Bike To Work Week
In addition to my new summer job of small-time weed farmer in GTAO, I've been enjoying my own personal "Bike to Work Week." I bought a mountain bike from Pedal Pushers, and had it delivered to my house in Paleto Bay. Then I've been biking from Paleto to the weed farm, cutting through the farms to take the railroad tracks through the gorge.
When I’m on the bike, I switch over to the first-person point of view. I've played around with first person a bit, but it has a limited field of vision, and things move so quickly in this game that it's hard to see what's going on. But when you're on the bike, things move much more slowly. And there's no music, so you just hear the ambient noise of the map, and man, the sound design is incredible. I mean, I knew it was good, but biking through town, you'll hear music coming from bars as you pedal by. The whole experience is actually so immersive, it should be a VR game. Mountain Biking Simulator.
And I found some shortcuts I'd never seen before, including a nice new (well, new to me) way to cut through the desert. On a bike, you're actually moving at the same speed as the NPC vehicular traffic, so you can cruise in traffic and look around, which is neat. It's a wonderful new way to experience the game world.
So I was all set to write a fun little post about “Bike to Work Week.” I even was going to make a set of bullet points about Bike to Work week. But the other night I got dog-piled by Motorcycle Club of four. I think they were trying to clear the server, I guess so that they could run product without anyone fucking with them. The little pussies had three jets and an attack helicopter, and were just spawn killing me over and over. I was close to home and didn’t want to give up, and by the time I made it, a bunch of people had joined, so in a way I guess I won. I didn’t lose anything other than a couple of rockets. But it left a bad taste in my mouth.
I’ve been grinding GTAO pretty hard recently, so I’ve decided to take a little break, and focus on No Man’s Sky. But I thought I’d summarize a little of what I learned this week.
What I Learned
- Racing is fun, but won’t make you rich. I think a lot of people forget that there is a decent racing game in GTAO, and it’s a lot of fun. There are a ton of different modes and race-types, and then a bunch of different ways to customize those modes. You can build your own tracks, and there are a ton of people racing. A lot of them are very, very good. I managed to move from DNF to the middle of the pack in a couple of days, and I feel like that is an accomplishment. But the money just isn’t there, not at least until you can win consistently, or at least finish with the front of the pack on a decent sized roster.
- Small-time motorcycle work is viable. It won’t make money as fast as running crates or flipping cars, or heists, but it will slowly and surely. You don’t lose much if something bad happens, and solo supply runs are easily doable. I might switch up to the Meth Lab for a little more bang per delivery, but otherwise, it was a nice, fun way to make money.
- You can save money by doing jobs every few minutes. Every forty-eight minutes in Free Mode, your bills will come due. You’ll need to pay your mechanic, your executive assistant, and the rent on your properties. But, every time you leave Free Mode, whether it’s a race or a deathmatch or a contact mission, that timer resets. So if you pop out and do a job every so often, you won’t get dinged for those utilities.
- You can save money by not wearing armor. If Player is coming after you, that armor isn’t going to make much difference. It helps with NPCs, helps a lot, so if you’re running contact missions, it’s probably a good thing, but if someone has just ganked you in Free Mode, don’t throw on a new vest once you’re back from the dead. Just wait until you’re in an NPC situation to put it back on, and even then, weigh if it’s needed. You can die as many times as you want with a Gang Attack, so why waste body armor on that?
- You can save money by not getting in firefights. Ammo costs money. The insurance on other players vehicles costs money. Being small-time means your margins are really tight, and you need to not waste money by spraying bullets all over downtown.
- You can sage money by not getting every single upgrade for a vehicle. Also, try to avoid impulse buying vehicles. It’s hard not to. I bought three or four over the past couple of days but they were really cheap, and I didn’t bother to upgrade them. I just wanted them for my collection, and to have fun running around in them.
- Have Fun, Dammit. This is for me, actually. It’s really easy to get wrapped up in the grind, in the work towards a big score. But everything in GTAO is fleeting. You can deliver a round of product and get shot out of the sky on your way back to the airfield. You can make the same routine delivery over and over and then suddenly completely screw it up for no apparent reason. So yeah, it’s great to make money, that’s how you get the best toys, but it’s also important to just have fun with the game.
And if you’re not having fun, go play something else. See, I did get my bullet points in, after all.