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Aug 03

GTA V Online: News And Thoughts At Rank 120

I’ve surpassed the Rank 120 milestone, and unlocked the last rank-restricted weapon:  The Minigun.  I’d used it before, because you can get it in certain jobs and missions, plus the random special prize boxes that drop.  It is a very powerful weapon, but uses too much ammo to make it economical to use instead of the all-purpose rifles.  Still, having it feels good, and there are enemies which are tough enough that the cost to kill them doesn’t matter.

I’ve stuck strongly to doing the things I’ve suggested, especially doing the Daily Objectives and the easy jobs.  Rockstar has offered bonus GTA$ and RP for specific things over the last month as well, which is good for ranking up and buying things.  It is very, very easy to fall into the temptation to buy new vehicles, even if you don’t really need them for any practical purpose.  That is part of the joy of playing this game, to get things which are cool yet truly unnecessary.

GTA Online is fun if you play mostly solo, doing missions against other players or in cooperative games on the fly.  But it really shines when you can get together with friends.  One of the big strengths of the GTA series is its sandbox aspect:  you can play and do whatever you want, with no need to be working towards any objectives at all.  This becomes even better when you are doing it with someone else for fun.  It definitely does pay — in both fun and game rewards — to work together with friends, but the freedom to simply mess around without caring about any of the game’s serious aspects really only works well when playing only with friends.

To best do that, you need to start the game in single player, then create either a friend, crew, or invite only session.  Then, let your friends join in, and have the entire game world all to yourselves.  You lose out on some of the competitive aspects versus strangers, but gain greatly in both freedom and safety, with no unknowns playing who may be out simply to cause grief.

The only downside of this is that, when playing jobs together, the changing hosts and sessions may split everyone up once you go back to free mode.  This can require everyone to figure out who, if anyone, is still in a private session, then get everyone to join it again.  Or even require someone to leave GTA Online and rejoin it to create such a session.

Friends make doing the Daily Objectives much, much easier.  Many require a cooperative opponent to accomplish.  Asking politely in a public session might get you one, but friends are more reliable.  And the pay off for doing them is so good, it is always worth doing if you are going to play the game regularly.

Helping Out The New Guy

I’ve covered some of the things which can help a new player get going in GTA Online.  I strongly suggest taking the introductory missions and get set up in the game a bit, which only takes about an hour or so, before playing with other people.  Playing with friends in a private session can make getting acquainted with the environment a lot less painless.  While I’ve often joined games with no players causing trouble for others, there are sadly too many who take joy in attacking defenseless players.  While the player rank isn’t shown at all times, so it may not be obvious when  you engage an enemy, it isn’t that hard to check.

The game doesn’t make it easy for you to give aid to another player directly.  You can’t give anyone money.  While you can drop weapons, it doesn’t unlock them for ownership, so they will only keep it during the current session (same as weapons picked up on certain jobs).  There is a very limited ability to share cash from jobs in the game — most of the money earned can’t be traded or dropped.

One thing which would seem nice to do would be to customize a car, then let another player take it.  Unfortunately for people trying to help out this way, once you customize a car at all, you own it.  Even if you don’t install a tracker or get insurance, the car can’t be taken into someone else’s garage or into a custom shop.

This does protect you if you forgot to get insurance on your new car after modding, and it also offers protection for the Export cars you resprayed for Simeon.  So I can see why it was done this way, but it does remove yet another thing players could do to help out a friend.

So what things can you do to directly help a friend?  First, as you may know, if you carry large amounts of cash (over $5000), you’ll drop some when you die.  It is only about $200-500, so it isn’t going to help all that much, but it is worth keeping in mind.

You also can invite a friend to shoot you when you get a bounty on you.  That is $1000-$9000, but it doesn’t cost you that much — only the medical costs for death.  Better to let a friend get the money than worry that some random stranger is going to hunt you down.

You can invite your friends with you on jobs.  Especially ones too dangerous for a beginning player.  Just let them sit in the car, and do most of the work yourself.  You can, of course, let them take action when it won’t risk the mission.  But a lot of the missions, especially the contact missions, have limited lives and you can’t afford to let anyone die unnecessarily.

Just playing regular jobs with an experienced player is a big help.  While new players can just join in with any random player, having a friend or two along can make the situation much easier.

Jul 12

GTA V Online: Rank 100! Rockstar’s New Ill Gotten Gains DLCs And More

During the Independence Day special (and weekend) I hit the Rank 100 milestone.  A lot was going on at that time, including the Star Wars Battlefront Alpha (awesome!) and Part One of the Ill Gotten Gains DLC for GTA Online.  Rockstar also did an Independence Day Celebration special, with fireworks, events, and special vehicle deals.

I couldn’t resist the temptation to get the Liberator Monster Truck.  It is a Pegasus vehicle, so you can’t keep it in your garage or customize it.  The Sovereign motorcycle was also available.  Neither one is available normally.  I got one of those too.  It isn’t fast enough for racing but it is fun to drive it around.  It can be customized, but you can’t change its special paint.

I passed Rank 110 the next week (July 10, 2015).  Part Two of the Ill Gotten Gains DLCs came out as well.  The two new DLCs add some new weapons and new vehicles, including the most expensive ones yet in the game.  The two new Supercars are pretty evenly matched, and round out the category well, giving the Zentorno and Entity XF a run for the money.  The Progen T20 is a very high performance car, with a unique speed-controlled spoiler.  The Pegassi Osiris has very cool gull wing doors.  Both also look very nice.  They also are the current top highest price cars, in the $2 Million range.  This gives them a special place as the “don’t blow me up, or else” cars, because the insurance costs the offending enemy about $25K if they destroy them.

Now, I dropped about $1 Million on vehicles for the Independence Day Special, including the red, white, and blue tire smokes, so coming up with another couple million for these cars isn’t easy.  Fortunately, there are still some good ways to make lots of money quickly in the game.  I’ve covered some of the basic ones before — selling cars and doing the Daily Objectives — but there are a few other things which are pretty easy to do.

I got my $500K 28 day bonus for the Daily Objectives, and that is pretty nice.  Of the things to do in the game, these are pretty easy, pay well, and also give good RP to help you rank up faster.  While some of the tasks are harder than others, all are possible to do within an hour or two of playtime, especially with friends online.

Cool thing happened, which may help some of you.  I missed a day playing, but when I got on GTA the next time and did my Daily Objectives, I got the $100K weekly bonus.  I thought I’d noticed that before, but now I’m sure that it only counts days that you actually play the game.  So if circumstances stop you from playing for a while, you will keep your consecutive days streak going as long as you do the objectives on any day you actually play.

Aircraft Takedown is a free roam task set by Trevor, and pays extremely well ($30K once you’ve done them ten times).  It is shared by all players in the world, but often you have no competition for the target and they can be taken out quickly if you have the right tools.

What are the right tools?  The Homing Rockets can do the job, but against the light airplanes you often need several to get a kill.  You may need to back it up with machine gun or sniper rifle fire.  The easiest way is to use armed vehicles.  The Buzzard Attack Chopper or any military jet (you can steal one if needed) are good choices.  You’ll need to reach Rank 42 to have these reliably, but it is possible to steal armed helicopters from the various heliports in the game, as well as any airfield.

The pay for these is so good that it is always worth trying for if you have a chance.  There are two related target jobs offered in free mode:  Destroy Vehicle and Kill Target.  These pay a few thousand each, and don’t have the progressive payout increase that the aircraft targets get.  But you often can find the targets within a short distance of your location, and you only need the usual ground combat weapons to do the job.  Any gun, and perhaps a grenade or sticky bomb to destroy the vehicle.  If you’re being cheap, you can drive it into water, use an armed vehicle with its weapons (which can make these jobs even easier), or just shoot and crash the thing after you steal it.

Distract Cops is another free mode job offered by Lester, and it pays pretty well — $10K if you are in the area the whole five minutes alone.  You will get wanted stars, progressing all the way to five stars if you stay in from the start, so be prepared to evade the cops or die.  Possibly multiple deaths, as especially at lower ranks it can be hard to cope with them.  Even so, the pay is just so good you can afford the expenses.  It is often practical to simply drive fast through the area and do your best to avoid engaging the cops, unless you can’t escape without shooting.  This will delay the increase in wanted level.  Planning an escape route afterwards is important, especially if you are using your own vehicle.  If you die to close to your car, it will be impounded, requiring a trip to the impound lot later to get it back.

All the above require rank 15 to unlock, just like Daily Objectives.  Reaching that rank makes it much easier to continue to rank up fast and make more money.  Fortunately, it doesn’t really take very much playtime to reach that point — you get Rank 5 just from doing the introductory online missions, which I recommend.

Hitting an Armored Truck is another way to make extra money. You need to get to the truck, usually shoot the driver, then get out and open the truck’s rear door to get the money.  A Sticky Bomb will easily blow it open, but may also set off nearby vehicles and blow up the truck (and money) too.  You can shoot it open with a heavy gun like a shotgun or sniper.  The cops will go after you, but the payout of $2K-$10K isn’t bad for a very quick mission.

Speaking of missions, Contact Missions are both a good way to make quick money and RP, but are also a good way to play cooperatively with friends – and get even more bonus money.  As you rank up, more missions will become available, but you can — as with all jobs — join someone else’s mission and play.  If you can’t find one you like, you can call up one of the job providing NPCs and request one from them.  While some are very difficult to pull off, and others can’t even succeed without two or more good players, many can be run solo if you can’t find cooperative players to join you. They pay very well, more than $20K for a long mission, especially on Hard difficulty.

Last of course, never forget just doing jobs of all types and playing the game to make money.  The idea is to do things which are fun, and get your money and rank as a nice bonus while doing so.

 

Jul 08

Battlefield: Star Wars Battlefront Alpha Play And RIP Battlefield Hardline PC

 

Battlefield Hardline on PC Isn’t dead yet, but there are not a lot of players or servers active in it.  Part of this seems to be other competing game choices, including the many improvements made to Battlefield 4, which is quite healthy on PC.  The 1st DLC is out for Premium players, but that hasn’t brought that many people back to the game.

So let’s hit one of the first issues:  Price.  I haven’t got Premium yet, in large part because I was hoping that it would go on sale with the first DLC.  Reports say that the new DLC is quite nice and adds to the game, but on PC we won’t have players unless they are willing to pay the price.  And for many, it simply isn’t worth as much as Battlefield 4 Premium was.  With one less map than Battlefield 4 DLCs, it objectively is worth less (or is more expensive) for the game play provided.  While the base game has been dropped in price, it is the Premium players who will keep it going.  After all, if you spend extra money on it — and those who already have I am sure are trying to get their money’s worth out of it — you are going to want to play it.  New content adds new interest.

Another element is the required grind or boosting in order to get the Syndicate assignments.  Some players are good enough to do it on their own, but for most it is simply too hard.  There is nothing wrong with having some hard achievements in a game, but not for things which lock useful content.  The game could benefit from more promotional missions and achievements, which could inspire players to compete to do them.

The odd thing is that the game itself runs fairly well and while not perfect in balance, it isn’t bad at all for a straight FPS shooter.  The fact that you will have most of the good unlocks pretty fast means you can concentrate on simply playing the game, not worrying about the progression to the next upgrade.  Many games do perfectly well with no new material, as long as the game play is good.  And there is some very fun times to be had in Hardline.

