Death of a Game: APB - General

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef3GPO67lTc[/media] I never played APB, but I played a fucking insane amount of APB:R and spent WAAAAAAY too much money on it. The games foundation was great. Super snappy game-play with a really high skill curve, but ultimately milked to death. Such gigantic potential completely wasted.

I played alot of APB when it was in closed beta, could never really get over the fact that driving cars was a server sided thing which resulted in horrible vehicle control.

This guy does a superb job at covering the games, it's some really good content. It's also actually unique and well researched, hope he gets more successful.

I had some good times in Reloaded with my friends aaaages ago. The character customization music was ace, did this thing with different layers being faded in and out and it sort of remixed itself as it went and I remember listening to it for ages.

Oh man, I remember being one of the super early adopters of OG APB, I pre-ordered and got early access way back in the day. It was actually pretty fun, it had a bunch of lag issues though, combined with mediocre balance, it had some teething issues. I went back and played APB:R some time after it launched, and they had pretty much changed it for the worse, the balance was worse, and the progression was way slower than in the OG version.

[QUOTE=Wolverunder;52549069]Super snappy game-play [/QUOTE] The extreme input lag on car controls was the opposite of snappy.

APB was fucking amazing for the dump-trucks alone~ [video=youtube;DAaE5Ec_2ec]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAaE5Ec_2ec[/video] But I had to drop it when the matchmaking would only ever pit me/my squad of noobies against max-rank elitists who sank hundreds of dollars for the [del]pay-to-win[/del]premium services and the only way to rank up to was grind the same content over and over again VERSUS such elitists.. I don't regret it, though.

Such a shame that the game became so imbalanced and kinda pay-to-win, at least back when I still played it, idk how it's like nowadays. I actually regularly paid premium for Reloaded mainly to remove the customization limitations, the bonus exp and cash was just a bonus for me. I still miss the huge clan I was in. We even had personalized but color-coded outfits and clan logos. :frown: Matchmaking was dog shit too, especially if you're in gold threat level. Apparently, that meant that it's completely fine for the game to match your average-leveled ass against either maxed out people or stacks of 4 silvers and below (because pfffft you're gold, you can take on 4 people alone) [QUOTE=ghosevil;52549159]APB was fucking amazing for the dump-trucks alone~[/QUOTE] dump trucks were the shit I'd occasionally ram random people with it while playing Ride of the Valkyries over voip :v:

Haven't played this game but I'm glad some of you got the feeling of sadness over a game, I miss lost saga so bad, shame its current publisher is a region locking twat. At least getamped2 is still around to fill the void. (and rumble fighter but I quit that one) I suck at fighting games and yet I enjoyed the shit out of these games even if they are heavily p2w, but lost saga did it way differently where beating a opponent would take out his clothes one by one and you would get a chance to be OP too.

Nothing like trying to get some early game stuff done and then you get a match with people that can two-shot you from 50 meters away while you're struggling to even maintain a half-decent accuracy at such a range, basically meaning you're screwed

This game did customisation right. I never even paid for premium or any items and even with the 5 symbol limit in the editor it was pretty much the best character editor in any game I've played. But everything else was pretty terrible. The gunplay was very bullet-spongey and unsatisfying. The car driving mechanics were awful. Technically, it had loads of problems. APB is the only game I've ever played where my frame rate was fine until I started to drive a car at high speed, which for some reason caused massive performance drops. I found that the game got quite repetitive after a while and though the APB thread regulars on this forum seemed pretty convinced the game wasn't pay to win, I felt pretty underpowered when I was still using the starting rifle hours in but getting pitted against people with uber-LMG's and getting curbstomped.

It really didn't help matters that updates amounted to new, usually op cash shop stuff, with the previous op cash shop stuff being nerfed to near uselessness and made obtainable in game(for specialized PvP currency). New contacts only added longer versions of the same missions that have been in game forever.

I was in APB during closed RTW Beta and played a it up until a year or so ago. Game would have honestly made it as it had a very loyal player base but G1 (aka moneyfirst) and the reloaded production team have very little communication, have done next to nothing content wise for the game other then this so called engine update (Only images we get are from the PS4 version of the game) which has yet to even be released on PC. Just to put this into perspective the dev team had completed content/game which yes they did balance certain things and changed a lot of gameplay aspects but for 7 fucking years they added nothing other then skins, weapons, and a few cars. No new maps and nothing ground-breaking. It took them years to finally listen to players and implement anti-cheat and proper reporting systems. It makes me mad because this game was incredibly fun and has potential to be so much more but you have a retarded dev team who can't figure shit out. I think the only way they can turn things around and get their hardcore player base back along with some new players is if they update the PC version and add real content at the same time. I know a lot of people who would come back for the engine update alone (Hoping for better performance and slightly better visuals) and if they added some real content that would be the icing on the cake. But I doubt it will happen ever, period. This engine update is suppose to be the Savior of the game which they've been discussing it for years now.

