Death of a Game: APB - General

When APB wasn't reloaded, I put 1300 hours into it. 700 were in the customizers/creators. This game was so fun but it just didn't pay for itself. Luckily I never paid my sub because I made so much money off other players that I could buy my time and keep creating content. [editline]8th August 2017[/editline] Also it's how I got my internet handle. ChadSexington was my characters name and I adopted that across all gaming after this. Man this game has a special place in my heart and I still get a little sad when I hear this song. [video=youtube;Q5J-qc3zBo4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5J-qc3zBo4[/video] [editline]8th August 2017[/editline] [IMG]http://i.imgur.com/M2AhUDe.png[/IMG] Never forget the game that spawned this kind of gameplay

All this reminds me of the old MMO called Auto Assault where you drove around in a post-apocalyptic world in those high-tech mad max-ish types of vehicles. [video] [url]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk3exUiKogM[/url] [/video] For some reason a miss it a bit.

I remember watching the dev videos and waiting for the game to release. I got all my friends into the game as well and we played it for quite a bit, but I remember there being balance issues that never got addressed. So we left the game to play WoW again.

It's sad to see so many good ideas ruined in this mess of shitty missions.

With over 3k hours in the game the writing has been on the wall for too long. Its really sad the way the game is, a skeleton crew of a company has been turned into a shadow of it self. They have dumped so much resources into the console ports (which are broken as of this post) and nothing to show for the PC version. Really wished the game could of kept going but as is the games population of playable this past year to just not fun. No denying it can be a fun game, but with how poor the game is running and the servers its just sort of sad seeing it in its current state. [video=youtube;TEw2cinvrBs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEw2cinvrBs[/video] [video=youtube;gmpLeUlccsE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gmpLeUlccsE[/video] RIP :disappoint:

Let's all take a look at the First official concept Trailer back in ~2006. :v: [media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3IMMlNpp8o[/media] I played in Alpha/Closed beta through the shutdown RTW then again a few years later when G1 took control. I really enjoyed the game even though the missions were really repetitive. It was really nice seeing each person's personal taste in the game. Sad to see what it has become but was a good idea. Hope one day someone else makes a game similar to it.

[QUOTE=SouthParkMGT;52550172]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.[/QUOTE] You shouldn't feel bad, I got over 2100hrs (on steam, that don't count the hours before I used APBR on steam) in APB:R alone. I had lot more hours in the RTW APB as well.

I really wanted to like this game, I did. But daaaamn... I just couldn't. Now, this was long into the Reloaded version (as it was only a few months ago), and I feel like that may've been one of my problems. Balance problems (The majority of weapons being mostly better then the ones you start off with, and the ones you can drop cash on being always directly better in every way), poor matchmaking (being in the Bronze servers yet almost always being thrown against people who curb stomp me and my team), inconsistent performance (getting 50+ fps on foot but it dropping to 30 when firing guns and dropping even lower when driving) and many other problems that just kept me from enjoying it very much. (The fucking launcher not working half the time being one of those said problems.) But man, when it did get good? It was really fucking good. The 1 out of every... I'd say 10 or so matches where I actually got a balanced team of people who where actually trying and weren't cheating being put against people who where also actually trying and weren't cheating was amazing. Really intense gunfights and chases throughout the chunks of city we where fighting in, just barely winning or loosing, getting the cash from that mission to go do more stuff in the editors (or buy new guns, that AK thing (I think it was called the Tac-9 or something like that? Been too long) being my favorite) was all really cool. But all the rest of the problems just dragged it down so much I just couldn't keep playing. And also of course those awesome character and vehicle editors, 20 of the 40ish hours I put into it before I stopped trying to play it was in them.