You just have to have people to play with, and that gets back to the issues which keep people from playing it.  I try to hit it at least once a week, but certainly could do more.  And I think I would, if there were more signs of support.

 

Star Wars Battlefront Alpha Play

http://www.pcgamer.com/star-wars-battlefront-4k-screens-showcase-the-pale-beauty-of-hoth/

The really good news is that Battlefront plays very well, looks excellent, and has an absolutely solid Star Wars feel.  It is most definitely not a Battlefield 4 reskin.  Not that I expected that, but it was very nice to see it fully confirmed by the Alpha game play.  Not everyone got a chance to try it, of course, and EA hasn’t authorized release of game play videos, so you can’t see it for yourself.  But the reports are all very good about it.

My own experience was good.  The game looked and sounded like Star Wars, and played very smoothly.  No weird glitches, nothing that seemed to work wrong.  Compared to the BF4 Alpha and first Hardline Beta (which was sort of like an Alpha), it was perfect.

We had two different game modes to try.  First, a horde-type survival mode, which could be played cooperatively or solo.  Waves of Imperial forces come after you, a downed pilot, and you must take them out.  Very nice desert scenery and a good environment to use tactics.

The multiplayer used the battle on Hoth, with the Imperial AT-AT walkers advancing on the Rebel base.  This is sort of a Rush game mode, with each side fighting over command stations.  If the rebels held two stations, they could attack and damage the AT-AT walkers.  The walkers continue their advance until they reach the base, unless stopped.  The front line — and the location of the stations which must be controlled — moves back as the walkers advance.  The rebels must concentrate on both holding the front (and stations) and engaging the advancing Imperial forces.  The snow trenches, rock and ice formations offer lots of cover, making for a very nice area to fight over.

The weapons were nicely done.  We had four basic weapons to use — same on both sides — with tradeoffs between things like fire rate, damage, and accuracy.  The weapon system doesn’t use ammo.  Instead, the weapons need to cool down (and you can speed up the cooldown using a reload-type action).  In addition to the soldier’s main weapon, you also have a “Card” which has three additional tools or weapons which you can use as well.  Those require recharging after use.  We only had two Cards to choose from in the Alpha, but I am certain we will see many more options in the full game.

A very interesting element was the power ups picked up on the battlefield.  These provide additional weapons for you to use, and you can only hold one at time, so if you want a different one you must use the first.  These include things like deployable shields, powerful explosives, and smart rockets.  But this system also includes the keys to the vehicles.  You can call in (and then drive) an X-Wing or Tie Fighter on the battlefield, drive an AT-ST walker, or even take control of the gun on the huge AT-AT walkers.  Rather than simply getting in a vehicle and taking control of it, you must earn a shot at them by being out in the battle and pick up the access key.   This should stop anyone from monopolizing vehicles for the entire game.

I believe this system will also provide access to the more powerful characters and their weapons, such as Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.  We didn’t see any of that in the Alpha, which was a little disappointing.  But they did the storm troopers and rebels so well, I could live without them.  Also, I suspect that the full game will, as Star Wars Battlefront II did, give you the option to play with or without the hero characters and other upgrades.

I’d have liked to see more game modes and maps, rather than just the assault on Hoth.  Of course, they do need to hold stuff back for the Beta and the full game, but still, it would have been nice to at least try a different game mode on the same map.

The Alpha didn’t support in game voice chat or friend/squad organization, so it was harder to coordinate than the current Battlefield games.  The Partner system worked fine, though — where you have one other player who you can spawn on and work with, which can be a friend.  Since it was in a sense a solid demo of the basic game play, this didn’t matter too much, but it did make it harder to try out with a group of friends.

The actual game play made up for that, very well.  The experience of being a Star Wars soldier in an epic battle is brought to life with this game.  It isn’t just upgraded graphics and sound compared to its predecessor.  Star Wars Battlefront I and II retained some elements which tied them to the Battlefield 2 play style.  The new Battlefront focuses the action on game play more like the source material, and has much more of the feel of being in a Star Wars movie.

If they do as well with the rest of the game, it is going to be a solid hit, and perhaps the best Star Wars game of all time.

 

Jun 29

GTA Online: Excellent Gameplay And Ranking Up, Rampant PC Hacks

I hit Rank 95 this weekend and am on track to reach the major milestone of Rank 100.  In many ways, Rank 100 is the level where you have finally “made it” in the game.   There are a lot of Rank 100 rewards unlocked, and nothing nearly as impressive comes along after that.  You do get the Minigun at Rank 120, and more spare armor capacity, but Rank 100 is pretty much the last of the best unlocks.  Last health upgrade, last car armor upgrade, unlocks the useful RPG, and a bunch of  vehicles and other goodies to let you show off that you are successful in GTA.

I also made nearly $1 Million over the weekend.  That is above average but it includes the very nice 28 consecutive Daily Objective bonus ($500K), but even without that it would be a good amount of money.   Unfortunately, the game is marred by rampant hackers on the PC.

We ran into “drive by” money shooting hackers this weekend.  They cruise around and shoot money bags at players, who automatically get the money when it hits them.  Of course, they can use the money hacks to get as much money as they want, which makes working hard to earn money legitimately in the game rather frustrating.  If everyone else is getting tons of free money with no downsides, why work for it?

I hit on this before, but if you do get hit with money you didn’t intend to get, the only recourse is spending it right away.  Best on something exotic which you don’t really need — a boat or plane for example.  You can leave sessions to avoid hackers, but even passive mode is not a defense against the money attackers.  In essence, the hackers use their”free money” gifts to get a pass to do whatever else they want, because other players aren’t as inclined to report them.

Rockstar’s Shark Cards are pretty much worthless in an environment where non-hackers can get as much money as they will ever want just by joining a session with this kind of hacker.  They are pretty common too.  This weekend, every single big public session I joined had hackers.  Not all were shooting money — blocking apartment and garage locations was a problem too — but there was nowhere safe from them other than private sessions.  And jobs, I didn’t see anyone using hacks in them this time, though it does happen.

Threats of bans and cheater zone banishment may discourage some of this, but obviously has little real deterrent at this time.  I would think that Rockstar would want this kind of thing blocked by technical means rather than player reports, but for the time being, it is quite a problem.

 

On the flip side, the Jobs players are all usually pretty good.  Racers especially.  There are a lot of serious Race drivers out there, who treat GTA as a serious racing game despite its action orientation and simplified physics.  The variety of cars and race types make it a lot of fun, especially with friendly players.

First tip:  Don’t crash into other cars.  You are more likely to mess up your own driving doing so, and a “clean” racer will be able to pull ahead when that happens.

 

 

Heists and Missions remain very popular and a lot of fun especially if you can get a group together to run them.  They are one of the best parts of the GTA Online experience.

Jun 16

GTA V Online: Starting Out

Starting out in GTA Online, you should do the introduction missions. You get money, it helps you get acquainted with the game, and you’ll advance in rank safely. During this, you will get a chance to get your first Personal Vehicle. You get your pick of any car or bike you can steal off the street, as long as it isn’t so expensive (or hot) that you can’t modify it at the Mod Shop. Simeon will give you any modifications you want (that you’ve unlocked so far) for free, so take your time looking over your choices when you take your car in.

I picked a Dominator, a very good Muscle Car, well suited for racing. As your first car will also be the vehicle you use for early jobs and missions, you’ll want something fairly fast and easy enough to drive. But as races are good jobs to make money on, and unlock more upgrades for your cars, picking a good race car as your first car is a sensible option. You will already have some free personalized modifications (paint job, at least) for this car, so that can save you a little money. The Muscle cars are a good category, because there are actual choices to make, not one single car recommended as best.

Another fairly good choice is the Felon. It is a very good Coupe when fully upgraded, and a pretty fast car for missions. A Baller V2 would have potential if you wanted an SUV, but SUV races aren’t so common and it (and compacts) just aren’t that fast for cruising around in.

Sports, sadly, aren’t a great choice except for missions. The more expensive Sports cars available for purchase beat all the street cars easily. The Elegy RH8 is a very good deal once you get the money, but you can’t steal and keep one.

You will quite quickly reach Rank 5, at which point you can buy properties.

Property:

So you want to invest in real estate? Only two things really matter in GTA.

Size. They come in Low, Medium, and High End places, with 2 car, 6 car, and 10 car garages.

Location, Location, Location. What’s around the neighborhood, and how close is it to places you need to go in the game.

As far as game functionality goes, all apartments and garages of the same level are exactly equal. You get different furnishings and scenery, and views if you have windows, but while cool to show off and to sit in between missions, it won’t affect game play at all.

Garages don’t have an apartment attached, but otherwise tend to be just as useful as apartments with garages for most game purposes. You can do a lot of business in the game without ever entering your apartment.

There are two useful things which do require apartments. First, the closet. You can organize and change your clothes here. Second, the High End apartments have the Heist Room, an office where you can join or lead (after rank 12) heists.

So what to look for in a location? #1 — The Los Santos Customs Mod Shop. A lot of your activity in the game will revolve around these. Stealing and selling cars, and modifying cars you already own. They also offer an escape location from the police. Secondary concerns are things like AmmuNation (buy weapons and ammo) and Stores (get snacks and maybe quick robbery cash.

Another minor concern is the accessibility and visibility of its entrance. Your garage and apartment are a safe refuge from both police and other players. You can’t enter when wanted by the police if they can see you do it, so having a little cover or a bit of distance from view (like curves in roads) can help a bit. It often isn’t hard to run around a bit and get enough distance to enter any garage (or Mod Shop) even if the cops are in the area.

You only really need one High End Apartment. You can buy three properties, but the other two can be just garages if all you want to do is store more cars and have some convenient alternate spawn points. There are only a handful of High End Apartment locations, and they are all in the downtown and rich areas of Los Santos.

What did I do? With about $1 Million burning a hole in my pocket between preorder bonuses and early game jobs, I just took the most expensive place I could find. It is a popular area, but you can get the location without taking the most expensive apartment. The Eclipse (and nearby Tinsel) Tower has a mod shop pretty close, and is fairly centrally located, which is good for a lot of missions. I don’t regret the purchase, but I could have saved nearly half the cost and had a perfectly functional Heist headquarters.

I also bought a 10 car garage. I picked the location before I discovered that you can’t keep Simeon’s Export Cars in your garage — you must find and steal them off the street each time. I could have picked a location closer to a mod shop, but it is good for some activities, in a nice area for harvesting cars (drive out of garage with one to sell, find another one like it and sell it instead). It is also out of the way of many player’s chosen primary homes, which can be useful if I’m trying to avoid unnecessary conflicts.

Last, I picked a Medium (6 car) place in Blaine County, near a mod shop and a useful base when I want to work from that area. Or just hide away from the high energy action going on in the big city. The area has no 10 car properties, so that is as big as I can get there.

Note that your Mechanic, who you get when you purchase any property, can deliver cars from any of your garages to your location, fairly fast. So for storage, the location isn’t important, just the size.

What if you’re starting out without bonus cash? Well, much depends on your plans. You can do jobs, especially missions, and make enough cash to get a High End Apartment fairly early in the game. The downside is that you will be stuck with one car, no ability to purchase cars online, and no place to change and organize clothes. You can survive this — buy outfits in the stores, use your one car for all missions.

A 10 car garage can also be a decent choice. It is something you can use even when you get a better apartment, as extra car storage and a spawn location is always useful. They are priced in the range of a Medium apartment, sometimes even cheaper.

