GamersFirst (the owner of APB Reloaded) bought off by Little Orbit - Sensationalist Headlines

https://venturebeat.com/2018/05/10/little-orbit-ditches-licensed-games-acquiring-apb-reloaded/ Little Orbit has dealt in kid-friendly licensed games based on popular cartoons like Cartoon Network’s Ben 10 and DreamWorks’ Madagascar, but it’s shifting focus to creating original works. To help make this happen, it’s announcing that it has acquired the massively multiplayer online game APB Reloaded along with GamersFirst, a platform for multiplayer games.

Is this a good thing?

Well from the current viewpoint of the game, any change at all is a small given hope.

That depends on Little Orbit. If they're not all talk like GamersFirst were, you bet it's a good thing.

Hopefully they can get APB back on track, or maybe just put it out of its misery. That game had a lot of potential, but jesus fuck, it's so poorly made. The only saving grace really is the customization.

APB was a fucking blast at first but man did it get awful. I would love to revisit it if they can straighten it out.

HOLY SHIT THIS IS GREAT I can't believe how much G1 fucked the game up, like I was expecting them to handle the game better than RTW did but nope. As someone who had played since RTW til G1 turned it into an unplayable mess I can't wait to get back into the game.

Where have I heard of Little Orbit recently, the name rings a bell.

I swear if Little Orbit manages to turn this around I'd be so damn happy

APB is dead trash, it was ran into the ground

I miss APB. The LTL Shotgun was the best sniper rifle in the game.

I absolutely loved the customization, I made enough money to pay for a years subs on the marketplace selling fancy logos and stuff before the game shut down originally. Funnily enough me and my gf jumped back on just to give it a go again 2 weeks ago and the first missions we were put against two high level guys using cash shop weapons and the high level regen/damage reduction passive perks and we literally couldn't kill them even once. The spawning system was a touch better than it used to be (You can choose from a few spawn points now) but its still totally busted, like on defense if you die at the wrong time it'll swap the objective and spawn you 3 miles away while the attackers are already driving towards it in a car so its automatic lose. This game was always a sore spot for me because it's such a good idea with loads of potential and when it worked it was really fun, but it has just been continuously driven into the ground and faced the fate of a lot of dying F2P games where they fall into the trap of starting to try and milk the whales to stay alive rather than try to bring the game back. Maybe 3rd time lucky!

I played thousands of hours in that game over four years. Something about that game kept me coming back. I played it with a good friend and even managed the FP clan for awhile. APB was concurrent with some of the best years of my life, so the glasses are very rose tinted, but I wish so much to experience those days again. It wasn't until the quality if the servers and the performance of the game became so bad that we stopped. Even with upper-mid level computers, the game lagged heavily during explosions. And no computer could save you from the server lag and desyncs that became very common over the last few months of our playing. The last time we played, a few months ago, the game was sadly in very poor shape. The servers were so bad that driving has a half second delay to it (in it's prime, the european servers had a better connection than that), the balance had become purely in the favor of those who paid for guns, and the performance on our upgraded computers was still as bad as ever. APB probably won't come back, and there probably won't be anything quite like it ever again. But I'd be lying if I said I had no desire for it. As bad as it was during it's good years, it was still a blast. I applaud the game for it's wide variety in gameplay: SMG, Shotgun, Rifle, DMR, Sniper, LMG, Rocketier, Grenaider: All extremely unique gameplay options with at least 2 unique weapons in each catagory. And if you did get bored of all that, go design a new outfit or car and get back in there and look beautiful!

Open Letter to the APB Community by MattScott (Little Orbit CEO) He's also answering some of the questions from the players on the official forums.

The letter feels pretty genuine. I have that little spark of hope. But it's going to be a lot of work for them to unfuck it if that's actually their plan.

F

Oh here, found a post where he says it outright. Right off the bat, I want to say that we are not going to fundamentally change APB. That means we're not looking to drastically alter the art style or change the monetization. While there are many things that I want to improve, there are also many things about APB that I really like. Otherwise we wouldn't have gotten involved. Welp, having hope was nice while it lasted.

