Grand Theft Auto V

I discovered something annoying: apparently you can't buy special ammunition (like explosive rounds) from Ammu Nation. In fact, you can't even access a MKII weapon there. You also can't stock up on special ammo from mission screens. You can ONLY buy it from your mobile operations centre. Which, of course, is not available during missions.

Why does Rockstar like to annoy us so much lately?

Oh, and don't start missions from inside your MOC. You'll start the mission inside the trailer shell, and can't get out.

Modder is fined 500.000 dollars for GTA Online cheat engine.

The mod in question is the cheat program Elusive.

The height of the fine probably has to do with the mod in question being sold for 10-30 dollars to users. Making a mod for free is one thing, but making money off of it at the expense of the company is quite another, it seems.

Ars made a list of the most popular games based on trophy data. GTA V Online came in first with a wide margin at 128.000.000 players.

That doesn't really surprise me. For sheer variety of gameplay, I have yet to see any game beat GTA online.

Granted, it's usually not the best in its field at each gameplay element, but it seamlessly combines so many genres all together.

How many games let you hop in a fighter jet and interfere with another player's gang fight and someone else trying to heist a bank?

Nice garden chess set you got there... would play better if it had other pieces besides pawns, though.

If you hadn't noticed the 52 collectible playing cards, there are now also 100 collectible minifigs to hunt down.

I like the idea of collectibles for extra bonuses, but 100 seems a bit excessive. Well, at least you get to see some interesting locations, though I detect a certain laziness in just going for a lot of the same landmarks over and over again.

I am however glad that these collectibles are generally in straightforward places that are easy to spot once you are there. No excessive climbing or helicopter shenanigans required (though bring a chopper if the guide you are using doesn't bother with going in any particular order).

Oh yeah, you earn a grand total of 150k by finding all 100 figures (the same 8 over and over, really), as well as an Impotent Rage costume. I'd rather have gotten a proper superhero costume instead of the parody one, but oh well.

Edited by Redmess on Sep 9th 2019 at 11:41:36 AM

Single player stores still seem to be broken for me. Can't buy anything, can't rob them either, they just stand there and do nothing, or walk away when you try to buy anything.

I worked out some statistics on horse racing for anyone interested.

I have run 100 consecutive (single player) horse races and taken note of who won and of turnouts. The “odds” listed for each horse have no bearing on how often it will win, instead, this number only determines the multiplier for the cash pay-out on winning. Instead, the win chances are fixed per horse number.

I have also timed the race, from pressing the start button to the victory screen (at which point control is returned to the player. This time was 33 seconds. I have estimated a (generous) 17 seconds for setting up another race, for a total of 50 seconds per race.

Amount of wins per horse over 100 races:

For ease of calculation, I have shifted the top three outcomes slightly to obtain the approximate odds of winning, as I expect this to even out easily over time:

Odds per horse in percentage:

I have also noted the range of “odds” (really just prize multipliers, which I will refer them as from here on out) for each horse. Note that for horse 3 and 4, 11 does not seem to appear at all. The multiplier indicates how many times the bet money will be multiplied (discounting the original bet being returned in the win total, which evens out to 0). I have calculated the average multiplier for each horse (assuming each odd occurs equally, which may not be the case), by dividing the sum of the multipliers through the amount. This will indicate the average number the bet will be multiplied by on winning.

On losing, the bet money is lost, which can be represented with a loss multiplier of -1.

Now to calculate the average multiplier per horse when taking losses into account. This is done by multiplying the win multiplier with the chance of winning, and the loss multiplier with the chance of losing, adding the two to get the average amount of profit you will see per horse.

So, on average, horse 1 will see a profit of exactly 1 times the bet made. Horse 2 will break even, while horse three will see a smaller profit margin (thanks to having a larger win multiplier average). Horse 4, 5, and 6 are all net losses.