It can also make sense to buy a really cheap Low End place and plan to trade it in later. This gives you a working starter home, doesn’t burn up too much money, and won’t waste much when you trade it in later. A two car garage is really too small to both keep a working mission or race car and also collect up cars for sale. But it is just fine to start out with.

Weapons:

Guns! I bought them all. I like to try them out for myself and see the differences between them. I have enough money for them. Only downsides? More weapons means a longer time to switch between them, and the default on spawn may not be the weapon you really want. Of the defaults, for me I get Pistol (would rather have AP Pistol), Assault Rifle (the carbines are better), and the Pump Shotgun (not bad for intimidation but the Assault Shotgun is usually better).

Still, it doesn’t take long to change them when you spawn, and it makes you think about which ones are best for what you’re doing. The game has a lot of weapons to choose from.

Clothes: These aren’t that expensive, so it is just a matter of picking what you want. You can spend more if fashion matters to you, but it is nothing near the other areas of spending

Armor and Gear: Most equipment, like weapons and attachments, only needs to be purchased once. Then you have it forever. It is possible to drop weapons if you don’t need them, but it is rarely needed. Ammo does cost to replace, and can be a big expense. Armor and Parachutes must be replaced when used, and you will need to hit the Ammunation to get them. You can replace ammo and armor between some jobs, but you can’t get extra armor except from the store.

Explosive ammo is not cheap, and you can spend a lot of money replacing it if you use a lot. At roughly $250 per grenade and $500 per high explosive rockets and bombs, it is easy to burn through $10K of ammo on one mission or fight.

Your capacity for armor, ammo, and snacks increases with rank.

Obsessed With Cars!

The game is Grand Theft Auto after all. Obtaining and customizing a collection of cool cars is an addicting core part of the game. Once you get all the unlocks, you can spend $100K to $300K — and perhaps more — upgrading one car. And while you don’t need every expensive performance upgrade for cars which are just for showing off, it is tempting to do so anyway simply because they are your special cars. Why not make them the best you can?

I’ll divide the cars into three categories, based on what you need them for in the game, though there is some overlap between the categories.

#1: The Mission cars: Fast, tough, decent off road handling, and depending on your finances, cheap enough to afford the insurance payment to replace them when destroyed. Space for four passengers is also good if you want to use the car to move your mission team mates and crew around. Cars are much more effective in combat when they have passengers to take out targets while the driver navigates the mission. Often, a fast 2 passenger car is quite sufficient for these things, as you don’t always have three people handy to fill the passenger seats. The fastest Super and Sports cars are good for this. Speed can matter a lot, making it easier to get to missions, run from cops, and such.

The Heist DLC adds two very effective mission cars: The Kuruma (Armored) and the Insurgent, unlocked in the Fleeca and Humane Raid Heists respectively. The Insurgent Pick Up is armed but is a Pegasus vehicle, so you can’t store it in a garage, mod it, or have it available for casual driving around all the time. The Kuruma (Armored) and Insurgent come with built in armor and bulletproof tires, which could be considered a nice cost savings.

The Kuruma is the winner for this category. It is a fast sports car and it is very well armored. It is entirely bulletproof from the front and back, and only has small openings on the side (the bullet slits) where shots can get through. Since you can shoot at enemies in front of you as the driver, this makes it extremely easy to take out foes as long as you keep them in front of you. The passengers can shoot to the rear, but the driver cannot. It does have a big downside — the armored windows block you from using thrown explosives. It also is not especially resistant to explosives, which isn’t usually a problem on missions but worth keeping in mind if the enemies (like other players) are willing to blow you up. It is a nice four passenger vehicle too, which is useful.

The Insurgent is a six passenger off road vehicle, with an armored body but it lacks the bulletproof windshield of the Kuruma, so the driver is vulnerable to attack. It is much more resistant to explosives, able to take multiple (3 to 4) hits and survive. It is also a massive vehicle, able to push most others out of the way easily. And while not as fast as the Kuruma, it can take mods and become very good at getting you and your crew around the map safely.

The Kuruma (Armored) is almost unfair to use against the police. I’ve got up to five wanted stars with it and they do almost no damage to me while I’m driving. If I do take hits, I usually can run and heal (or use snacks and armor) to keep going. I took out police choppers using it, with only the Micro SMG available (best gun usable from inside it). With care, you can survive alone against most of the normal NPC opponents in the game.

In Free Roam against other players, it is easy to kill with explosives. It will cost the player about $6500 Insurance cost to do so without justification, which can act as a deterrent to such attacks, but won’t stop them. The side windows are hard to shoot through but not impossible. One time driving around, I and my passenger were picked off by a single sniper shot from the side — either good skill or luck. But if the shot doesn’t kill you, running away usually will work to keep you alive in the Kuruma (Armored). It can get funny when both players in a fight are using one.

Which happens pretty often. I think it is the most popular mission car now in GTA, with the Insurgent coming a close second. The armed Insurgent isn’t bad, but requires calling Pegasus which puts it into the class like the armed Helicopters and the Rhino Tank.

They do cost a lot, figure with mods to need a cool million (so as to have money leftover) to buy and fully upgrade each of these. If you aren’t going to use one of these two, speed and handling are probably the key priority, since driving to and during missions easily is the goal.

Most such cars also will double as decent Race Cars, and that is the next category. You can kill two birds with one stone by selecting a decent racing car as your early mission car. Or at least, trying to fit out select Race Cars with the Armor and Bulletproof Tires which help a lot on missions.

Race Cars: One “trick” or bit of trivia which is useful to know is that the “need X wins in class” to unlock really means that you need to have “X Wins” in land races of any type in order to get that unlock for that class of cars. So you don’t have to worry about trying for wins in the Compact cars in order to get upgrades for those, as wins in Super, Sports, Bikes, etc., all count.

Super and Sports are the most popular race classes for custom cars, with Offroad and Bikes fairly popular as well. You will likely want one Race vehicle for each of these classes. At the start, it can be hard to come up with the money for some of the most expensive choices. Also, using custom cars in races means having the unlocks (from race wins) and money to afford all the performance upgrades to make the best use of them.

Sports: This is an easy class because the Elegy RH8 is a great car and not that expensive. Note that price is not a good indicator of a car’s racing performance. Also, the in game shopping websites do not give completely accurate information about the cars. Legendary is especially inaccurate — do not pay any attention to the speeds shown on it.

Supers: Zentorno and Entity XF are the two top cars. The Zentorno has better acceleration, the Entity better handling on turns. Both are pretty expensive cars, making this category require a good bank account before you can really take advantage of it. Best to get some race wins for unlocks before you spend money on these, since you will need the upgrades to compete with other players with custom cars.

The new Osiris is a new top car, in the same class as the other two.

I’ve tried the other cars in these classes and while you can sometimes win and do well, depending on the race and other drivers, these are the most consistent winners. It is worth trying out every car in non-custom races, just to see how you like them. Best in short races, in order to try out more and be less frustrated if you find one too hard to use, but worth doing simply as a way to “test drive” the cars before you buy them.

Offroad: Sanchez, one of the best racing bikes out there. You do need to manage the wheelies to maximize speed, and as with all bikes watch your collisions, but nothing else is nearly as fast. The Bifta is the best off road car for racing. Most off road tracks have narrow paths, which make the larger vehicles tricky to use on them.

Bikes: Bati 801 and Akuma. These are pretty close, with the Bati being faster but the Akuma handling better, and therefore easier to keep on the path in many races. Note that bikes are the fastest vehicles in GTA (and have been for a long time in the series), despite the stats shown both in game and on the vehicle store websites.

Custom Upgrades:

For performance, the Acceleration upgrades are the most important.

#1: Turbo. Takes about 20 races to unlock, depending on class. Max is 25% boost.
#2: Engine. About 34 races, and gives max 15% boost, four levels.
#3: Transmission, about 40 races, gives a max 5 % boost. Three levels.

Note: The game stat bars for vehicles are neither accurate nor complete. The acceleration bar can be easily filled up without getting all three mods. They all do add to acceleration, which means the actual value is “off the scale” literally. If you look at the upgrades BEFORE you install any of them — especially the very effective Turbo upgrade — you will get an idea of what each one adds.

Once you get the Turbo unlocked, you should use it as the first performance upgrade on any racing car. Before that, the Engine upgrades are the best value, and they remain the best to add after the Turbo is installed.

For racing, having all three maxed — a total of 45% boost — will have only a slight effect on lap race times. Maximum speed isn’t affected, but it may make it easier to reach that speed, and certainly quicker. It offers an advantage in accelerating off the line, and in recovering if you are forced to stop.

Brakes: A good upgrade with four levels, but have only a small effect on the stat bar and a minor, but useful, advantage in the game.

Spoiler: Any spoiler gives a small boost to Traction. It doesn’t matter what type, so pick whatever you think looks nice.

Wheels: The effect of changing the wheel from stock rims is subtle. There is no effect for driving on pavement, which is where you will be most of the time when driving. When you go off roads, though, you will get a small improvement in grip with customized rims (and the tires which go with them. Offroad seems to be the best when driving off the roads, with Tuner, Sport, and Low Rider almost as good. The effect is minor, though, so you can go with whatever you think looks nicest for the car.

Everything else has no significant effect on performance as such. Pick whatever you think looks best.

Suspension and Armor both are tied to Rank for upgrading, rather than unlocked by races or other game actions. Armor improves your resistance to bullets, while suspension may improve cornering, it also can help with landing after jumps.

The in game website Legendary Motorsports does not have accurate stats for the cars shown on it. For example, the Z-Type is probably the fastest Sports Classic, despite the relatively low top speed shown for it. San Andreas stats are more accurate, but Maximum Speed doesn’t mean what you’d think it would mean. That applies for the in game stat bar as well. It is actually the maximum potential speed the car is capable of, but it may not be able to do so using its stock upgrades, and may need the racing boosters (Slipstream and the boost items) even then. Acceleration is a much better measure of relative performance in races, with the Traction stat a good guide for how well it will handle corners.

Cruising Around San Andreas

The last category of cars to buy? I call them Cruisers — cars to take around Los Santos for fun, just to show off. A closely related class are Harvesters — cars which are similar to ones you want to find and sell.

The top cars for Harvesting for me are: Baller ($9000, and a good SUV to race), Felon/Felon GT ($9000/9500 and a good Coupe for racing), and the Oracle/Oracle XS ($8000/8200 and OK for racing with the XS but not spectacular). These cars are fairly easy to find on the street, but driving one of them does increase the chance that they will spawn, especially in parked locations.

In practice, these can also be some of your racing cars, especially for the other classes, if they perform well enough. Most can be obtained off the street — steal them and customize them with purchased insurance — rather than obtained from the online stores.

So, what do I stock?

Super: Zentorno
Sport: Elegy RH8
Offroad: Sanchez
Bike: Akuma & Bati 801.
Muscle: Dominator & Gauntlet. Both are good, the Gauntlet can handle better on some tracks with tight turns.
SUV: Baller V2 (the one with the sloped roof, it is faster)
Sedan: Schafter
Coupe: Felon (not GT, because the GT version can’t take a spoiler)
Compact: Blista
Sports Classic: Z-Type. One of the most expensive cars in the game and a rare exception to the purchase price not reflecting performance.