I remember when G1 first bought APB and all the guns were like $30 and heavily P2W and then it's like they thought they were GTA5 and charged $50 for full slot vehicles which is pretty OP. I wish we could have the OG APB which was just subscription based and nothing else to buy that would help you win. It was just such a fun and easy game and the social aspect was awesome. I wish GTA 5 online actually had a way to play against eachother like you could in APB. Screenshot for the memories https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/45354133213976190/86073DB5092839E24AF9D472D1AE334FBD6D7BC5/

Never forget that time the whole Facepunch crew came together to win a single mission. https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/630728788522449729/3173048BA069B367EE039EA1F3AC07C932959FE6/ https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/577805776681191969/E060A3F6890720EC079D89C00AD53F0CC59FE3C3/ https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/577805776686661772/722979343A50BE5CA6E477BD625F51F0EC7AB4C9/ https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/577805776681192708/1A41FF2EFE0D2323B77A21F9818ECEF86B99CC1B/

...exactly what part of the game is P2W? Right off the top of my head I can only think of one weapon that would be P2W, and that would be the AMG 'Euryale', which is a $400 loyalty reward or something along those lines. And the only thing that makes it P2W in comparison to its legendary counterpart, AMG 'Medusa', is the lack of the Intelligent Recoil Stabilizer purple mod, which is ditched in favour of an open mod slot. APB is honestly very well-balanced in terms of weaponry. Everything plays its role and everything has a free-to-access counterpart which is equally powerful most of the time.

Oh shit, I forgot about that one. JackBadass was my character. Those were really fun times, specifically open beta days of 2011, and even lags and stutters didn't stop me.

That's awesome, was your name still Valis on oldpunch too? I know who I am obviously, I know Zoey (not really active here) and Stunz (who hates me now), and JohnBadass was Taggart.

I'm not going to argue the point about slow progression, because that is a fact (which I'm not a fan of; I also think it could be made faster with no real downside to such decision). I've even pointed it out back on Oldpunch - R5 to R195 (base game) requires less standing points in total than R197 to R255 (endgame). It's in no way a dubious claim. There is not a single item on the Armas Marketplace which gives you a straight advantage over everyone else and does not have an in-game counterpart or equivalent. As a matter of fact, one of the more meta weapons (owing to its versatility) is the N-TEC 5 with Hunting Sight 3 and Improved Rifling 3. The mods are readily available to everyone for in-game cash only. The variant of the gun itself which allows you to slap two custom mods on it - the Adeen variant - can only be unlocked through Marksman role progression. Which is progressed by killing people. I like how you're the first person to reference my post. Seems like other people resorted to throwing boxes and disagrees at me instead of trying to present a rebuttal.

Got that right. There's also some other APB players here being active. You already know about Jenz and I think Nitronik4ever is also here. Don't know about others.

Didn't they also buy Unsung Story and are trying to get that on track too? I wonder where they're getting all this money from.

I don't use the Joker Distribution because Joker Tickets are given out in ridiculous scarcity. That is also something I agreed to back on Oldpunch and something my opinion on hasn't changed. What's the difference between grinding and progression? You progress roles and are given tangible rewards for progressing them. I'm sure I could respond to that properly if you were to elaborate upon that specific point.

Welcome back to facepunch, hadn't heard from you in a while

My main gripe regarding the current monetization system would be the gun lease. Oh and that stuff on armas are way more expensive for me since our currency has devaluated a lot since the last time I played

I really don't understand where this whole "APB is P2W" spiel came from. Guess it's just part of being an F2P game The grinding is awful however

I wouldn't exactly call it P2W, but having deep pockets definitely helps skip a bunch of grinding for a bit. Found it funny when people ingame complained about p2w whenever I'd win in 1v3 missions with a silenced smg back when that thing was new though. Probably doesn't help that matchmaking on the "Asian" (except not really because it's in the US) server was godawful lol. Anyway, I hope they can make the game somewhat good again. I really loved APB:R, despite its many flaws.