Robert C

The playing field is level already. High level players (except RP Glitchers, who should be banned for being stupid) earned the right to have superior weaponry and armour by playing the game more and better. But if you insist on everyone having the same gun, Locked Only levels the playing field. Locked + Pickups steals Bullets and Rockets we paid for, and favours whoever memorised the map. Which, on user created Deathmatches, means the creator and his friends. Has anyone noticed that you can be shot through cover now? I was hiding behind the edge of a construction barrier, killed someone but took some hits and had low health, so I ran along behind it to recover my green bar, was covered up from head to toe behind it... and was shot and killed by bullets coming through it. It's been that way for a while, at least in some cases - corners of some buildings for example. I've been hit by bullets that had to pass thru several feet of concrete multiple times. I am the world's most inconsistent deathmatch player. Played 2 team matches back to back. The first was 2 kills and 6 deaths. The second was 11 kills, 1 death. I guess it mostly comes down to whether I'm familiar with the map.

Working from home this afternoon, so I left the XBOX on with a car bomb percolating in a Baller. Just heard a bigass explosion coming from the other room. Sure enough victim #1. I'm now officially 1/20 th as evil as JT.

I still can't master JT's car bomb technique. I tried it again last night with no success. I'm gonna keep at it though. On the way to drop off the rigged car last night I picked up a tail. He took a couple shots at me so I shot him in the face for his trouble. While I was waiting for the heat to die down, I look him up and notice he's level 8. That was ambitiously stupid on his part. Had fun helping spread chaos across free mode last night. Five us were going after some guy with a bounty holed up in Ft. Zancudo, when the asshole interrupted my doomed attempt to jump an 18 wheeler off the side of a mountain into the base. Pissed me off - I was almost at the jump when he got me. Went after him with a sniper rifle to get my revenge, going on somebody's guess that he was on top of the control tower. I couldn't see him he was so far away, but I did see muzzle flashes after he started shooting at somebody else, and that was enough. By far the longest shot I've made in the game thus far.

I'm guessing most of us are in that same boat. I loved watching it back in the mid 80s.

Yeah, I have learned the difference between hard rank and soft rank. I've come across Rank 100+ guys in firefights that barely know one end of the gun from the other and some Rank 50 and below guys who are fucking monsters. Lots of people got a high level by spamming races like Criminal Records or Down the Drain back before Rockstar changed the rewards. As a result, they got really good at those races, and often suck at everything else. I still remember doing a Boneyard survival with a level 200+ guy - the first time I ever saw anybody that high. He died early in each of the first 3 rounds and rage quit. Just shoot in amongst em. I'll be on tonight, but probably not till late. I had a bunch of car problems the other night. I got my personal Baller got stuck in a train tunnel on Mt. Chiliad, and it got dragged for probably half a mile. I really should have taken a picture of it. One door was bravely hanging on for a while before it finally fell off with the rest. The frame was so bent it was barely recognizable. Then jstout got annoyed with my choice of SUV to carjack, asking if we were taking the kids to soccer practice. At least I amused myself by getting the Mile High Club award during our shared flight out to Ft. Zancudo.

Once again the board delivers - I had no idea the NAB challenge was televised here. Of course I'm wiped out to day after staying up till 4 watching Western Bulldogs vs. Saints last night.

Forgot to mention a really weird deathmatch encounter. I was playing a team match out at the beach. I'm sitting up on top of a building behind a little ledge with 2 other guys waiting for anybody to be stupid enough to make a run at us while we're in cover. After a couple minutes of this, I look over at the other two and notice that the one furthest from me is on the other team. My teammate is right next to him and completely oblivious. I blasted the other guy before he figured it out. I guess all 3 of us were so intent on watching the open ground that we never gave each other a second look.

I clearly do not have JT's car bomb skills. I tried it out a couple times on my lunch break. First time I'm pretty sure I got too far away. The second time I tried placing it right in front of the Los Santos Customs downtown. I left it just outside the the little barriers before the garage. I also tried to stage it to look like somebody got in the car by shooting out the driver's side window. People just rammed it out of the way. I'm guessing I either need to set it right outside the door or try using a remote triggered one.

After getting several of JT's carbomb and ladies messages in the game, I'm now picturing him as part Desmond Llewelyn, part Smoove B.

I was wondering how he did it, and I honestly have no idea. I was on the opposite side of the chopper from him, and couldn't see what he was driving. When I respawned he was driving past in a POS 80s Cadillac. Made it easy to get the first revenge kill.