I also have:
Adder: Fastest rated super car and looks cool, but it just doesn’t handle well enough in most races.
Coquette and Banshee Topless: The cool factor is important here. Either one isn’t bad for Sports but nothing beats the Elegy in races.
Phoenix: Just for cool looks.
Kuruma (Armored): A Mission car, you can race it but that isn’t its strength.

I had a PCJ 600 (classic of the series), Enduro (its website info makes it look like a good alternative to Sanchez), and Carbon RS (not bad looking nor slow, but isn’t the fastest bike). Bikes are harder to customize in ways that make them stand out when you look at them on the street. I’d love to see neon light kits for them.

Cars which I think would be cool and I may get: Bifta (tiny offroad fun) (Got one now, is fun for riding on the beach and hills), Stinger Classic (looks cool), Sandking – I had one but sold it for garage space. It could be fun to take on off road trips even if it won’t win races). The Rhapsody and Blade are decent cars for their class for racing, and can’t be found on the street. The Exemplar is a nice sedan, both in looks and speed. I haven’t filled up my garages yet.

Street Stealing vs Buying Online: A lot of good cars suited for racing and missions can be found on the streets of Los Santos, and customized. Some of the street Sports like the Sultan have good potential. You can save a little money by using these rather than buying cars off the websites. The customization costs will tend to overwhelm the purchase price of all of the cheaper vehicles, if you use all the performance upgrades. Some of the appearance customizations are rather expensive as well.

The cars you can buy online, and the more expensive models available online, are only slightly better than the cheaper cars available off the street (or for Supers, for the cheapest choices). The key words are “Slightly better.”

All the performance upgrades only shave a few percent off the lap times in most races. Upgrade costs tend to be based off the car’s list price as well, so a cheaper can will cost less to fully upgrade than a more expensive type. Upgrades can make almost any car outperform a stock vehicle, with the Turbo upgrade almost guaranteed to do so.

Special Vehicles

Elite, Boats, And War Stock: First thing to remember is that most of these are stored with Pegasus. It will cost you $200 each time you want to use it, and you will need to pick it up wherever Pegasus has it available. That may not be the closest or most convenient location. South Los Santos has a lot of good locations, like the Airport, Marina, Extreme Sports, Hospital, Elysium Island. For Helicopters, many heliports and airports will serve.

Once called for, any player can take them, unlike a personal vehicle. Try to be near a potential pick up location when you make the call, or at least, look to see if other players are near. This will take a little experience to get used to.

Some land vehicles are normal Personal Vehicles and can be kept in your garage. The Insurgent (not the armed Pickup model) is one good one.

Keep in mind that you can often easily steal these sorts of vehicles if you know the spawn locations. It is cheaper but a bit riskier than buying them. You need to think about what you will use them for before you spend money to have your own mostly legal special vehicles available.

#1: Get To The Chopper! A Helicopter is the most useful air vehicle you can buy. It can take off and land from almost anywhere, and can be used on many missions. It goes fast, and can carry passengers. Some missions actually require you to obtain a helicopter in order to succeed, so having one of your own handy can make that much easier. As you advance in rank, the types of vehicles which will spawn on the map will change. Once you find armed helicopters spawning at the airfields, you can take advantage of this in many ways.

The Buzzard Attack Helicopter is available at Rank 42 and is one of the more flexible vehicles in the game. Fast, has both guns and missiles, and can easily be operated in combat with one pilot. The other armed helicopters can benefit more from additional crew. The Hydra Jump Jet unlocked with the Heists can make a fine alternative, but it costs $3 Million.  The Swift is the fastest helicopter (update:  the Supervolito is even faster), and available at lower rank, and can be better for getting around if you don’t need weapons.

Planes and boats are nice to have for fun, but aren’t usually needed or even useful for missions. You can do OK without having them, especially as they are available to steal from the same places you’d usually go to pick up yours.

Making Money:

The general stuff that you do in the game normally will make you enough money to keep going in the game just fine. Take jobs, rob stores, sell stolen cars, go after targets and missions called for by the NPCs, etc. The Daily Objectives added with Heists are also an excellent way to make extra money. You get $25K and 3000 RP for completing them, and most of the things you need to do are stuff that you could do in the game normally — and often are Jobs that pay money for that as well. You also get bigger bonuses for doing them 7 days in a row, with longer streaks paying higher bonuses. While some of the tasks are harder than others, most aren’t too hard to pull off. A few will require another player to cooperate and join in your objective, but having one friend available can make that part easy.

You can usually do your Daily Objectives in your first hour of play, and sell two stolen cars, plus possibly one export car for Simeon. Call that $60K for pretty easy work, and it can leave time to do stuff to earn more money.  The bonus for not missing any days for a month will boost this to about $100K, for less than an hour of playtime per day.

The Big Money Deals: Missions and Heists.

All of the cooperative missions, and the Heists especially, work well with a small crew of 2-4 players who can work together. These can net you an easy $100K per hour. Some Missions can be pulled off solo, but there is a payout bonus for additional players. That is, each player gets more money. Of these, some are very easy to pull off once you are familiar with them. They pay based on the time taken to perform the mission, up to 15 minutes.

Heists have a somewhat complex system for the payout, with the big money only coming in the Finale mission. The Heist Leader only gets paid for that part, while the rest will be paid for each Setup mission as well.

Note that putting these on Hard rather than Normal will increase the payout nicely, if you have a crew which can do the job. It takes little or no more time to do it on hard. Easy, on the other hand, is really only useful to get a look at a job where you don’t know what to do, as the cut in pay doesn’t make it worthwhile.

All of the other jobs which involve shooting tend to pay OK, but aren’t as predictable in pay as with the missions. They can be quite good for RP.

Activities such as sports are mostly good for RP, not money, but some can give surprisingly large amounts for that.

Bets: These are rarely worth using because you don’t know who will win. You can use the odds shown for the payoff to try to guess, as well as information from previous rounds with the same players. It requires a minimum of two bets to be placed, but you can place both if there are more than two players in an event yourself.
The Regular GTA Day: First, I sell a car. I always try to keep a car in my spawn garage which I can sell for good money. Once I sell a car, and especially if it was the last one in that garage, I try to look for another to replace it right away. If I’m lucky, as I head out to the Mod Shop to sell it, I’ll see another good car on the way. I’ll then steal it and sell it instead, keeping the car I had. Often, you will find a car similar to the one you just sold as you leave the mod shop, and can just steal that. If it looks like there are violent players outside my garage or the mod shop, I’ll use passive mode to complete the sale.

Next, I check my Daily Objectives. OK, I might have checked before I left, but usually I want to do the car sale first. I look to see which ones are easiest, and how much time I think it will take to do them. Any objectives I can quickly and easily do, I go for. If one of the objectives is a difficult one, I may actually try to do it first. If I can’t pull it off, then there isn’t any reason to do the others.

So, what are the difficult Daily Objectives?

http://gta.wikia.com/Daily_Objectives

Get a Gold Medal in a Flight School Lesson (depends on flying skill and how far along you are in Flight School, you may be just fine with this)
Any two player sports activity. They are actually pretty easy to do, the trick is finding players to join in.  Tennis takes the longest to play, due to the game rules of  Tennis itself.
Perform a Stunt Jump — at this time, it needs to be one you haven’t done before. Because nothing visible to you as a player lets you know which jumps are completed, this can be difficult. The “Downtown Underground” race has one stunt jump in it, which may work as a substitute, and make this one a little easier.

Participate in a 1 on 1 Deathmatch
Participate in an Impromptu Race
Both of these are hard only because you need a cooperative opponent, not because the event is hard.

Evade a 4 star wanted level
Evade a 5 star wanted level
First, you have to earn these, then you must pull off the evasion. There are places to do it, but it doesn’t make these easy.

Parachute dangerously (deploy parachute 200 feet or less from the ground)
Pull a parachute 30 meters from the ground
Both of these are hard only because judging the distance can be hard — and you can’t die immediately, so the chute has to deploy completely and give you a chance to land.

Bribe the cops then cause havoc (blow up 10-20 cars after paying the cops to Turn a Blind Eye)
This one isn’t that hard to do, but unless you have an armed vehicle it can cost you a lot of money for ammo, on top of the $5000 for the bribe. One of the least cost-effective objectives to do, as it will cut into your profits.

Participate in a Rally Race
The race is easy, getting someone to join in isn’t so much. Picking a race with an easy loop track (like Criminal Records) can make doing it less of a strain.

Overall, the reward for doing the Daily Objectives is excellent, and it is always worth trying to do them. You get extra bonuses for doing them every day (every seven and 28 days), which makes it even better.

If I see the Red Gang Attack areas, I may hit some of them. It usually only takes a few minutes to take them out, and it pays OK for the time spent – $1500 or more and 500 RP plus the points you get for kills.

If there are calls by Lester or the other NPCs to go after a free roam target, or if the Armored Truck shows up, it can be worth the time to go after them. As these are open to all players in the session, others may be closer and take them out first. Simeon’s green export car is often too much trouble to grab when other players chase it. I may let whoever gets to it first take it, rather than fight over it, because the fight all too often ends up with the car destroyed and no one getting much out of it.

Next, Jobs. First, Heists. You’ll see a lot of calls for these. I like having four good players available to start them myself (two for the Fleeca job), and it requires a couple of hours commitment to run through one full heist from start to finale. While you can take breaks between them, it tends to work better if everyone can stick together, especially if you have a group which seems to know what they are doing and can coordinate. Also, the Finale is the big payoff, and it is rather nice to have the crew which started it present to finish to get the big bucks at the end.

Missions require up to 15 minutes each, and 1 to 4 players who can work together (for the best paying contact missions). These can pay over $20K for each player, which is very good money for the time spent. Some are fairly easy to pull off, many offer interesting challenges, and you will learn which ones are easiest for your crew to complete efficiently. Playing them on Hard rather than Normal gets you 20% cash, which is worth doing as long as you can succeed. This is better than $1K per minute, which is pretty decent money in GTA.

Other jobs are less predictable in their pay per minute. If you find one which can pay well, or you just enjoy, you can keep doing it (the Replay option is available if all vote for it). Survival is good with players who can keep up through all the waves, as the payoff isn’t bad.

All jobs have the same lobby and basic loading times to deal with. You don’t earn money for those parts, so you want a job which will pay well for the active time spent playing. A lot of races are quite short, but also often can have fairly short loading times to help make up for it (especially with replays). If all players want to keep redoing a job which pays well, the Replay option can be a very good way to make more money faster.

Then there is Cruising. Just going around the world in free roam, with no special objectives. This is mostly for fun, or to relax, but can include hitting up shops and modding cars and taking care of some of the supporting business you do in the game.

Now, other players and NPCs can get in the way of a pleasure cruise around town, but that is part of the game as well. The game gives you some incentives to kill other players in Free Roam. First, Bounties. If you steal some NPC cars off the street, they may set a bounty on you because you “stole the wrong person’s ride.” Expect other players to kill you to collect it. This is nothing personal, it is built into the game. If you have a friend online, you can have them kill you to collect the bounty. Daily Objectives can include killing other players, though you can do so during Jobs and it will count (as in Deathmatches), so they don’t have to hunt you in free roam to do so. Some gun tints are locked based on player kills, but those aren’t needed to play the game so aren’t a strong incentive to kill players just to get them.
No, mostly, players who shoot at each other in free roam do it as a type of free for all open world death match. If you don’t want to participate in this fighting, you can avoid shooting at the other players, or go to Passive Mode to avoid conflict. The idea is to have fun doing it, not be frustrated.