I genuinely had a lot of great experiences with this game at launch despite the numerous issues. The emergent gameplay that could happen created a lot of cinematic moments that simply don't happen in any other game, especially with friends. I can't remember how much game time I put into it but I do know I was playing up until it got bought by the Reloaded folks and after seeing what they did to the game I quit pretty quickly, though by that point all my friends had quit as well. I'd love to see the concept revisited at some point. [QUOTE=Jalict;52550292]All this reminds me of the old MMO called Auto Assault where you drove around in a post-apocalyptic world in those high-tech mad max-ish types of vehicles. For some reason a miss it a bit.[/QUOTE] I got into the beta for this game when I had a shitty computer. By the time I had upgraded it was already dead :(

I also played this since the RTW closed beta, was also one of the first to unlock the LTL shotgun and paid for game time by selling it, and hoo boy do I miss when this game was run by RTW - however briefly. It immediately went to shit when G1 took control considering not only the dumb balancing and pay to win, but by their total fucking of the trading and auction house systems to enforce having to pay actual cash for guns. No other game has ever made me so frustrated. Between the game being balanced like a tightrope where even a single fuckup over the course of a mission can make you lose it all, the griefers that aren't even a part of your mission pushing your car or pushing you out of your vantage point just because they can, and friends of the enemy team following you and relaying your moves to the enemy - again, because they can and there's nothing you can do - I wouldn't be surprised if this game took a year or two off my life expectancy. But it felt just as good to win under those circumstances. And like others have said, the customization is still unparalleled. [T]https://i.imgur.com/Uc2Rn_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=high[/t] [T]https://i.imgur.com/gTCua_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=high[/t] [T]https://i.imgur.com/yf8Su_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=high[/t] [T]https://i.imgur.com/NXbwl_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=high[/t] [T]https://i.imgur.com/U1lS2_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=high[/t] [T]https://i.imgur.com/shovH_d.jpg?maxwidth=640&shape=thumb&fidelity=high[/t] The Barack Knight will ride again.

I never really fucked around with the LTL but I know it was a real salt harvester. I pretty much immediately fell in love with the HVR.

[QUOTE=Supacasey;52552219]I also played this since the RTW closed beta, was also one of the first to unlock the LTL shotgun and paid for game time by selling it, and hoo boy do I miss when this game was run by RTW - however briefly. It immediately went to shit when G1 took control considering not only the dumb balancing and pay to win, but by their total fucking of the trading and auction house systems to enforce having to pay actual cash for guns.[/quote] This pretty much, I played mostly in RTW days and I used to use the beanbag shotgun and getting arrests on people was so satisfying. I remember getting an arrest on a player with a huge world bounty and getting an insane amount of money and rep for it as well. This game was just another amazing thing which was ruined by awful management combined with low sales/etc from the get go. I loved that you could create and sell both themes and logos as well, I used to spend hours creating logos for clans for payment or creating stuff to sell, like the GTA girl: [img_thumb]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v488/nightmarejkiii/APB2010-07-0119-14-47-94.jpg[/img_thumb] [QUOTE=Supacasey;52552219] No other game has ever made me so frustrated. Between the game being balanced like a tightrope where even a single fuckup over the course of a mission can make you lose it all, the griefers that aren't even a part of your mission pushing your car or pushing you out of your vantage point just because they can, and friends of the enemy team following you and relaying your moves to the enemy - again, because they can and there's nothing you can do - I wouldn't be surprised if this game took a year or two off my life expectancy. But it felt just as good to win under those circumstances.[/QUOTE] Yeah it was great when you were car chasing someone as an objective and a random person would ram you off the road. Griefers aside though the objective/spawn system was the most frustrating thing known to mankind because sometimes the game would just screw you and make you lose by default. For example spawning your whole team at the objective that was just captured and forcing you to watch the enemies speed off towards the next one in a car before you can do anything to stop them. Or the ones where to win you need to drive around holding a briefcase or bag, and it would easily get to the point where it's not really possible to catch the enemy as long as they don't majorly screw up and crash. Putting you into a mission where you need to defend an objective that is a drive away and the enemies are next to it etc. Despite launching fairly barebones in terms of actual content it sucks because the game was really good at its core but they just did nothing with it for years except milk Russians for P2W/microtransactions.