In effect, this means that you will double your bet on average by betting on horse 1. Note that this can be skewed considerably, for instance by betting a minimal amount on evens. This will effectively add a multiplier of 0,5 to horse 1, for a profit of 1,25.

So, practically speaking, since the maximum bet is 10.000, you will make an average profit of 2,500 pet bet on horse 1, remembering to put in a minimal bet on evens.

So how much money can you make per hour? Since the race turnaround is about 50 seconds, you can do about 72 races an hour. With a bet of 10.000 each (except for evens), this will net you a profit of 180.000 dollars per hour. This means you can earn 1.000.000 in about 5,5 hours on horse races.

I suggest muting the sound and turning on a podcast or something while you grind away.

Edited by Redmess on Oct 2nd 2019 at 8:20:00 PM

Outstanding work, Redmess. Where'd you pick up those math skills?

At Brilliant.org. :p And the math is not all that hard once you get the idea.

If you haven't already, you should probably start taking advantage of horse racing, because it flat out breaks shark cards. I'm easily making a million in a few hours. Compare that to paying 15 bucks for the same amount.

It's only a matter of time before they pull the plug on us.

Oh shit u rite

thanks for the headsup

Always put money on horse 1 right?

Yes, and reroll on evens. It's a bit more complicated than I initially thought, but overall, just sticking with horse 1 is the winning method here.

I've seen several new deals for bonus cash for shark cards. I think they are already starting to feel the pain from the casino.

Well, I think it happened. I can't get on Inside Track anymore. Is anyone else being booted from it?

It says "this feature is not available right now, please come back later".

Edit: I can't play any casino game now, it appears. What the heck is going on?

Edited by Redmess on Oct 21st 2019 at 11:55:22 AM

Might be a glitch. Try verifying game integrity

I put in a ticket, and all I'm getting is that I just have to wait until the service is available again. Support seems to avoid calling it a ban, and doesn't explain why it happened, but yes, it seems to be a ban for the high crime of winning at horse races too much.

It's honestly all a little Kafkaesque. They suddenly restrict your services (if not outright ban you) without notice or explanation, and when you try to get answers, you're just told to wait, with no confirmation or denial of what happened.

Also, I just won a mystery prize at the Lucky Wheel, which asked me to pick a garage, so I figured it's the podium car, right? Nope! It's just a random mediocre bike. Great.

Edited by Redmess on Oct 23rd 2019 at 1:06:20 PM

... What? Did this guy even read the ticket? Also, suddenly a different tech support guy once I start pressing for details. And the Kafka continues...

Well, whatever it was, it seems to be fixed now. It was exactly seven days, so I suspect it was indeed a ban.

It's still weird how tech support wouldn't even admit or deny it being a ban. It really is just like Kafka.

I dunno who or where to ask this but we don't have a General GTA thread, do we?

I've been thinking of making one. I haven't played a GTA game in over a decade but it is such a foundational part of my childhood and I wanna get back into it. But not GTAV, at least now now. But, again, there is no general GTA thread I don't think.....

Do you all talk about other GTA games in here like how the Fallout New Vegas thread has other Fallout chat?

Edited by Nikkolas on Oct 28th 2019 at 5:20:23 AM

Sounds good to me.

Well, it happened, they made horse racing a little more complicated. Now odds are in random order, so you have to look what you have to pick each time, instead of simply picking the top one.

Luckily, the odds still seem to be the same.

It's basically throwing up another hurdle for grinding, and it makes spotting patterns all but impossible. On the plus side, it makes races more visually interesting, since they had a tendency to finish in order of their odds, which looked rather unnatural.

Oh, and the most crucial change: it doesn't re-roll odds when backing out any more, which was clearly the biggest issue for Rockstar.

Edited by Redmess on Dec 15th 2019 at 2:56:22 PM

Also you can now heist the casino

Yes, and you can buy an arcade to set it up.

How does that make sense, though? Don't you kind of own the casino after the casino missions?

As far as I'm aware you just steal some paintings...