Quick Travel: There is no fast, teleport to another location system in GTA Online as such. The Taxi — and all other NPC driven vehicles like the subway trains and helicopter rides — will travel normally to their destination. Usually at a safe speed, not the sorts of hazardously fast driving that players use.

Jobs, however, will take you to the location of the job when you join it. When you leave the job, you — and your personal vehicle — will be left in the area of that job. This can be faster than travelling normally, and your vehicle will not only get there without damage, but will be entirely repaired as well (you will also be healed when you do a job). You can use the map to start a job at a location you want. Some jobs can be started with one player and completed quickly. At the very least, the time you spend playing the job pays well, and may be no longer than your normal travel time to your destination.

Player created jobs and playlists add variety to the game. Some are very hard challenges, and verge on the impossible, but most add new fun choices to the activities you will do in this game.

Jun 16

GTA V Online: Legit Play Vs. Boosting, Glitching, And Cheating

Boosting, Glitching, And Cheating

Finding ways to do things in the games like GTA which go far beyond the design intent is, in a sense, just another part of what makes playing games enjoyable. In single player games, the use of CHEAT CODES and game mods are built into the game (or easy enough to add) to expand the ways players may enjoy their game. No matter how overpowered they might be compared to playing normally, nothing you can do in single player will do anything worse than mess up your own playing experience. It is your game, after all. Play it however you wish.

GTA Online, as with most multiplayer games, has an expectation that everyone is going to play using the same game rules, to be fair. That isn’t the same thing as being equal. Ranking systems, unlocks, and acquired resources can make an experienced player more capable in the game, and thus have a competitive edge.

That’s just fine, as GTA Online as a whole isn’t really a competitive game. There are jobs and situations which involve winning and losing, but there are many others which are cooperative. Players with better weapons in the open world will tend to kill more easily, and better custom cars will make winning races easier. Everyone can strive to gain such advantages, so it remains fair overall. The game as a whole is much more a shared, cooperative world than a constant conflict between players — more like a typical MMORG than an FPS. The point isn’t to have balanced teams competing, but to have fun playing.

Rank Up Fast. Make Money Fast: These are commonly found when searching for information about GTA Online. There are loads of videos providing hints to accelerate your progress through the game. Players have made new jobs which offer high pay and RP — or at least advertise doing so. “Grinding” — playing select jobs over and over — to make money and advance faster doesn’t have to be boring in GTA. Yes, if you keep doing exactly the same thing over and over it could get tiring, but there are enough variations within jobs, and different sorts of jobs offered out there, to keep the game fun even while working hard to get ahead.

Obviously, there is nothing wrong with trying to find the jobs and ways to play which will bring the most “Bucks For The Bang” — GTA$ and RP per minute. Some are decidedly easier to complete than others, and the pay in both RP and money can be quite a bit more.

Is it wrong to look for and play, especially repeat play, where you can take advantage of an opportunity within the game which lets you make far more than expected?

Glitches, exploits, boosting, cooperative team mates, all can make it easier to score higher in the game. Rockstar has patched many exploits — like the Challenges, which are temporarily disabled — and can be expected to work to keep the game fair.

One that players “advertise” are jobs which offer one player an advantage over the others, by design. The game’s betting system can make these attractive, as you can bet on the advantaged player, and when they win, get extra money from knowing that you are going to lose.

Players can deliberately throw a game — boosting — and thus determine the outcome. This requires a cooperative group of players, or at least a pair, in order to work. A certain degree of trust is needed to pull this off. This is popular for races, where wins — 1st place — are needed to open up more upgrades for cars.

Some jobs can become very easy if you take advantage of map positions, new vehicles, or other situations. By doing this, you can “farm” money and RP and advance much faster than players who simply play the game normally — as the designers originally intended.

Higher rank also brings with it more armor, health, weapons, and vehicles, which will give you an advantage over lower ranked players. By choosing to play with “inferior” players, you can score more wins than if you were competing against approximate equals.

OK, that happens in the game, and some of these situations can be hard to avoid. But are these BAD THINGS?

All players are free to play the game however they want. There is no special award for either ranking up faster than others by finding easy paths. Nor is there anything to indicate that a player has played the game with an eye on fairness, never exploiting any easy loopholes to get an advantage.

Your own game play isn’t harmed or affected when others try to “farm” RP, GTA$, or race wins. Everyone will eventually advance in rank and win races, and the advantages of higher rank and resources aren’t infinite. It is up to you whether the easier path makes you feel like you’ve spoiled the game, or if it makes it more fun to find short cuts to success.

Bets in GTA are generally a losing proposition. You can’t predict the winner, and you don’t win enough to make up for all the times you lose. Players with more cash (it requires cash, not money in the bank, but you can use the phone app to get cash during a job) are the only ones who can afford to take the risk without it being risky.

There are only so may cars and properties you can buy in the game — three properties, up to 30 cars in those garages. You can spend a lot of money here. I’d estimate it at about $20 Million, but once you reach that, you don’t really need more. In fact, you’ll pass the “I need this to feel competitive” level in terms of useful racing and mission cars and safe houses well before that point.

The highly useful militarized and other vehicles stored with Pegasus can eat more money. But you only need a few million to get the ones which are most useful. The others are just something to put all your hard-earned GTA$ to use in the game, and to show off.

I won’t say this isn’t a lot of money in the game, but it is well within the reach of normal players who play for reasonable amounts of time. I haven’t hit that level yet after six weeks of play time since PC release, but I have pretty much got the things I consider most useful. You don’t “Gotta catch them all” in order to feel like you are a good player, or are having fun in the game.

Making An Honest Buck

So let’s look at money and incomes. You can make $100K per real day without working very hard. The Daily Objectives — came out with Heists and this always on for PC — pay $25K and 3000 RP, with additional bonuses if you keep them up for seven or more days in a row. Most are fairly easy to do, and often include things you’d do normally. Selling stolen cars and other common activities can being you up to $100K for your first hour or two of play.

Daily Objectives alone can earn you $1.6 Million per month ($500K on the 28th consecutive day) and the jobs you do during them will boost that to about $2 Million.  Add in selling stolen cars for another million, and doing a moderate level of jobs beyond that, and you could run $5 Million per month.

Heists and Missions offer big bucks for good crews. The full series of five heists can get you a couple million each time, which is pretty decent money. The one time bonuses can boost that up quite a lot, and a good crew could get a lot of extra money for their time. Plus they really do go better when everyone knows what they are doing. Missions pay pretty well too — most are about $20K per player for 10-15 minutes, or $80-$120K per hour. Between working Heists and Missions, you should be able to keep your bank account well stocked.

Of course, it is also easy to blow through money fast in this game. Not waste, most of the time, as it is money spent on things of use in the game. Some things add up fast.

Ammo. I’ve paid over $20K to reload after a mission which required a lot of expensive killing. Or just shooting up cops in free mode, or in general, any time you go on a killing spree using your own ammo. It is the explosive weapons which cost the most, but even bullets do add up. The kind of jobs which will consume that much ammo tend to more than pay for the expense.

Modding cars is a big money sink. You can drop $100K easily on a car on simple upgrades, with several hundred thousand in costs possible as you try to make a high end car both perform the best and look and sound the coolest. Add in the purchase price for the fancier cars, and you are into some serious bucks. I believe that this is biggest category of expense.

Unlike the others, modding cars never has to end. You can sell cars you no longer want and buy new ones you like, forever. Your garage space is your only limit. Note: If you create a second character, they will share bank accounts and can buy their own set of properties with garages. You can double your stock of cars this way, although each character can only use their own set.

I’ll mention clothes and equipment together. These don’t eat up nearly as much money as the others, but they do add up. Weapons can get expensive, especially with all the weapon mods available. But you only need to purchase each weapon ONCE. After that, you just pay for ammo as you use it. Same for clothes and most of the equipment you can buy.

OK, military and special vehicles. First thing, many are locked by level or Heists missions, so you can’t just make a lot of money alone to get them. The Rhino Tank requires rank 70, the Buzzard Attack Helicopter rank 42. The armed vehicles are fun to use to wreak havoc in free mode, and some are also very useful on missions and some other jobs. Aircraft and boats, even without weapons, can improve your mobility in the game.

You don’t need every single one in order to have enough to be useful, but it is fun to keep collecting them.

The Heists add some nice vehicles which are very useful for jobs, and fun for just cruising around. The Kuruma (Armored) and Insurgent (the unarmed one) are both very nice to have in your garage. They’ll set you back over $1 Million, especially when you upgrade them — expect the pair to consume another half million bucks. But they are so tough and effective, both in free mode engagements and on missions, that it is hard to use anything else once you have them.

The keys to quick money: Fast, effective missions, and with a good crew, Heists. Always set the difficulty to Hard for the increased money. If that makes the mission too difficult, you’ve picked the wrong mission to farm money. Farming means doing similar missions over and over again. Fortunately, some can be a lot of fun to repeat, and there are many good choices. There are only FIVE Heists, though, but at least all of those offer a definite challenge, as well as paying well.

Many jobs can be finished quickly and easily, and pay $5K to $20K, some even more but those generally take longer. The job payment system uses time played as a factor in the payout, so succeeding quickly doesn’t necessarily make for more money per minute. The key factor to consider is the payout per minute, and to a lesser but close degree, how easily you (and your crew if any) can manage the job. You can use the Replay option to repeat missions which pay well, and this works especially well if the players are all Friends or Crew.

I also want to mention, again, that the common, low level, ordinary game play actions will net you a good bit of money. Sell cars. You can score better than $8K per real hour by remembering to hit the Mod Shop with a high value car for sale. It pays better to use the rare cars, but you need to consider the time it takes to find them. A $7K car sold now can be better than taking five minutes to find a $12K car, if you use those five minutes to score money on a job or other activity. You can store sale cars in your garages, and have them available every time you log into the game.

Store robberies and Gang Attacks (when unlocked) get about $1500 or so and are pretty easy, and don’t take long to do. I’ve become reluctant to rob the stores, as their owners are pretty nice and they sell me tasty treats (Snacks). But it is a pretty easy way to make money, especially at the beginning.

The Daily Objectives include things which encourage you to kill other players. The Bounties do so as well. You don’t get a great deal of money for these things, unless they are part of your Daily and you get that bonus money, but it usually isn’t too hard to kill other players in this game. There is a risk that you will start a vendetta, but try to keep that phase short. It can be fun to be involved in a fight, but it doesn’t pay well.

Races are generally a quick and easy way to make some money. While some races will take a lot longer than others, they pay based in part on time. Winning is the key to getting more unlocks in the mod shops. Each car class has different numbers of wins needed for the unlocks, but despite the wording, it only counts wins in LAND RACES with any sort of vehicle, not just wins using that class or type. Roughly, you’ll get the Turbo around 20 wins, which is the single biggest acceleration booster, and the last Brakes, Engine, and Transmission around 44 wins. Chrome paint is 50 wins, and that is the end of the unlock series for land racing itself. There are paints which require wins or actions in other types of races, including sea races.

To score wins, short races are better because you can get more wins in less time. You may want to strike a balance, because longer races and more laps gives you more time to compensate for accidents and mistakes, and also pays better. Especially early on, ranking up and making money can outweigh getting the unlocks faster. Plus at low rank and with limited money, custom cars in a race will be a disadvantage, because the higher ranked players can have all the upgrades and you can’t possibly match that. On the other side, using custom cars when you have upgrades not only can give you an advantage, it is fun to show them off, so often players want to have them on in races.

