Players who have been venturing into the virtual streets of Los Santos in GTA Online for even a short while will have likely encountered — and suffered — the phenomenon known in gamer culture as "griefing. This is when a high-level player singles out a single other poor soul in the lobby, likely someone inexperienced or low-level with less of a chance to stand against them. The griefer then proceeds to kill the victim over and over again, constantly harassing them and essentially pissing in their soup.
Every online community has its griefers, however these unruly fellows have an easier time at it in GTA Online. Jet griefing is particularly wide spread, so much so that we posted an article giving tips on how to avoid them and retaliate effectively. Before the most recent update going into Passive Mode was the only way to get a griefer off your back.
Ever since the recent Lowriders: Custom Classics DLC was released along with a heap of bug fixes and various tweaks some players have noticed a new option to solve the griefer problem has been introduced. The new feature is call "Ghosting", but is unfortunately less awesome than it sounds.
Instead of allowing the victims to respawn as ghosts who are invincible, can pass through buildings and have the ability to deal damage to the griefer for some righteous revenge, Ghosting is more of an escape method with some strict criteria.
If your character has been killed three times inside of 5 minutes by the same opponent and you haven't dealt any damage to the attacker, you have the option to be "Ghosted to Player" when you respawn. This means that you will be invisible and invincible to that player, but only to them, for two minutes.
This method plays on the apparent short attention span of your typical griefer, who isn't satisfied with life unless they make another human being somewhat inconvenienced every ten seconds or so. If you're getting griefed and activate Ghosting, chances are the bastard will move on to another victim by the time your two minutes of etheral being are up.
Not quite as cool as coming back as a ghost to haunt the perpetrator and exact righteous vengeance, but hell, it's more than nothing. The same system could have been used in reverse — if you're being griefed, you can turn the griefer into a ghost, severing their connection with the game world. This way they could not interact with the game or the other players for two minutes, allowing you to leave the scene.
Of course, both this and any other method which propagates vigilante justice could be exploited in many ways, which is why Rockstar chose the method they did. If you desire sweet righteous vengeance, you'll have to fight for it.
Hopefully Rockstar will implement a similarly effective fix for the hacker issue as well soon, as the particularly destructive insurance fraud hack has popped up again in public lobbies.
Have you guys made use of the new Ghosting feature in GTA Online?