Wait, that engine update still isn't out yet? hahahahaha jesus christ

I remember playing the open beta I think it was. The criminals were making tons of money really easily while enforcers were struggling to get anything.

Had great times in APB. It's a shame that it shut down, but at least I was introduced to Mass Effect because of it (got a free title from EA because APB failed). Street racing: [img]http://i.imgur.com/IodhtEch.png[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/Plx6Qm5h.png[/img]

I was one of the first people to unlock the LTL Shotgun. I'll never forget the sheer butt-mad a sniper-rifle-accurate two-hit-arrested shotgun produced. So, so many hours of my life spent dancing in people's faces while they waited for their arrest timer to run out. Unfortunately the game died not long after and the devs that purchased it ruined what little it had. I guess on the bright side I only lost the initial cost of the game. The LTL shotgun sold on the market for enough in-game cash that I could pay for another month consistently every month that the game was alive.

Really had a blast with APB while I played it. I was really disappointed with the direction it took, because it was a great idea.

Wait so how was this an MMO, exactly? It seems like the map was pretty small.

[QUOTE=Not64;52549759]Wait so how was this an MMO, exactly? It seems like the map was pretty small.[/QUOTE] They weren't small, but they were instanced to a smaller number of players (I believe 100?)

[QUOTE=Ridge;52549691]Had great times in APB. It's a shame that it shut down, but at least I was introduced to Mass Effect because of it (got a free title from EA because APB failed). Street racing: [img]http://i.imgur.com/IodhtEch.png[/img] [img]http://i.imgur.com/Plx6Qm5h.png[/img][/QUOTE] Just so there is no-confusion APB:R is still up and running.

[QUOTE=Not64;52549759]Wait so how was this an MMO, exactly? It seems like the map was pretty small.[/QUOTE] Basically the map wasn't small but wasn't GTA large either, and there were multiple segments overall to the city that had loading screen dividers. From there players load in around you randomly in instanced servers, and when you put yourself up for missions (or someone gets spotted robbing stores, murdering people or other idle stuff) you randomly get tagged with available players for the mission to have a sort of spur-of-the-moment deathmatch, retrieval, attack & defend, and so forth. The system tried to be dynamic about it, but the limited variety of mission types and the way the game was structured meant that you'd be doing a lot of the same things over and over and over. But it can be amusing seeing players have a mission against eachother in the background, and someone with a dump truck drives in and ruins everything. When you went to the social hub to customize your character, that's when you'd see the most of other players as no combat and no missions meant they didn't have to stress the instancing as much and let more players run amok showing off their Vegetas and neon strippers.

Was pretty fun back in the day, then again, I wasn't really aware about the P2W aspect and the fact that it was a reboot of a dead game. [t]http://i.imgur.com/CcckJ11.jpg[/t]

Didn't that whole planned parkour FPS spinoff die off too?

I used to play this game, its a nice concept but badly executed imo. The game has some major flaws that no one ever bothered trying to fix it, these include: Bad controlls (i.e. cars) its not like GTA and the lag the server lag.

[QUOTE=RikohZX;52549951]Didn't that whole planned parkour FPS spinoff die off too?[/QUOTE] It never took off. It was a kickstarter and got pulled quickly due to the outrage from the community.

yeah i remember when i played reloaded the missions were pretty boring and since there were only NA servers, playing on them from australia meant driving cars was unplayable as each input had a second of delay [editline]8th August 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=maxspeed3006;52549089]I played alot of APB when it was in closed beta, could never really get over the fact that driving cars was a server sided thing which resulted in horrible vehicle control.[/QUOTE] what can you really do? Driving is a very precise thing and putting anything client side is just asking for tampering.

Man, I remember getting into the Alpha for this game, and I really enjoyed it. Knowing it was an alpha, I expected more work to be done by the time it released. I was disappointed that nothing changed. Then when RTW went under and it got bought out by GamersFirst, they milked the shit out of that cash cow. The game has basically not changed state from the Alpha, except for the fact that it has pay2win shit in it, and a lot of features were removed because of the pay2win model.

Every time I remember APB my blood boils as I've actually spend over 900 hours over this crap and while I knew it sucked ass I kept playing and playing and playing. Not to mention I've bought some stuff on cash shop and lost it all because of an unwarranted ban. The only thing worth mentioning about APB is customization. Put something like that in GTA Online and it would become perfection.

Loved this game. Helped me stop avoiding competitive multiplayer games by giving me some PvE and easing me into PvP. Also it's a really good ego booster because you get hackusations for doing literally anything remotely competent.