Kojima Productions is stepping in to help players that have been being griefed by others in a unique way. Recently, players have been leaving their vehicles in places that block entrances or turn-ins for quests, making it impossible for others in the open-world to turn in their own quests.
This has plenty of negative repercussions, from not allowing other players to progress in the story to simply stopping people from getting quest rewards. In essence, this small thing is game-breaking.
To counteract this, Kojima Productions is implementing a quick fix as part of their mid-December patch. We don’t have any specifics on exactly how this will work, but Kojima Productions confirmed on Twitter that the issue was definitely acknowledged and would be dealt with.
It isn’t just quests being affected, either. Players leaving their trucks on roads impedes the progress of others and forces them to off-road, which can sometimes end in disaster. Every facet of the game is affected by a factor as small as individual vehicles being left behind.
It’s a bit alarming, honestly, that this was something that even made it to the final game. With all of the polish and care that Kojima Productions poured into the game, you would think that one of the many people on the team would have foreseen the game-breaking capabilities of impassable vehicles. Whether it’s on the road or blocking the way to Conan O’Brien, an impassable barrier is always going to be annoying and letting other players pick where to put it is even worse.
Of course, one can never underestimate the capabilities of the online community to find new ways to grief each other. It’s almost impressive that no matter what game it is, online players discover some way to be a nuisance to others. It just so happens that in this case, the griefing has the ability to completely stop progress in the game.
So what sort of fix can we expect to see? It’s unlikely that Kojima Productions will give players the ability to outright delete the vehicles of other players, as that would lead to a fresh new type of griefing. Some fans are theorizing that we may see a “downvote” system that allows players to more or less report the vehicles of others and have them removed.
The problem with this second method is that it’s by no means a quick fix and would likely need multiple players to report it. This won’t help anyone who’s in a hurry or wants to progress without waiting hours.
Either way, we’ll only have to wait another week or two before we see what Kojima Productions had in mind.