General Multiplayer

This guide has been revamped for ease of reading. Please refer to this as a quick reference guide to online multiplayer. I will be continously updating this guide on very regular intervals. If you have queries you want answered in the guide, feel free to send me a message and I will try my best to get it covered

Hosting A Match
There are several ways to host a match. The first one is Party Mode. Invite several friends over and play matches from there on. However, the best way is Free Mode. Invite all your friends, and leave it open for others to join, and then host tournaments from there on. However, you may not remain host forever. The host will change due to several reasons, mainly dependent on the amount of kills you earned from the last activity, how much money you amassed from the last activities, how many respawns from the last activity and which player has the best internet connection with all players. Also, if the current host leaves, it will go to the next best player in the city, not the original host. While this may seem a harsh system, it gives you a chance to show off your skill to reclaim the hosting position

Modes and Restrictions

Deathmatch
16 Players
This is a straight run and gun deathmatch. Either work on your own, or in teams. The player(s) with the most money at the end of the game win. Make sure you pick up any money from the opponents you have killed. Its not about the amount of kills, it the amount of money which comes out of them. Always find cover and look at your radar on frequent intervals to see you nearest target. Again this is the same as TLAD, except the characters are different, and the weapons include sawn-off shotgun and pipe grenade.

Team Deathmatch
16 Players - Up to 8 teams
In team mode, stick together as a team. An obvious suggestion, however, moving to far away from your team may result in a unfornuate death. Make sure one guy from your team as a highly explosive device, and the other a highly dangerous gun! Make sure you can hear each other (party mode?). Again this is the same as TLAD, except the characters are different, and the weapons include sawn-off shotgun and pipe grenade.

Mafiya Work
16 Players
A guy named Kenny Petrovic dishes out missions to all players and the one who completes the mission first wins. When waiting for a task, find a car and wait until the order comes. Killing the other players is a waste of time and slows down the time taken to complete the task.

Team Mafiya Work
16 Players - Up to 8 teams
When in a team, spread the teams task, such as two killing, two guarding, two collecting the objective and two in the car! This is renamed Club Business in TLAD.

Car Jack City
16 Players
The aim is to find and bring back the cars in the best condition. Again, the player(s) who ammases the most money wins. Look down on your radar and you will see green and blue blips. The green cars are drug cars provide good money regardless of condition. The blue cars provide more money dependent on the condition. Although it would be a more sensible solution to go for green cars, if you are looking for a safe, clean delivery, which has lots of money tied in, the blue cars are recommended. Since players will be going for green cars, it requires less killing if you choose blue.

Team Car Jack City
16 Players - Up to 8 teams
In teams, one should drive and the others shoot, maybe another in command of the whole operation

Turf War
16 Players - 2 teams
You must take over a preset amount of bases and keep control over them until the end of the match. The team who come out with the most bases taken over will win the match. Remember that defending the territory is much more important the offending it. Find a sniping position on a rooftop close to the territory, and destroy any obstacles. Make sure you have voice communication first, to ensure that you will remain working as a team for a long time. This mode has been renamed Own The City in TLAD.

Race/Team Race
16 Players
The host of the match has control over which, or all, of the five races you should race in. There is only one difference between Race and GTA Race, and thats the latter has weapons. The road race is a normal, on street race. The heli and boat are air and water races dependent on mode. Free Race start as pedestrians, run to vehicles and get to the target checkpoint. Cannonball race starts as peds, get vehicles and race through checkpoints. Similar to free race, however, there is a set course. It would be recommeded you turn off traffic due to being a big distraction if you crash into it. GTA Race may involve weapons, but its the person who gets to the end of the course first who wins the match. In TLAD, the mode allows you to race around on bikes with a baseball bat as your weapon of destruction. There is, however, no Team Race mode in TLAD Race Mode.

