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[APB: Reloaded] New name, same game?
MoSiAc
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Just got an interesting e-mail in my inbox tonight, and I bet many of you have too. I don't know what is allowed to be discussed and what is not, but it looks like some company called GamersFirst will be bringing APB back from its recently dug grave.
Looking at the Gamersfirst main page it appears to be one of the many companies that pumps out a bunch of free to play mmorpgs, so that's a big strike against this even becoming anything better than what it was.
Looks like they have been publishing info for about 10 weeks about how they are reviving the project, but honestly I've not heard a single gaming outlet even discuss this. (Probably because of the bad taste left in everyones mouth.)
So heres the dev blog : http://apbreloaded.blogspot.com/
The twitter: http://twitter.com/apb_reloaded
And it doesn't appear they really have a main page yet. Though there is a special link if you get the e-mail.
Closed beta seems to be starting in the near future from what I can gather, and maybe they can turn this game into something better, who knows.
Looking at the Gamersfirst main page it appears to be one of the many companies that pumps out a bunch of free to play mmorpgs, so that's a big strike against this even becoming anything better than what it was.
Looks like they have been publishing info for about 10 weeks about how they are reviving the project, but honestly I've not heard a single gaming outlet even discuss this. (Probably because of the bad taste left in everyones mouth.)
So heres the dev blog : http://apbreloaded.blogspot.com/
The twitter: http://twitter.com/apb_reloaded
And it doesn't appear they really have a main page yet. Though there is a special link if you get the e-mail.
Closed beta seems to be starting in the near future from what I can gather, and maybe they can turn this game into something better, who knows.
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And this, also, is the absolute first I heard of it. Kinda looking forward to it.
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So, it looks on the surface like this is actually happening! I will certainly give the game a look.
APB had so much potential that RTW managed to fucking botch hard in every way.
That said, I will totally check it out to fiddle with the character creator.
I was in the original APB closed beta, and I can say without a shadow of a doubt the character creator is the hottest shit.
Fuckin' blew my mind.
So, I figure, with the game going F2P, there's going to be a number of people who check it out just to check out the famous character creator, maybe make a dude, fuck around, etc.
That might give the game some legs.
I'm also highly skeptical over what they will do about the rampant cheating that overtook the game. That was what drove me away even before it died, the inability to actually play due to aimbotting and such.
Pretty much this.
/hope
/go team rocket!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCZ6h28mixI
I never asked for this!
But someone has to clean up these streets
Edit: They're actually talking about PvE content. Heres hoping these guys can deliver
Apparently they claimed that they did figure out how to track cheaters but by then it was too late to go through and ban them.
pretty much this.
I don't care what anyone says, if you could overlook the flaws that would have eventually gotten fixed then this was one of the most brilliant games to come out in recent history. Every MMO has a weak launch with broken/missing features and I think it's a crying shame that APB wasn't even given a chance to work out the kinks.
I got this email even though I never played this game.
What sort of cheating was going on? It doesn't seem like aimbotting would be all that useful in most MMOs.
It's pretty useful in one where it's exclusively pvp and you point and shoot rather than select someone and click attacks.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
I would love to jump back in if not for one last taste of this game.
What are you talking about? The game was utterly devoid of gameplay content. It had the coolest character editor in awhile. It had some neat ideas for social atmosphere. The two quest types were fun for about 10 minutes, and then you were done.
If they don't redesign the progression system so it doesn't eat lowbies they will suffer the same fate.
I miss tooling around in the Two-Days SUV of Death.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
APB had as much gameplay as pretty much any AAA FPS game currently on the market, in fact probably significantly more if you consider that the "2" quests could happen in one of like 50+ unique locations in each map, and given that each quest had 3 to 5 parts each of which would also happen in one of 50+ unique locations. APB was important because they actually focused on making "the grind" the good part of the game.
You could make that same argument about Counter-strike or Call of Duty and you'd be just as wrong; both of those games have a maximum of 12 maps which you could play through in under an hour, yet the average player of either of those games has at least 60 hours logged on their account. 60 hours is a pretty conservative estimate too, elite CS players have probably have 300+ hours.
You could make that argument about Minecraft. All minecraft gives you is a half-finished game world yet people go around building scale replicas of the Enterprise-D that take god knows how long to complete from start to finish. I'm sure people are expecting there to be more content in the future, but people still bought it and are willing to wait for the developer to work out the kinks.