Don't remind me about spawning systems. It felt like the game just randomly spawned you wherever it damn well pleased within the mission areas, which could mean anything from being on the edge of the area and having to awkwardly make your way over a large distance back into the action, to popping up a short distance from an enemy player and getting gunned down shortly after spawn, to appearing on the other side of the goddamn city in vehicular missions. it's like APB was made to be frustrating.

the best memory i had in rtw beta is doing some koth gamemode against another person and we both had the same shotgun but i had an upgrade on it and was winning so he was complaining in allchat about how the game is bullshit because i was winning with an upgrade except my upgrade only decreased the reload time of my shotgun. had nothing to do with damage or time between shots

[QUOTE=elitehakor;52552431]the best memory i had in rtw beta is doing some koth gamemode against another person and we both had the same shotgun but i had an upgrade on it and was winning so he was complaining in allchat about how the game is bullshit because i was winning with an upgrade except my upgrade only decreased the reload time of my shotgun. had nothing to do with damage or time between shots[/QUOTE] Being able to reload a shotgun fast is pretty valuable if the size of the clip is less than, like, six, or if you have to load each shot.

i was definitely killing him before i had to reload

RTW APB happens to be my first multiplayer game so it was really hard to let it go at first but after incompetent devs fucking pretty much everything up I had to call it quits. Weird that there isn't a single game out there that has reached the APB level customization: [t]https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/106231921932591917/8EDB7060E09705DA13721E659D93E9F2DE2DDD5D/[/t] [t]https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/542938027805984647/13D520C05C42DD13296FE45B86506355400B4ECA/[/t] [t]https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/50986719876130155/F95406428F9DCEC1A0F850137719BC42127C896A/[/t] [editline]9th August 2017[/editline] God I miss the game so much. It's the only game that kept me going for more than 5 years.

Customization made half the game, wish that more games offered customization as APB did.

APB's customization is extremely complex and was quite the feat of software engineering - highly unlikely we'll see something anywhere near it any time soon

The one thing that sets this game apart from others is that no other game lets you dress up as the TF2 demoman, slap a flame paint job on your grenade launcher, and have Bonetrousle blaring at full volume while you drive a hugeass SUV parked on top of an armored van, parked on top of a dump truck. I am Booms of Jericho NA, [B][I]know my name and fear it.[/I][/B] :v:

Man. This thread actually made me reinstall APB to see if it was still as awful as I remembered it back in 2012. They actually managed to make the controls even worse, but before I could join a mission and get gangbanged by gold-rated players with store-bought grenade launchers who still called for backup, like the good old days, the game crashed. Just like old times. On the other hand, my old car was exactly the way I left it: [t]http://i.imgur.com/YhlQdCM.jpg[/t] so maybe it's a good thing the game crashed before I found my keys

Played for [B]years[/B] on PC and just started playing on the 12fps console versions lmao. This game still takes up waaay too much of my time.

[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] yeah thats the only reason I got out of it. legitimately the jankiest driving I've ever experienced [editline]10th August 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=ashxu;52550036]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] what can you really do? Driving is a very precise thing and putting anything client side is just asking for tampering.[/QUOTE] I'd rather there be some people with cars that are too fast than be at the mercy of shitty servers

APB Reloaded was my life for a good 2-3 years. I loved the snappy gunplay and the social aspect was like no other game I've played. I'd still be playing it now if it weren't for the absolutely pathetic dev team the game has ended up with after all these years. The lore was intriguing, gameplay was addicting, customization was top-tier.. so much potential gone to waste. miss u apb

Wow, it's almost amazing how [I]nothing[/I] proposed for the game actually came to fruition outside of the character creator. The world was never living. Ever. And none of the mechanics felt right ever.

i was super-hyped for the original launch of apb, preordered it and everything, was somewhat disappointed when it came out but i still played it a lot. i got real sad when i heard they were shutting it down, then was really excited when i heard it was being revived, but i never really got into apb: reloaded very much (aside from a couple years later when i got really into it for like a week then stopped again). it's sad to see it in the state it's in today. the menu/customization editor music theme is still really nostalgic

[QUOTE=Zeos;52560056]Wow, it's almost amazing how [I]nothing[/I] proposed for the game actually came to fruition outside of the character creator. The world was never living. Ever. And none of the mechanics felt right ever.[/QUOTE] The "Racing District Coming [i]Soon![/i]" signs in social still haunt me.

[QUOTE=Jimesu_Evil;52560737]The "Racing District Coming [i]Soon![/i]" signs in social still haunt me.[/QUOTE] Clan wars!!!

Classic. [video=youtube;KicvwLemdeM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KicvwLemdeM[/video]

[QUOTE=RikohZX;52549916]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.[/QUOTE] Favorite was making a line of dump trucks with friends on a central street. People would get so mad.