If you get into a lobby where you do well in the race, vote for Replay and see if the others will cooperate with the rematch. Doing the same track over and over can make scoring wins easier, and players may be more than content to learn while losing and hoping to win, thus giving you a chance to rack up more wins on your score.

The payout for racing is better with more players in the race, but it is fundamentally easier to be #1 among 4 players than 14. If you are good enough that isn’t as important, but while learning this can be your best shot to actually score some wins.

The feeling of being a big winner is great, but all too often I’d be in 2nd place, or anything which else which doesn’t pay bad but still doesn’t count as a win. When I was working to get Turbo unlocked, this could be frustrating. It did make me try harder.

One helpful thing to keep in mind is that the custom performance upgrades are of the greatest use — and only really worth spending money on — if you race with custom cars.

What can happen to make this a bit easier is when you get a lobby where everyone is trying for the same goal of quick wins. There are a lot of short tracks — Criminal Records set at one lap is a good example — where you can have a race which is quickly decided and won. You also can use these to try out cars you would otherwise not use, because it is harder to win with them and not worth spending several minutes driving a losing race.

A downside of winning races is that you’ll have more very expensive performance upgrades to buy for your cars.

Racing Custom Cars: There are a lot of reasonable choices, but only a few very good ones in each category unfortunately. On the plus side, there is enough difference in handling to make it worth taking a car which you like driving better, even if it isn’t the fastest. In both races and driving around Los Santos, speed alone will lead you into crashes. You need to be able to maneuver in order to win, and that is more subtle. The game stats don’t show enough to let you know how a car handles. The only way to really know is to try and drive one.

My Picks:

Super: Zentorno. The Adder can be faster in the straights but can’t turn as well, but it is so cool that you can be tempted to get one anyway. The Entity (which I haven’t bought yet) is a good contender too. In my race testing of the super cars, they are really fairly close in times despite different stats, and you actually can win with any of them. It is just easier with these ones, as they have a sight edge. I rate the Turismo pretty close as well, and like the Cheetah. OK, they are super cars, that means they are cool and worth considering even if you may not win races with them.

Sports: Elegy RH8. This is a good deal for the money, for a racing car, and you can use the money you save by not buying a more expensive car on upgrades. I also have a Banshee and Coquette, neither of which are as good for racing but they are cool to drive. The Jester and Massacro racing sports cars are fun too. Note also that you can get away with customizing cars you get off the street, as some of them are decent.

Sports Classic: Z-Type. I couldn’t afford one until very recently, and the class as a whole is pretty expensive. But they, like the Super cars, have such a coolness factor that you can get these simply because you want to drive around in them.

Off Road: Sanchez. You do have to handle bikes differently from cars, but it is faster than any of them if you do it right. I got an Enduro thinking it might be competitive, but no, the cheaper Sanchez is still the winner. The Bifta seems like the best dune buggy for off road driving if you don’t want a bike, but I haven’t bought one yet.

Bike: Akuma. The Bati is perhaps faster but the Akuma is easier to manage and still very competitive. I had a PCJ 600 and wanted to love it based on past GTA games, but it just didn’t offer anything better. I still have a Carbon RS, but rarely use it as the Akuma simply seems better. It is hard to make a Bike’s look standout, it would be cool if there were more highly visual mods you could put on them as on cars.

Sedan: Schafter. It handles well, decently fast. Also good for “harvesting,” finding similar cars when driving to steal for sale. An Oracle XS would be a decent choice to keep for “harvesting” too, but I prefer to keep unmodified ones as they seem pretty common and are easy to farm.

Compact: Blista. The Rhapsody looks like a good alternative but the Blista is quite fast enough, and you can get them off the street.

Coupe: Felon. Not the GT, because that can’t take a Spoiler, which improves handling a little. But it probably isn’t that critical, so either could do. Both are high value cars for sale as well.

Muscle: Gauntlet. If it could have a spoiler it might be even better. I have a Dominator as well. It was my first car in the game, and it is about as good as the Gauntlet, just a little harder to handle. I also have a Phoenix because I like the look.

SUV: Baller, V2. One of the cars with two models and one name, the 2nd version with the slanted roof is faster. Another one of the top sale cars.
Kuruma (Armored) and Insurgent: These aren’t for racing, though you certainly can mod them up and use them that way. No, they are tougher than the usual cars and do very well on combat based missions where you can use your own vehicles, as well as Heists.
Racing Choices: Most races use Super, Sports, and Offroad vehicles (as some tracks are purely offroad by design, the last is almost an essential choice). Muscle, Bikes, and Sports Classics are also fairly popular. Compacts and Sedans get used on a few tracks by default, Coupes seem even less popular, and SUVs are near the bottom, rarely chosen unless the racing group knows each other and wants the challenge.

As a result, you really only need a Super, Sport, Offroad, Bike, and Muscle car to have a good custom vehicle to help you win races with custom on. Note that you can get the Sanchez off the street, and it is pretty cheap anyway, and likewise for Muscle cars. Only the Super and Sport really have tempting high price offerings, and it is the Super car which will really require some savings to get. Note that there is no need to buy a car for racing until you have won enough races to give it performance upgrades. You do save a little money on entry fees if you use your own car.

Player created jobs and races can be fun, but some are pretty strange. There are some stunt tracks which require making jumps, and they can feel more like platform puzzle games than races. I’ve run into some where nobody knew how to make it through the race, forcing everyone to quit to avoid endless frustration. Most aren’t like that, and you can expect tha someone will figure out how to work with the new situation and finish.

Arena Death Matches, where there is an open battleground and walls to prevent escape, can provide a quick and intense battle. Some may limit weapons to melee or pistols, but I’ve seen RPG Death Matches which pretty much end with mass destruction with enough players. The “King Of The Hill” variants can be challenging too, where there are useful pickup weapons accessible only after climbing and jumping to the key spot, and everyone else has to make do with melee or weak weapons.
The Bad Stuff: Single player mods and hacks exist, but single player already supports cheat codes to let you modify how the game plays. But some of the same modifications work in GTA Online, and that can cause trouble.

Having a whale (or is it shark or dolphin?) fall from the sky, or a UFO appear, or trees grow up instantly along the side of the road, can be funny and strange, as long as no one gets hurt. But the same hacking tools allow for invulnerable players, super lethal weapons, teleportation, invisibility, instant money, instant remote death, and many more ways to warp the game far outside its normal play.  Rockstar has made attempts to counter this, but often the only solution is to leave the session.

Jun 09

GTA V Online: Annoyances In A Great Game

Doing this one because it is short, if not sweet….

I’ve hit Rank 75, and look to be on track for 10 Ranks per week.  I’ve been doing my Daily Objectives as much as possible, and lots of Jobs and Heists.   Most of the time, the game plays smoothly without trouble.  But sometimes, that isn’t the case.

We have a new DLC coming tomorrow (June 10, 2015).  In addition to new material, there are supposed to be some improvements to the game itself, and help to block some hacks and exploits.  That would be very nice if it succeeded.

So here are six common annoying problems which come up more than often enough to detract from the fun.

Ours is not a perfect world…

#1: Load times. From start to run off HDD with Steam directly into GTA online is over two minutes, sometimes over three. You can load it faster off an SSD, saving you a few seconds, but it still takes a while. Single player story mode takes about 45 seconds with HDD, 30 with SSD. In short, an SSD doesn’t really make it all that much better, so if you don’t have 60 GB of space to spare, you can play the game fine off an HDD.

Fortunately, that is game load time. You can start the game and make a cup of coffee, grab snacks, etc., and it will be ready and running when you get back. Once you are in the game, you can move around in free mode without any loading. There is a load time for jobs and activities, but some of that time is syncing up with other players, and an SSD wouldn’t make a bit of difference for that.

There are also delays as you change from one job to another, and also when you leave a job.

Solution: Have patience. That’s really all you can do.

#2 & #3: Griefers and Hackers. These aren’t the same thing, but both mess with your enjoyment of the game by deliberate acts to spoil your fun. Both will require you to take action if you wish to keep playing and not suffer from them.

The game is GTA, after all, so you can’t expect every player to be nice and friendly. Hostile action is part of the game by design, and you are encouraged to take actions against other players, especially with some of the Daily Objectives. Kill and be killed, that is all in the game.

Griefers go beyond that. They will try to hunt down and trap players trying to do peaceful activities in the game, and will stake out (and effectively render useless) game locations like the mod shops. They will especially look for and hunt players who are lower level and ill-equipped to counter their attacks, and who don’t understand how to evade them. They can also deliberately spoil races and missions, by taking actions which cause car crashes or get team mates killed.

Hackers and Griefers both can quickly fall into the class of Bad Sports, which is Rockstar’s way of trying to deal with players who don’t play the game properly. By putting the bad players into sessions only with other such players, they can help keep those trying to play clean safe. Or at least, a little safer.

Hackers go beyond just messing with players within the normal parameters of the game. You may have some hope of fighting a griefer, if no way to truly stop the from coming back and doing it again, but hackers can do things which are outright impossible within the normal game rules. You are utterly powerless to stop them, which might be good for their ego but is bad for game play. One current hack plays with this godlike role — a hacker can essentially make money rain from the sky (or just give away loads of it). Tempting otherwise good players into taking their bribes may reduce the anger players feel against them, but it doesn’t change how badly they break the game play. Rockstar is aware of money hacks and can take away ill-gotten cash, but at least so far, they seem to recognize the difference between the hacker who changes the world and players who may, even unwittingly, profit from those changes. You could still end up with your bank account emptied or reduced.

Solution: Passive mode may sometimes work, but against a hacker infested session, you will need to change sessions in order to be safe. Worst case, if a Hacker messes with your character and world too much, is to log out and start again.

#4: Glitches & Bugs: GTA Online is pretty stable now, and Rockstar has done a good job with the PC and Next Gen consoles for keeping up with newly discovered bugs. There are a few which still exist — one I’ve seen is the “no weapons” bug, where all your weapons seem to disappear. For me, it happened when the armed chopper I was in crashed, and I jumped out. Had to quit and rejoin the game to get them back.

Solution: Patience. Most don’t happen often, and the worst case is a break from the game as you reload it.

#5: Waiting for players: If you want to start a particular job or activity, especially if you need it for your Daily Objectives, you can end up sitting on the Job screen for a long time. Players can join, then leave before the minimum number required show up. Heists and Missions, which work better with full complements of players (usually 4), can be especially frustrating to get going.

Solution: More patience. Also, having friends and crew who will join can make this sort of thing much easier.

On waiting, and Daily Objectives, I’ll make a special note for Rally Mode races and Impromptu races. These can be hard to get going and play, because there aren’t a lot of fans of them. In a Rally Race, you two players per car — one driver, who can’t see the race course checkpoints, and one navigator, who can and must tell the driver where to go. You can use the direction keys to give hints, but voice on a headset tends to work better. Impromptu races require cooperative players close to your current location on the map in free mode. You should try to pick a spot out of high traffic when you set up this race, as random traffic can knock the cars out of position and disqualify you from the race.

Activities can also be hard to get players for, and they are often part of Daily Objectives.

Finding friendly players can help with this. Having actual friends on can make it easy, but you can ask other players to help you out with a job needed for a Daily Objective. On the other side, if you see players looking to start these, be willing to join in to help them out too.

