GroundControl

The day is finally upon us.  Rockstar closed GTA Online for a day or so to fix the economy...and the hacker issues that have plagued it over these last few months.  This was a shock to me as I was away from the game for about a week...didn't even know that it shut down...

Sharks in the water.

I found this out rather quickly once I returned.  You see...whenever you start a mission you are able to purchase ammo and armor from the setup screen.  There is a 'purchase all ammo' option.  I naturally chose that one since I was swimming in loot.  After I was stocked to the gills I noticed that it said that I had 140,000 dollars.  But since I'm slightly dyslexic when it comes to numbers...I thought that it said 140 million dollars.  I was sitting on 200 mil in the bank and another 110 on my person that I didn't bank out of spite at the hacker who gave it to me.  Speaking of which...

...what cha gonna do when they come for you...

When the mission was over I checked my account.  Yup...140K.  Ok.  I'm cool with that.  I'm actually more than cool with that.  I sort of did a double take...looking at my account again and letting it really sink it.  Wow...they fixed it.  And surprisingly they let me keep my apartment and all of my cars.  Ok.  Even better.

Appropriate.

I've read some message boards and there is all sorts of thought/words/opinions on the matter.  Not only did RS fix the economy...they also fixed the RP hack which is really good since it keeps tanks off the streets...for the most part.  Glad I could catch that battle when I did.  As they say in the industry...makes for great copy.

Slow day at the track.

They decided to punish those caught cheating at their own 'discretion'.  For those who were gifted money but innocent of cheating...they reset the money levels to where they were (or where they thought they were) before the modded money was added to individual accounts.  Ok.  I understand that.  But let me throw myself under the bus for a minute...

When I was 'gifted' the initial amount...I had just purchased a 6 car garage for 70K.  I had about 5-6K left on my person.  I was then 'windfalled' to the tune of 100M+.  So realistically I should have only been given somewhere between 5-10K.  But I guess that RS wanted to keep people happy - and more importantly...playing - so they adjusted the numbers.  I'm ok with that too.  I guess removing purchased items (apartments, garages, cars) was too exhaustive or difficult so they are allowing us to keep those for now.

Chocolate brown.  Dope.

You see that car in the background?  That's one of the cars that they let me keep.  I had that car and 3 other 'highend' cars in my garage.  But before I get into that.  This car above...it's an Ubermacht Sentinel Coupe.  My favorite car in the game.  I have three of them.  One in black.  One in chocolate brown.  And one in midnight blue.  Excessive.  But necessary.  So...they let me keep a whole garage full of cars...10 in total.  Three like the one above, 4 highend cars and 3 others which I'll show you later.  Anyway...after the monetary adjustment...and realizing that they were not going to take away my garage/apartment or vehicles...I took each and every one of them to get priced for resale.  From just the 4 highend cars...I had a total resale amount of just over 1,000,000.  Not bad.  Good if I ever get into a pinch...

...or need extra hooker money.

I think the running mascara is a fantastic touch.  Tough day at the office...

Unaffected by the recent economic recovery act.

I actually sold that car in the background bringing my cash total to 420K.  That should do me for a while.  Since they didn't take the apartment, garage or car away...the real need for money is to keep fully stocked with weapons, ammo and armor.  Plus...the only way that you can rank up (RP) is by doing missions and they all come with monetary incentive attached.  Plus bonuses for finishing them with teammates/crew members.

Crew emblem.  Dope.

I made that car china white...like my coke habit.  Ha!  Just kidding.  I'm actually thinking of changing the car back to black but with a 'cocaine white' strip running across the top with our symbol shining bright...

Now the playing field has been leveled.  Although...from the windfalls until now...I've managed to take my stats through the roof.  I've maxed out on stamina, driving and most importantly...shooting...

Case in point.

Actually that's not entirely true.  Driving is so key.  I rocked a mission the other day where I had to hunt this van down because The Ballas (local street gang) decided to kidnap someone and I had to snatch him back.  First I had to take out the hoods in the van, then scoop up this dude...and then drive him back into the city.  Two or three blocks back in that direction...I was swarmed by multiple cars filled with gangstas trying to break a piece off in our collective ass.  Thankfully I was in one of my faster cars (armored w/ bulletproof tires) and I was able to stay ahead of them...and alive.  Delivery accomplished.  I drive like Steve McQueen.

Canadians welcome.

Even before this leveling of the playing field...I was starting my sessions off with a game of survival.  I'm not sure if I explained it but Survival is for 2-4 players and sounds pretty much...well, exactly what it is.  You and your teammates are attacked in escalating waves of enemies...dirty cops, meth heads, mercenaries.  This is a nice way to increase your shooting stats as well as a nice source of RP.  But what it really does for you...especially if you involve yourself in one early in your GTA session...is gift you more advanced weaponry.  In addition to armor and health to keep you alive during wave after escalating wave...weapons become available in the surrounding area that you usually cannot access at Ammunation due to your current RP limitations.  This gives you the advantage once the Survival ends since you can keep this weaponry for your entire session...as long as you have sufficient ammo, of course...

Signature!

This is so hard to do...catch an actual opponent right after death.  Unlike computer generated characters...these corpses disappear very, very quickly.  You have to kill them and then immediately opened up your phone and take your photo.  I can't tell you how many times I've rushed up to an extinguished adversary and then had them disappear right before my eyes.  Frustrating...

That lady from the DMV.

And there are certainly plenty of ways to take out your frustration here.  But now the playing field has been leveled.  The economy has been resuscitated...to a point.  I could still sell off my apartment/garage and all of the cars in it for well over a million dollars.  There's no fun in that though.  One of the very best things about this world is tooling around in supped up cars looking for trouble...and somewhere to store them when you're done.

Indeed.