The balacing was much needed lol there were a bunch of stores that you could rob and have the stars gone in 30 seconds  just by driving up the side of a hill or into the middle of nowhere since the cops wouldnt leave the street.  The choppers were MUCH needed to fix that,  getting away actually takes thought now

That two weeks to "prepare for online" really helped out. I think preparing for online is a bunch of bs and I was right all along. The two weeks was just their way of attacking used game sales and get more money.

I tried it and I was able to make a character (I'm not really digging the whole grandparents/parents design, and would have preferred a more traditional character creator), but was unable to actually log into the game. From what I've read, it seems like there are server issues, so I'll probably have to give it another try some other time.

I managed to create a decent looking character, which took me 45 minutes( Worst character creator ever), and then started the introductory mission but I couldn't do the first mission because of server issues.

yea its not just flying out the windshield, i swear the crashing physics have changed. hell they may have even changed parts of the map because i ran into rock cliffs where i was able to drive up before.. and a jump ive done tons of time and "land" almost exactly in the same spot seems to be missing a few trees i would slam into. I definately bounce different though.

3 failed attempts, so I gave up.

The character generator is awful, but I'm pretty happy with the final result.

Well I hope they balanced that by removing the magically spawning cops. You would think going down a small country road would decrease the number of cops, but they always just spawn at the other end of the road

Character creation was just plain terrible, though I am happy to admit that John Marston is my characters daddy.

How do you get that option?

but thats GTA,  everyone of them has had cops almost completly non-existent until you get a star, then they come out of no where..  But they do need to fix how close the can spawn to you and when.  I had a helicopter spawn over top of me while i wasnt in anyones view lol