Chopper VS Chopper & Lone Wolf Biker
2 - 8 players
In Chopper, the host chooses a number of checkpoints for the biker to cross before being blown up by the helicopter. As soon as the biker is dead, if all checkpoints have not been reached, the role reverses to the pilot of helicopter is now the biker. This keeps going till one claims all the checkpoints needed to win the game. Lone Wolf Biker is one biker against every other biker, with all guns blazing. If the lone biker finishes the race without being killed, he wins.


Cops 'n' Crooks
16 Players - 2 Teams
There are two modes to this game. Apart from the fact that one team are cops and the other team are crooks, All for One mode involves the crooks getting the boss of the team into the car, and One for All, involves each crook trying to get to the getaway vehicles. If you die in this mode, there is no respawning. The other team are cops, and are continously trying to stop you getting in the vehicles. It would be good to use the water as a getaway tool. For Cops, get two players on boats, two in air, two in cars and the rest on land. This allows you to be prepared for whichever route the crooks do take to make a swift getaway. For crooks, put 3 people at different locations around the map as teams, so prevent allow a clear path to the vehicles. Also, if theres a copper on your tail, don't lead them to the vehicles, otherwise the whole operation will go wrong!

Deal Breaker
4 Players
You select the difficulty level - easy, medium or hard, and the aim to break up a deal between the biker gang and the Italian Mafia, killing everyone at the deal. You should split your players into 2 in air and 2 on land. The bikers leave after the last package, therefore having a helicopter in air will stop them from their escape, while the guys on land do the work with the Mafia. Be quick and be safe.

Bomb da Base II
4 Players
Again, you can select the 3 difficulty levels and the aim is to take the explosives from the convey, place on helicopter and blow up ship! Since you are all given a sniper at the beginning of mission, send 1 man to a rooftop to kill the guy through the armoured car. Then get 2 other guys to steal the car, and 1 guy waiting to pick up the drugs and drop them off at ship. This mission requires planning so talk to your team before you start the mission. Its better than being killed to early on, and missing the deal.

Hangman's NOOSE
4 Players
Select from 3 difficulty levels. the story goes the Petrovic hires you to eliminate the NOOSE officers that are after him in the airport and take him to his safehouse. The NOOSE are quite hard obstacles, so when Petrovic is ready to be picked up, get one of the armoured cars, take him straight to a helicopter and fly him to the safehouse. However, if you want challenge, money and achievements, the other solution is to find a fast car, drive to the chopper, kill all NOOSE officers and fly to safehouse. What you should not do is try and drive there. Petrovic will be dead, and thats as far as it goes.
Tutorial thanks to PhantomStranger
Set up the match on a level of Hard. Get Player X to jack a NOOSE van on left and drive to far-end of the airport and get a chopper. The other two or three hold the NOOST back by shooting them down. Player X then flies the chopper back, collects Petrovic and other teammates and flies to the drop zone. Its easy and only takes a few minutes

Witness Protection
4-8 players
One team are cops, the other are getaway drivers. Based on the mission in the main TLAD story, the cops must stop the getaway bus from taking the criminals away. Once the criminals have been stopped, the roles are transferred. The game gets played the number of rounds the host choose to play.

Free Mode
16 Players
Set up a match, invite some mates, and do whatever you want. The worlds is now your oyster. Its good time to get achievements, or practise some tactics for future missions. When you are ready to play some matches, select your phone and select one from the above list. ITs good time to fly helicopters, get wanted levels, basically create ulimate chaos in Liberty City. Or you can act nice and drive your team around the city for a bit a site spotting! This is excluded from TLAD.