Selecting the easiest, quickest options can make many of these easier to get players for. One last helpful case is that some things can be started with ONE player, so while it may not be as much fun or as challenging, you can at least complete it for your Daily.
#6: Mission Failed/Disconnected: Heists and Missions can fail if too many players die, or if anyone causes any of the mission requirements to fail. It can be hard to figure out some of those requirements, and easy to do things which violate them for some missions. A player on your team who doesn’t get the mission plan can mess it up for everyone.  But also, any network issues can cause players to disconnect, and sometimes spoil missions due to their absence.

Solution for #5 and #6: When possible, play with friends or at least known players. Headsets can help coordinate.

The network issues, I’m not sure.  One of the most annoying is the inability to log in at all.  While sometimes it could be your system (restart and see if it fixes it), more often it is on the other end.  Both Rockstar and Steam on PC seem to have problems from time to time.  The only reliable solution seems to be patience.

All in all, with a bit of patience, tolerance, and cooperation, you can deal with the problems we face from time to time in GTA. Don’t try to fight stupidity by being stupid! Keep the game fun, and avoid situations where it ceases to be fun.

May 21

GTA V Online — The Curse Of Cheaters, The Bane Of All Multiplayer Games

First thing I have to say is that despite the fact that there are some players using blatant hacks and messing up the game for other players, they aren’t so common as to ruin your day every time you play.  You can escape them by switching sessions, and unlike FPS or sports games, GTA Online isn’t a game where you can expect to impress other players with your “skill” on in game leaderboards or the end of round scoreboard.  There are a lot of jobs and activities which are cooperative, and players can accept being in 2nd place for a round, then quit and find someone else to play with.  There is no way for a hacker to “live” in a lobby and be more than a short term annoyance.

 

http://www.rockstargames.com/newswire/article/52096/taking-aim-at-gta-online-cheaters.html

Rockstar has strategies to deal with online cheaters, beyond simply catching them and banning them.  Players can be put in a Bad Sport zone, where they can only mess with other Bad Sports.  Active cheaters could be put into Cheater Zones, where everyone is cheating and nobody will care because they wont affect normal, non-cheating player’s games.

The cheats vary in degree of annoyance.  Many are based on the single player mod tools, which are both fun and offer players a way to explore the game and do things it was never originally designed to do.  Since it is your single player game, nobody will care if you choose to “cheat”  rather than play fair,  Though most of the mods are used not to beat the game easily, but to simply mess around and do things that are funny, different, or just a good way to blow off steam rather than always playing seriously.

So when a hacker makes a whale fall from the sky, a UFO appear, or trees grow on the side of the road, it can be a funny episode in our Online game.  As long as nobody gets hurt, does it matter?

If someone cheats to get free money or RP, and progresses in the game faster than you can possibly do normally, that doesn’t directly harm other players.  It isn’t fair, and I’d expect Rockstar to look for this sort of thing and try to correct the inflated bank accounts and levels, but for the most part, they won’t hurt you any worse than a player who legitimately got that.  Besides that, there is only so much money you really need in order to have some good stuff, and you can earn that quickly enough in normal play.  Rank unlocks above 120 won’t give you anything new, and based on my play so far (rank 50 in five weeks), cheating doesn’t give you anything useful you wouldn’t get normally.

For me, and most players, part of the fun is actually earning things normally.  The feeling of accomplishment is almost a better reward than the money and new stuff unlocked.  Getting everything for free would deprive you of that.  Sure, I’d love to get more vehicle unlocks faster, but it isn’t that hard to find races where you can win, especially when you play with teams of friends.  Even so, it is just a matter of playing the game — as is making lots of money.

http://www.lazygamer.net/pc-gaming/not-even-god-mode-can-save-your-cheating-ass-in-gta-v-pc/

Still, there are players out there who will use cheats to beat other players.  Or worse, mess with them in other ways.  It is annoying to run into someone who can’t be killed, or who kills you easily, despite your superior skill and weapons.  Running a race with someone who can teleport, use weapons in a non-GTA race, or simply move super fast, quickly becomes boring.  As it must seem to the cheater, who has only so many different ways to win while obviously cheating to use before everyone quits playing with him — making the cheats effectively useless.

GTA is more than just races, death matches, and other jobs, though.  We have a persistent character with possessions — guns, vehicles, and money.  How much can a hacker mess with those things?

Well, the first risk is that the hacker could simply give you lots of unwanted money, which makes you a sort of accessory to the “crime” of hacking.  Rockstar will take away unearned funds from players, and may do nothing else.  I would still worry about being blamed as a hacker by Rockstar.  If I don’t have a big bank account, I don’t have so much to lose.  But if I’ve been saving up for a big purchase, it would be a pain to lose it.

Worse is the possibility of a hacker taking your resources, rather than giving you unwanted presents.  I’ve had a hacker steal my car and repaint it, which cost me money to restore to my original design.  Or at least, as close as I could remember it.  Changing upgrades on the vehicles is worse — more money wasted.  Stealing weapons or money would directly hurt your play in the game, requiring a lot of effort to restore it.  Can Rockstar undo these hacker-induced changes?  I hope so.

On a positive note, most of the hackers I’ve seen either get quickly bored or don’t do much to bother most players.  We have solo, invite, crew, and friends for sessions which are safe from such predation.  And you can freely change sessions and avoid being stuck with annoying players — both hackers and just general annoyances.

And if Rockstar can trap hackers so they are locked out of normal play sessions, it might be enough to keep us honest players safe and having fun.

May 21

Battlefield News – May 2015

My life has been hectic, and as  result I haven’t played any of the Battlefield games nearly as often as I would like.  As a second result, it has been hard for me to keep up with all the new stuff going on in the Battlefield universe. DICE, Visceral, and EA have not been standing still since the Hardline patch came out.  We have continuing development with BF4, news about Star Wars Battlefront, and some exciting new stuff for Hardline.

No, Hardline hasn’t got its next patch yet, but we’ve seen teaser information about the first DLC next month (in June 2015), and a stream of hints that a pretty good patch should come along before that. While a lot of things weren’t addressed in the first patch, the stuff that was did a good job of keeping the game fun and playable.  It remains a solid alternative world for Battlefield players, with its own play style distinct from BF4.

EA has been supporting ESL and competitive play for both Hardline and Battlefield 4.  I’d love to see them pull off a broader range of serious play for the game, especially for us North American players.  They’ve talked about doing a Battlelog based, platoon organized matchmaking system, which sounds cool but isn’t available yet.  That would open up more organized play for players who don’t have the time — or perhaps skills — to get involved in the serious competitive scene.  There is something special about being part of a persistent team, where you know everyone on your side and can keep track of your stats as a team, not just as an individual player.

CTE is coming for Hardline — allowing players to test new maps, patches, weapons, and features, and give feedback directly to the developers.  This has worked wonderfully for BF4, and should be just as good for Hardline.

 

And for fun:

 

Battlefield 4 has a new patch in the works, likely to release sometime in May or early June.  It adds new weapons and new improvements to the game play, including the potential for increased tick rates for more responsive multiplayer games.  And with that development finishing up, DICE LA and the CTE team continue to work on new improvements and content for Battlefield 4.  They seem determined to keep the game alive, and try to make it live up to the fans’ expectations.

 

There has been a bunch of news about Star Wars Battlefront.  As a fan of both the original Battlefront and its sequel Battlefront II, I see this game as a true reboot of that series.  It may carry some elements from the never completed Battlefront III, but everything points to a game which updates the epic planetary battlegrounds inspired directly by the original Star Wars Trilogy.

I’ll address two of the big announcements together, as they are somewhat related.  First, 40 human players per side (rather than the 64 that Battlefield always supported, and that Battlefront II could do).  Second, no space battles — all engagements will be over planets, with fighters and bombers providing ground support as well as dogfighting each other.  Now, in Battlefront II, the game would automatically assign AI players to fill roles in order to make the teams full — something which Battlefield 2 could do as well.  But in Battlefront, a lot of those soldiers would be manning weapon or tech stations — important jobs but not really exciting combat positions — and providing escorts (AKA cannon fodder) for the star players in the more combat effective fighters and assault craft.

So if the new Battlefront either provides automation (like droids) for these support roles, or even if it provided NPC characters to fill them, the number of human players would be fairly similar to that of the original games.  And it should be sufficient for a lot of combat situations where all of the warriors present are actual players.  Note that the original provided NPC aliens to fill supporting roles as well, which added much to the feel of being in the universe, without having to make a player be, say, an Ewok or Sand Person, up against Storm Troopers.

I liked the space combats in Battlefront II, but they really only worked well with a small number of human players.  And despite the idea that the game was about space dogfights between fighter pilots — which you could do — winning tended to come to the side which most intensely and effectively got its bombers and assault ships in position to disable the single big capital ship.  The points scored off space kills couldn’t compete with the big score of taking down a Star Destroyer, and disabling it also made life much easier for your own space fighters.

Mostly, though, space never had any terrain, and the players tended to act as individuals, only a handful ever being in close proximity.  The idea of having a tight unit working together — as in the movies — would require a very different sort of space battle in order to achieve that.

Planetary combat, with aerial space fighter support, makes that sort of team operation easy to achieve.  Or at least, a lot easier.  And it should also be easier to make spectacular planetary battlegrounds than to try to make empty space seem exciting just to travel around.

Everything also points to keeping the special units and hero characters available on the battlefield as special awards, who can’t be simply chosen from the start as regular soldiers (who would obviously be much better than the rank and file sorts — who can stand up to a Jedi, after all, one on one other than another Jedi, or perhaps a good Bounty Hunter).

The look and feel of the game should bring to life the action of the movies, and by keeping the core game design from the original Battlefront — rather than co-opting the Battlefield 4 mechanics — we should have a game which is a winner both for game play, and for being true to its sources.

May 13

GTA V: Online Unleashed: A View Of The Game After One Month

I’ve spent a fair amount of time playing GTA V since it came out.  I intended to play more of the single player, but found the Online multiplayer to be highly addictive.  it is also very easy to just jump in and play for short periods at a time, and still feel like you are accomplishing something.  I expected to really like the Online element, but it is surprisingly good, a fun way to relax and play in many different ways.

GTA is the classic sandbox or open world game, where you are free to do whatever you want, to go wherever you want, and have loads of choices for activities to perform.  There are a lot of structured Jobs and Activities, which give game rewards, plus the ability to interact with other players anywhere throughout the huge game world in GTA  Online.  This interaction can be friendly or hostile, and there is room for doing all sorts of random exploration, stunts, and experiments, for no reason other than to see what can happen and have fun.  And possibly record them for others to watch.

Getting Started

When you start out in GTA Online at Rank 1, you get a series of quick intro missions to get you acquainted with the game world, and help you settle in.  You will only have a basic Pistol as a weapon to start, but you can quickly get more.  You will rank up fast for the early levels, and quickly reach the point where you are both familiar with the game world and have the resources to really start to take advantage of it.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/gta-5/List_of_GTA_Online_Rank_Unlocks

You get to customize your character at the start.  Appearance is really up to you, but there is — so far — no way to really change your appearance once you start play, so try to pick something you’ll be happy with.  Your stats can also be optimized.  I’ll go over the stats in terms of which are most useful to have boosted up at the start of play.

http://www.ign.com/wikis/gta-5/Character_Creation

http://www.ign.com/wikis/gta-5/Increasing_Stats_in_GTA_5

#!:: Shooting.  Your weapon fire accuracy will be improved by having this at a higher rank, so I would recommend making this a priority.  It is also takes a relatively long time to rank it up, even if you engage in combat frequently in the game.

