While it's usually New Year's Eve, not Christmas, that is a time for reflection, most outlets are already naming all of their various nominees and even winners for various end-of-year awards. This includes the new Steam Awards as well as countless game of the year awards being handed out by pretty much every news site.
Since this particular site is dedicated to GTA 5, our own end of year awards don't exactly have such a large pool of candidates. On the other hand, what GTA Online had plenty of in 2016 were content updates. Many were major, many were well liked, while others were divisive. Online arguably changed more in this past year than it did in any year before.
We wonder, then, which of 2016's updates was the favorite of the fans? Which DLC did the players like the most? This isn't the first poll we've ran here at GTA BOOM. Previously, we asked our readers what their hopes for the next Rockstar project are between Red Dead Redemption 2, Story DLC and GTA 6. More recently, we set out to gauge just how much interest there actually is in Story DLC — the results were overwhelming.
We suspect that competition will be tighter with more options on the list with this particular poll, considering how many strong entrants we have for this particular race. With 8 distinct DLCs to rank, players will have to think long and hard on which one to grant their vote. But before we get on to voting, let's see a recap of this year's DLC.
January saw the release of the year's first DLC. Even though it was a minor update, it wasn't tied to another major DLC for which it was an expansion, thus it gets its own entry. This small update added the Karin Sultan and the Bravado Banshee to Benny's list of serviced vehicles. Unfortunately, the latter was hounded by bugs — however once these were fixed, it briefly enjoyed the honor of being the fastest car in the game. What the update was named after, however, was the Drop Zone Adversary Mode, which saw two teams of paratroopers drop into an arena to battle it out team deathmatch style.
Valentine's Day has been celebrated in GTA Online before with DLC and this year was no different. The update brought back some fan favorite content from previous DLCs, like the Albany Roosevelt and the Gusenberg Sweeper. It also brought new things to the table with the Till Death Do Us Part Adversary Mode which put a new spin on the typical deathmatch formula by putting two players on a team with just the one life between them — if either of you dies, you both die.
Custom Classics was the forerunner of the following month's one-lowrider-per-week model, with which it is grouped together. By the time it ran its course, the update series added six new lowrider vehicles to GTA Online, two weapons and a new Adversary Mode, Sumo. This new Mode ended up being the best-received part of the entire DLC set and went on to become one of the few Adversary Modes which achieved popularity among the players.
Possibly the most impactful and definitive update of the year, Further Adventures In Finance And Felony also wins the awards for "DLC with the longest name". Expanding on the concept introduced by Executives and Other Criminals last year, Finance and Felony placed GTA Online players into the soft leather chair of a CEO. While bank robberies were the name of the game before, white-collar crime became the new focus of the game.
The update added a ton of new vehicles including the iconic Pegassi Reaper. The main addition, however, was the new CEO mechanic. Players could purchase executive offices and warehouses in order to get a slice of the black market deals going on in and around Los Santos. Missions tasked players with acquiring contraband goods, and them selling them off at a profit.
Finance and Felony is possibly one of our strongest candidates, even though it is likely the most divisive. The initial investment required to get in on crate missions is pretty high, which was off-putting for many players. That said, once the black market business warms up, it is pretty much the best way to make cash in the game right now. Special Cargo spices things up occasionally by giving players large bonuses in the case of success. Notably, the update also introduced the Weapon Locker, which finally solved the game's weapon inventory issue, even if just partially.
Cunning Stunts is pretty much the craziest GTA Online DLC of them all and the most deviant. Instead of focusing on criminal activities and being grounded in reality, this update instead shifted the focus to unrealistic but flashy stunt races filled with deathtraps and massive jumps. The update introduced the all-new Stunt Race jobs, which are separate from regular races.
Adding an absolutely massive number of vehicles, only to be expanded with post-launch bonus updates, Cunning Stunts really strained the garages of car collectors, who were already struggling with having to get rid of older rides. The races themselves were pretty insane, with most of them being suspended hundreds of feet in the air with nothing but the sheer power if imagination.
Cunning Stunts was thought to have marked a change in the direction GTA Online will take in the future, namely that the game will shed the restrictions of being grounded in reality for a less realistic but more entertaining directive. This didn't actually happen, but Cunning Stunts did end up being pretty much the most loved update of the year and has a good chance of grabbing this award.
This was the DLC everyone was waiting for. Years of pleading and hoping paid off this year when possibly catalyzed by a popular petition, Rockstar finally added a biker themed update to GTA Online. Not only were a host of biker clothing items added to the game alongside more than a dozen new bikes, but players could now join or found their own clubs, complete with new clubhouses that doubled as an HQ and a 10 bike garage.
The update also added a number of clandestine businesses for players to run in order to generate some passive income. Though they were kind of difficult to get a hang of at first, once players learned the intricacies of the businesses, these were a great way of making decent amounts of cash with relatively little effort required.
Yes, we know this was just an expansion for Bikers, but freaking light cycle battles from Tron. I'm not even sure anymore how many times I typed that phrase since the release of the Nagasaki Shotaro, which is a pretty decent replica of the iconic vehicles from Tron.
Not only is the Shotaro the best bike in the game, it's also the vehicle you use in the Deadline Adversary Mode, which makes a pretty good job of porting the concept of the light cycle battles to GTA Online's structure. Deadline also turned out to pay pretty well, especially for an Adversary Mode. Deadline ended up being one of the most loved updates, in spite of being a minor one.
This year's latest update, Import/Export, ruffled quite a few feathers. While as a DLC, it packed a whole lot of content, including a few bits that are universally liked — such as the massive 60 slot executive garage — it caused some tension to bubble to the surface.
Import/Export sought to return to the roots of GTA but making the stealing of cars the main game mechanic again. It also added a bunch of special vehicles, including amphibious cars, a Voltic with a jet-engine strapped to it, a post-apocalyptic camper, a wedge-car and an intelligent vehicle based on KITT from Knight Rider.
In terms of content, Import/Export is all there. It's the prices where things get a bit wonky. Even Finance and Felony got a bit controversial due to the high initial investment, but Import/Export eclipses it by much, and the learning curve of the new mechanic is much steeper. Many players found themselves dumping millions into the new content, only to make back pocket change with the actual missions. That said, if done right, import and export missions become just as lucrative as running crates, if not more.
The poll is open! Which is your favorite GTA Online DLC from 2016?