Somebody got the kill of his lifetime on us last night. I had a bounty on me when melraz and jstout picked me up in an annihilator. Then we went over to grab misanthrope over near downtown. As soon as he gets in the chopper, I see somebody hurtling at us full speed. Before any of us had a chance to react, the world explodes, netting the guy 4 kills and 2 bounties in one shot. Hope it was worth it for him. He paid for it over and over and over till he finally took off.

I would avoid the race I created. I was experimenting with somebody's suggestion of doing a two checkpoint race from one end of the map to the other - basically letting people choose the route they think best. The end result was not good.

I'm completely inept at tennis, and never played golf. I finally did a little storyline over the weekend and opened up tennis. Amanda kicked my ass - I maybe won 6 points. I'm chalking that up to not having played tennis on a console since Intellivision. I hit 100 strength during that match, so that was a plus.

That's not how baseball does it. OK. Did they change it? I thought it used to be if the guy you drafted went to college, you kept his rights for four years or something. Via mlb.com: It's been that way since at least the late 80s. A friend of mine was drafted by the Reds out of high school in 89. He didn't sign, played college ball instead, then signed with the White Sox 3 years later.

I was trying to get my strength up to 100 last night, so I broke my own rule and did Prison Thugz with randoms and pulled off a miracle win in a full room. My chickenshit tactic of attacking people that are already engaged in a fight paid off again. The bus ran me over about 9000 times in the match, which was driving me nuts, till I realized it was Dan in the damn bus. After that I figured at least crew was getting the kills, till somebody yanked him out and I got my revenge.

The first DNF was my fault. I took chose the motorcycle when I shouldn't have, and died 3 times in a single race. That's a pretty exceptional level of ineptness on my part. The second DNF was partly because I was about to call it a night, and partly because the combination of muscle cars and water frustrates the hell out of me. And yeah, that first race was Gopher Hole. Couldn't tell you the other two.

Is there a way to turn off automatic invites to crew/friends? I was just trying to spam deathmatches for myself and felt bad you kept getting them. Usually if I see Prison Thugz or Saving Ryan's Privates I just leave ASAP. I actually like the maze one, but setting up in a good area outside the maze early is key. Unfortunately the folks we were playing knew that too. I did an insane match over the weekend, something like "free RP and money lobby". It was set for 15 minute team deathmatch with no kill limit & 16 people. I finished with about 50 kills, and was barely in the top 10. An enclosed space plus lots of minigun spawns equals chaos.

Somebody on the board posted the bright idea of doing the cockpit view for the flight school back when San Andreas came out. Flight school became fairly easy to get all gold with that. I'll echo Neil on the driving school being harder. There was one test in that where you had to do 5 laps around a short track. Trying to get gold on that was the most difficult thing for me in any GTA game.

If I'm reading the release right, it looks like the cap only applies to cars that don't have insurance/tracker, so you may still be good.

Public servers have the potential to be much creepier with people running around in lingerie

Guess I'll have to hold off on paint and armor upgrades for a while. My heavily tatted female character needs flapper dresses.

I've done that race exactly once, with jstout a month or two ago. I failed that jump about 8 straight times. He lapped me before I got across once.

I love it when guys don't figure out that once you get a melee weapon it is yours to use for the rest of the deathmatch. I love hitting guys with baseball bats while they are running for a knife or a nightstick. They've forgotten that all they need to do is quick arm or use the weapon wheel to get to the melee weapon they already have.. Deathmatches are a good payday but races are faster. When you are only on for an hour at a time, short track races are a steady source of income without the time length of a deathmatch or the headaches of a survival match. I had no idea about this till somebody mentioned it a couple weeks ago. Makes life so much easier in melee matches now

We were all in high end cars, but the streets were full of Minis. Jstout and I were running side by side in first place when we both hit the same mini at the same time going flat out over a bridge. The damn thing must've rolled 15 times.

I have no idea how I invited everybody into the Prison Thugz match that I bailed out of. I just joined a random deathmatch and then left as soon as I saw it what it was. I've got to the point where I refuse to do that match unless it's closed crew. The crew Prison Thugz match was good stuff. I finally won one by being a complete chickenshit. My whole strategy was to find people that were already fighting each other and attack them from behind. Any time I tried to take somebody out one on one, I pretty much got my butt whipped.