Hell, if you look at the elite wow players they pretty much have the game boiled down to about a dozen instances that they play over and over just like the CS and CoD players.
edit: after re-reading this post I realized I come off as justifying the lack of content in APB. I totally agree that APB launched with paltry content, but to write it off as 2 quests that take 10 minutes is pretty flipping inflammatory. Especially where games like WAR and Age of Conan shipped without RvR and any form of PvP at all, respectively, which were both the big touted features of the games.
Hell, some of the best times I've ever had playing a PC game were had rolling around with Team Rocket in my mudkips themed pedo-van blasting Scandinavian extreme speed metal while trying to outrun better equipped cops to the next objective location.
A big part of that, I think, is that APB was a shitty FPS combined with a shitty MMO. The cover mechanics, aiming and weapon balance was awful. The objective system was terrible. Therefore, bad FPS. There was essentially no MMO content, other than rep grinds through the shitty FPS to access new weapons that just switched where you were on the imbalanced power curve, thus shitty MMO.
Most gamers realized they'd rather just play Modern Warfare (or whatever) for an hour, then play WoW (or whatever) for an hour than play a half-assed, terrible, watered down version of each for two hours.
On the other hand: Best car painting mini-game ever. I think I spent more time designing cars and then driving them around town so that I could look at them than I did anything else.
What I originally said was that there was brilliance to be had once all the broken shit was fixed, everything you mentioned was either fixed in the final hours or fixable within a timescale that is reasonable to expect out of all other MMO's. It had the potential to become a really great game and I stand by that statement. That's why I mentioned Minecraft, it has the potential to become a really great game once it's finished.
The progression should be like Bad Company 2. You play the game -- you game ranks, you unlock a variety of weapons that have good aspects and bad aspects.
Lvl 1 - Weapon is just a basic semi rifle. All around basic stats, this is the rifle all other weapons will be measured.
Lvl 2 - Sub-Machine Gun unlocked. Less damage and less range then level 1 basic rifle, but rapid fire and more magazine capacity.
Lvl 3 - Shotguns unlocked. Significantly more damage then rifle and sub, drastically decreased range and small magazine size.
You're unlocks in a game like APB should give you more options, not give you clear advantages and superior equipment.
Critical Failures - Havenhold Campaign • August St. Cloud (Human Ranger)
I very much agree with the above. Level progression should unlock cool things, but not overly more powerful things. Different weapons, new character/vehicle customization, new vehicles, maybe new quest types, new maps... all those would be good things to give players as they level up.
They're probably too concerned with being very hungry.
Right, and FPS games have no recurring monthly charges or micro-transactions. People who are willing to pay MMO subscription fees (or their equivalent in micro-fees) expect to be buying access to another world, with enough content to keep them busy for 12 hrs/day if they choose to play that much and a steady stream of meaningful rewards for their time invested.
But APB had no recurring monthly charges or micro-transactions either, so what's your point? I already demonstrated that CounterStrike and every major FPS game to come out in recent years have less content than APB did but they still have millions of players playing 12 hours a day.
Re weapon unlocks: I agree, personally I think there should have been a few archetypes, you know like, SMG, AR, MG, Sniper, explosive, and then just a shitload of weapons to choose from in each category which are largely the same, give or take some trade off between fire rate, damage, capacity, etc. It would be easy to balance each type against itself (SMG vs SMG, etc) and then that would allow for simply having to balance the half-dozen or so weapon types instead of having to worry about how each new gun is going to affect every other gun. Especially in a game where it's all about character customization. As it stood, let's say I wanted my gangster guy to be running around with some small soviet SMG I was putting myself at a disadvantage because the mp5 looking thing was simply better in every way.
Darkwolfe I agree that there still are months and months of content development too, I was mostly irate because like I've said before: APB failed before it got the chance to live up to its potential. I think really the biggest problem with APB was that it made the professional MMO players nerdrage over "lack of content" while simultaneously making all the professional shooter players nerdrage over "subscription based content and micropayments" both of which were false to some degree and both of which were the result of misinformation spewed by people talk like they didn't even actually play the game.
edit: Not that I'm implying that you guys are the misinformers or anything.
Yeah, 50 hours of gameplay in action districts ought to be enough for anybody.
Which is still dependent on someone spending real cash. There was always going to be way more people spending money than actually managed to get free time.
sounds like they might be at least trying to fix what went wrong. Interesting to see the Development QA Lead from RTW as the Design Lead for Reloaded though I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. . .