While money may be the boss in GTA Online, it doesn't give you the skills or tools needed to acquire funds and protect your wealth in the shark eat shark world of Los Santos and Blaine County.
Reputation (RP) in the criminal underworld gains you respect and — more importantly — the fear of your lessers.
Rank means you can put your money where your mouth is and bullets where your enemies' mouths are. As the old saying goes, " with infamy comes grenade launchers and body armor ", so don't fall into the mistake of thinking that money is the only thing you need much of.
New players might be lulled into the false sense of security that ranking up is a breeze in the game, seeing as everyone complains about how hard it is to farm cash. However the only difference is that while you always lose — and therefore need to re-acquire — cash, once you've bagged some RP it never goes away.
How Hard Is It?
But climbing that particular ladder is no easy task, mind you, especially if you want to do it fast. Some missions grant more RP than others. Some just don't have a good effort to reward ratio. Faffing about in Freemode sure as hell won't help you achieve your goals either.
Just like in the case of getting cash, you can always just opt for the method of tossing your hands up in the air and saying " hell with it, I'm just going to play however I like ". You'll probably end up having significantly more fun than anyone else, but get used to seeing other characters leveling up a lot quicker than you.
However, unlike in the case of acquiring money, you don't have the option to buy your way to fame. While Shark Cards allow you to decided how much your time is worth, you have to rank up the hard way no matter how thick your real life wallet is.
And while ranking up unlocks new toys along the way which make things easier, with each rank you unlock, the next one will require more RP and the missions keep getting harder as well.