Customisable Options

Duration/Time of Day
5-60 Minutes
Morning, Midday, Evening, Midnight or Random
Weather/Weapons
Clear, Overcast, Drizzle, Rain, Foggy, Random
One weapon for all, select weapons for all, random weapons for all
Traffic/Pedestrians/Police
Low, Medium, High, Parked, Random traffic
Low, Medium, High density pedestrians
On, off police
Other
Respawn time (1-30secs or none)
Respawn distance (how far away from subject)
Friendly Fire (kill teammates)
Gamertag Display (displays gamertag)
Voice Chat (on, off, team or proximity)

Ranks

Each rank gives you several new options for clothing. You can optain ranks by playing in Ranked Matches, and earning the most money. However, in Ranked Matches, you cannot be invited, nor can you invite friends, therefore it is done through a match finding server.
There are two ways to unlock the Zombie costume. Either by getting Rank 10, the highest rank, through multiplayer games, or by being killed 5 times by a Rockstar employee by melee attacks. There are 10 ranks in the game. Like other games, they repeat themselves on several intervals. For each rank, you unlock a box set of clothes to customise your character with. On intervals, you may loose clothes. This occurs whenever you re-reach the rank you unlocked them in. You are expected to beat the rank to get your clothes back. Thus if you unlocked clothes in Rank 3, when you come back round to Rank 3 again, the clothes will vanish from the wardrobe until you earn them back. However, all the other clothes from the ranks above and below the current repeated rank will stay there until you re-reach it. Its complicated, but its provide a bigger challenge.

General Tips
- Make smaller teams to collect lots of money. Because the money is divided to all alive teammates at the end of the match, it would be bad to send 1 guy to do all the hard work, because him he gets killed, you all walk away with nothing
- While passengers can set GPS co-ordinates to anywhere in the city for the city to go to, don't all keep randomly changing it for the sake of it. Only do it if neccessary, such as a suprise roadblock.
- Get a sniper rifle guy in the helicopter with you, to get more precise shooting.
- If you only want to talk to one person on the team, use the cell phone. Its less annoying than trying to pick them out in a team of 8!
- Keep a team member close to respawn area, do prevent other teams killing the respawned character straight away
- Especially good in most modes, even Free Mode, helicopters are good for pointless dog fights. There is usually a helicopter above Booth Tunnel, and when its gone, another respawns within 5 seconds. Therefore, get 16 players, 16 helicopters in the air and have one massive brawl
- Also with helicopter, get a guy to stop in mid air next to a skyscraper, and get 6 or so up on the skyscraper. Run off one by one and get chopped by the razor blades. Do it again and again, although you die, its good fun
- Grab a bus as soon as possible. They are great for protection and can transport over 11 passengers
- Grab a friend and get to a fire engine. One can shoot water cannons while the drives the engine. It is also very durable and lasts a long time.
- In Free Mode, the safehouse usually caters for several fast cars. These are good for quick fire car chases however they are very weak and can blow up with a few AK shots.
- Create a booby trap. Park a durable vehicles outside an open dorryway and take cover. When the enemy approaches from the outside, duck in the building and vice versa. Now kill the enemy before they realise what you just set up. This works best if you are playing a team defense game and you can hide in your own base, with a car outside the door to protect you
- Lure enemies near hotdog stands! Not to eat hotdogs, but 1 good shot at the gas tank and ka-boom!
- Crouching removes your icon from your head, making it hard for an enemy to spot you, unless you are right in front of them
- Try different map settings, such as blips when near, or no blips. Makes spotting enemies harder, and better.
- Have fun doing all the activities. Treat it as a game, not a job!

Server Issues And Suggestions
There are plenty of people complaining about the lack of connectivity to the games online. Everyone who plays GTA IV would have experienced at least once. The game servers do not rely so much on NAT being Open as they do the strength of connection and how far away an opponent is. If you live 200 yds from a friends and want to play against each other, there is a higher chance of you playing lots of matches with no problems, but if you play someone the other side of the world, then you will have a lot lower chance of connecting with the players and a higher chance of problems occuring. Also, if you use a wired connection to 360, then you will not experience as many problems as if your wireless. If you are a PS3 owner, make sure your PS3 is close to an internet connection to ensure the best gameplay. Just to reinforce...The Lost and Damned is not available on PSN, only XBLA.
More information to come - If you have any questions about multiplayer, please ask and i will try and get them covered in this guide