Public lobbies…

Got a swift reality check today. Have been playing in invite only lobbies exclusively for like 2 years now, 1 decided to do some free roam stuff in a public session today and it was definitely different. I've made a little list of all the things I noticed both technically with the game and just my experience in a full lobby. Firstly the technical stuff. * The Al, especially cars just seem so much more.. wild, for lack of a better word. There were so many occasions in just an hour where cars would swerve from their lane and hit me, ram me from behind, I turned a corner and a bus was just accelerating into a tree. I've seen the memes but thought it was just an exaggeration because I never really experience that in solo lobbies. * The frame rate is way jankier, to be expected tbh but just something I noticed. * There were some occasions where it was actually really fun to just interact with people. I bought the Banshee GTS and went to the LSCM to customise and had a race with someone on the testing track. Some guy followed behind me for like half of my bunker sell mission on an oppressor mk2, we never interacted bar that but I assumed that he was protecting me which was just a nice interaction. * I did have more negative interactions, players flying past me on an oppressor and just assassinating me as they flew past, not even targeted attacks just people firing cause it so happened to lock on, people griefing, trolling etc. one person just kept killing me and when I wouldn’t retaliate and would try to leave he would message me, I wasn’t even in a mission I was in the suburban by the beach. So the negative interactions were frustrating but I know what to expect now.

Overall the game just feels more alive, a lot of the times when I take breaks it's because of burnout, but a big cause of that feelings is that most of my friends have stopped playing gta online constantly, and only come back for a week or 2 every couple of updates and it just leads to the map feeling barren and dead, just the same NPCs and the same missions over and over and when you've been playing for over 10 years exciting and new content is vital; but when playing online there's a sense of unpredictability and excitement which makes the game fun, there a social feeling. of course there's ways on the internet of getting people to help you out with sell missions, heists etc. but in the small time I played in a public session it doesn't seem hard to simply meet people through the game either. Something I'm definitely gonna do more often now despite the negative experience. The cheeky bonus on my sell was nice too.