#2:  Flying.  Being able to fly well will be a definite edge whenever you get a chance to fly in the game, especially in missions.  It can take a long time to rank this up during the game, so starting out with some skill can help.

#3:  Strength.  Climb faster, hit harder in melee combat.  This one isn’t that hard to advance in game but it still takes a bit of special effort.

#4/#5: Stamina and Driving.  These skills are both very useful, but they are advanced by running and driving.  Both are things you will do constantly while playing the game, making them the easiest skills to improve over time.

#6:  Lung Capacity.  This is very nice to have increased if you must spend time swimming, but since that isn’t necessary most of the time, you can skip it until later.  It is improved by time spent swimming, which isn’t hard to do.  It does have a special use in evading the cops, as they will not chase you under water.

#7:  Stealth.  This is only occasionally useful, and it is also fairly easy to improve simply by engaging stealth whenever you are walking around, especially in combat (like death matches).

Once you get into the game, you are going to want to improve your rank — to increase the choices you have for equipment and jobs — and gain money.  You are going to want to purchase property once you gain the option at rank 5.  That gives you a garage to keep your vehicles in.  You get a “free” car during this time, and can gain more.  The best, coolest cars are only available for purchase from one of the online vendors.  All of the high value cars cannot be stolen off the street and kept in your garage — you will be told that they are “too hot” to keep.

The Ammunation stores will let you buy weapons, once you have the rank to unlock them.  A bunch of very good weapons (shown on the right wall in the store) do not have rank requirements, and these make good choices for your early purchases.

http://www.vg247.com/2014/11/25/gta-5-guide-best-weapons-load-out-gta-online-ps4-xbox-one-pc/

You get the Micro SMG at Rank 5, and it will do for that role for the entire game.  It is the only SMG you can fire from a vehicle, and that is the best use of the SMGs in general.  You are better off using a rifle in open combat.  Either the Bullpup or Special Carbine are excellent choices.  You will want a shotgun as well — good for close range and intimidation in robberies — and the Marksman Rifle until you get the Sniper (Rank 21).

Jobs are the main way you will make money early in the game, as well as gain RP (Reputation Points) to rank up.  There are a huge range of jobs available, in many different types.

http://gta.wikia.com/Jobs_in_GTA_Online

I group the jobs into four basic categories.

Combat:  These involve fighting, mostly players vs players, some are players vs NPC enemies.  Death Match, Last Team Standing, Versus Missions, Survival.  Most of these pit the players against each other, but Survival puts the players up against waves of NPC enemies, and they must try to eliminate all of them in each wave.

Some of these are very creative — not just a simple arena where the players fight to the death, but with interesting terrain and features, including the use of vehicles — both regular cars and military.

Races:  These are their own category, but there are a lot of types of races, with all sorts of vehicles and environments.  The GTA race mode allows players to engage in combat while racing.  Land vehicle races will unlock customization upgrades for cars and bikes in the Mod Shop, which gives an added bonus for winning those races.  Air, water, and bicycle races have no unlocks, but are interesting challenges and can be great fun.  Some races offer wild stunt challenges, far beyond simply trying to run a race course through varied roads, terrain, and traffic.

Missions:  I include both the contact missions and the Capture games for the way each team — or the entire cooperative team — works to achieve the objectives to win.  Some have multiple objectives.  Most Missions have a limited number of team lives, and once they are lost, no one can respawn.  This makes staying alive very important.  Many of these are among the highest paying Jobs in the game, besides the new Heists.  They also make good practice for the teamwork needed to be successful in Heists.

Activities:  Parachuting is its own category, but it shares some elements in style to the Sports activities, and the Shooting Range.  Some are two players only, others offer more, but all give you something very different to do from racing and fighting.

 

Heists are like Missions on steroids.  Rather than a single job, a Heist consists of several Setup missions, and once those are complete, a Finale where the goal of the Heist — and its big payout — is accomplished.  Heists are strongly structured, with a heist Leader — who puts up money to begin the mission, and usually gets the biggest cut of the final take — and one to three (the first Heist only takes two people normally) others.  The additional team members can change between each stage of the operation, but there are nice benefits to keeping the same group together throughout the Heist.

Heists have a secondary benefit:  you unlock new vehicles to purchase by completing them.  These include some pretty powerful military vehicles, but my favorite is the Kuruma (Armored) available from the first heist.  It isn’t entirely immune to bullets, but it is very tough and can make a lot of missions — and engagements against other players — much easier.

 

Making money and ranking up tend to go together, but some things pay better in money than others.  Heists pay very well, if you succeed.  There are one time bonuses to earn from the Heists, if you can pull them off, which will give you a huge amount of money.  Once you’ve done that, they still pay very well and are worth doing, but you can’t get the huge bonuses ever again — except for the Elite Challenges, which you can, if good enough, can earn every time.

One easy way to make money is to steal cars off the street and sell them.  The rare, NPC custom cars you can find are worth the most, but it can be a lot of work to find them.  You can steal cars and keep them in your garage, so that every time you start a game you can just take a car out and sell it.  Los Santos Customs (and Beaker’s Garage in Paleto Bay) pays 10% of the list price of the car for common cars, but you get 50% of the value of any custom modifications added to a car.  This pattern applies to any car you steal off the street.  Vehicles purchased from the in game web sites are legitimate, legally owned vehicles, and will sell for about 50% of what you paid for them, including any modifications.

One car can be sold every game day — 48 minutes of real time.  You can take advantage of this timing while playing by going to your garage, or near a Mod Shop, about once every hour of play.  You can also log on and play just to sell or find cars.  Simeon will, once you unlock it, offer extra money for specific cars, tend to be available once per real day.

Any car you put in your garage will become one of your personal vehicles, with a free Tracker installed.  You can purchase insurance in any of the Mod Shops.  All cars purchased from the websites automatically come with insurance.  Insurance will replace  your lost vehicle at a cost of about 1.25%  of its list purchase price.  For example, the $1000000 Adder will set you back $12,500 if you get it destroyed.  But if another player deliberately destroys your vehicle, they will be charged this cost and you will get it back for free.

Insurance brings the car back at the Mors lot by default, but if you are in another of your own vehicles when you call for replacement, it will reappear in your garage.  That is usually more convenient.

http://gtaforums.com/topic/766408-npc-modified-rare-vehicle-bicycle-mega-thread/

Not all the rare cars are worth extra money, but some are not available any other way, and they can be cool to possess.

http://gta.wikia.com/Los_Santos_Customs_Vehicle_Prices

The best “ordinary” cars you will find for selling are:

$9500-9000:  Lampadati Felon GT, Ubermacht Sentinel (this is the convertible version, not the Sentinel XS), Gallivanter Baller SUV, and the Felon.

$8500-8000: Obey Rocoto (I rarely see these), Umbermacht Oracle XS and regular Oracle, Benefactor Schwartzer, and Ocelot F620.

$7000:  Albany Cavalcade, Benefactor Dubsta SUVs.

$6500-6000:  Benefactor Schafter, Ubermacht Zion Cabrio, Zion, Benefactor Serrano, Ocelot Jackal, Ubermacht Sentinel XS (hardtop)

$5000-4500:  Fathom FQ2 SUV, Mammoth Patriot (hummer), Vapid Sandking SWB or XL.

Below this, it isn’t worth making a special effort to find and sell those cars, with a possible exception when Simeon is looking for a specific model of car.

One thing that can help you is to ride in a car similar to the type you are looking for.  The spawn system for traffic and parked vehicles is neither completely random nor is it set purely by the area you are in.  GTA has always used the type of car you are driving as a key factor in what vehicles will spawn.   So if you are looking to get the top dollar cars like the Felon GT or Baller, one way is to already own one — keep it in your garage — and drive around looking for another as you head out to make a sale.

A nice series on tips and tricks for GTA 5. One I’ll point out because I i didn’t realize it.  The Snapmatic gallery includes GPS coordinates.  You can use this to ‘bookmark’ locations you want to find again which do not have markers on the map.

 

 

A Feeling Of Accomplishment

I’ve made it to rank 45 in about a month, playing often but not excessively.  Increased rank brings more options for weapons, vehicles, clothing, and other equipment.  Many items require things other than just rank.

I was very happy to finally unlock the Turbo Tuning upgrade on my cars, which requires winning races.  Placing 2nd many times doesn’t count, you actually have to win to get many of the land vehicle customization options.  The more races you win, the better options are available.  Many are tied to rank.

Customizing cars is a mini-game in itself.  While I try to keep a set of cars tuned up for racing, I also have cars which are just for me to drive around and have fun.  Your garage space is limited.  You can own three locations (for now), a possible 30 car spaces.  I chose to get a place in Blaine County, which has no 10 car homes or garages, so that I’d have a spawn and base option there, but even so, that gives me 26 slots for keeping cars, which is pretty good.

One thing which surprised me a little was Bounties.  At Rank 10, you unlock the ability to call for a bounty, an offer for all players to go after and kill a specific player in the game.  Not so obvious to me is that it also makes NPCs place a bounty on you, if you steal their cars.  Not all NPCs will do so, but those that do will set a bounty of $1000-$9000 — showing as from Unknown.  The type and value of their car doesn’t seem to relate to the amount.  Now, you can try to run and hide and avoid other players for one game day (48 minutes real time) of actual game play time.  If you succeed, you will collect the bounty.  But unless you were already planning actions to stay clear of other players, this can be hard to pull off.  A better solution is to just get it over with — find a “friendly” player to shoot you.  Ideally, an actual Friend in the game, who won’t treat the whole thing as an impromptu vendetta.h

Free Roam play is a big part of the fun of the game.  You can go around and just explore the world and fight with any player on the map.  Rob NPCs — off the street or from stores, steal almost any car you see (Player-owned cars can be locked by the owner and become unstealable, I usually leave mine unlocked.  First, because that way I can have someone get in as a passenger (though you can unlock just the passenger seat).  Second, I don’t; mind if someone else wants to take a responsible joy ride.  As long as I get my car back (and it will reappear in my garage automatically when I use a different personal vehicle), it’s just fine.  If they blow it up, they pay the insurance cost, and I still get the car back, if it is insured.  I always use insurance on any customized car, it is cheap and worth it).

It can be a lot of fun when you have friends — even ones just met — run around with you on the map doing things.  The game offers an impromptu race feature, where you can challenge players near you on the map to an instant race, based on your current location.  I’ve found that most players don’t want to join in, so you may need friends to get this.  But you can just drive around together and cause trouble, and have loads of fun.  If you have an air vehicle, you can all get in and do things.

At Rank 15, Daily Assignments kick in.  You get three activities which you can perform during that real day, and if you do them you’ll get bonus money and RP ($25000 and 3000 RP).  If you can do them every day, you get even bigger bonuses, but it can be hard to find the time to do that.  Also, some of the assignments are easier than others, and many require cooperative players to do them with you.  Even so, it offers a nice and often quick and easy way to get a bit of bonus money, just for doing things you’d already be doing.

I haven’t done every job yet, and many offer multiple options which change how they play.  Add in player created jobs, and you have a nearly endless supply of fun and profitable activities to do.  I can’t; see getting bored with this game anytime soon.

 

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