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

To be fair though the Whisper really did have an advantage you couldn't get through ingame currency. It had no tracer and was silent which made it difficult to know which direction you were being hit from until it was too late, and was only available through ARMAS.

...it's been several years since tracer rounds were removed from the game though. And just about the only unique thing about it was the dual red mod combo - it had a silencer mod along with another red mod, I think it was Cooling Jacket 3, so if you were a fan of dealing less damage to cars because of that silencer thing, the Whisper was your go-to.

Probably from when G1 first got the game and they let you buy guns that were more powerful than you could ever make the free to acquire ones.

I have such fantastic memories from APB, especially playing with Facepunch on Joker. The last time I played actively was before I joined the Air Force, over 6 years ago. I don't ever see myself playing again, but I wish them the best. There was a lot of potential in the game.

The P2W spiel came from the OCA Whisper that originally came out, it was a very OP SMG and i believe they made adjustments do it. But as someone who played APB since RTW Beta, the game was more balanced in my opinion then the original release. A lot of the cash shop guns had decent stats, but ultimately were useless. Most stock weapons that were 3 slot modded did better and had better utility.

ooh boy am I ready to get back to arguing about APB's balancing after all these years My experience was that the game was designed in a way that heavily overemphasized any skill advantage in a way that a 1v3 would almost always be favored for the 1 player through shit like high health, fast movement, mid-combat regen and a lot of funky mechanics also it never seemed like the P2W guns were the problem, the base guns that they were based off of were (it's been 8 years and you can bet I'm gonna start screaming if anybody measures the OCA)

Every time I see people diehard defend APB I get super confused. The game launched with horrible gunplay, driving, mission design... grind. Like the gameplay was horrendous

there's a lot of people that enjoyed the FUCK out of it despite that – it's kind of a cult classic, flawed in many obvious ways but still uniquely enjoyable.

Certain aspects were P2W, for example being able to buy a 4 slot car, you could be an ultra low level with a endgame car and be matched up with people around your rank/level.. Certain weapons are sidegrades but the "lite" HVR was able to be jump shot with so I guess you could say it's a potential upgrade that you can only get if you paid. The whisper used to have certain features on the silencer that no other gun had in regards to recoil and I'm pretty sure you didn't show up on the radar originally when you shot.

I saw you around a lot, and sometimes in-world hanging at gas stations. But we were usually on different faction / server. It had zero recoil and very little sound. It wasn't something I'd call P2W, an OCA user of equal skill still had a good chance to win, and one better would certainly win. But it was an advantage you couldn't achieve any other way. I remember seeing you around a lot. I made you an Air Force symbol. Don't remember if that was before or after you decided to enlist.

I remember really liking APB:R even with it flaws, but I lost motivation after I gained a few levels and the game would place me at gold level at every win, making it impossible to fight back at people with all the meta stuff, when I was just using what I thought it was cool. After getting instantly blown up for, like, the 100th time, I kinda gave up, since grinding all that stuff would take forever.

Honestly though I think something little as getting the engine updated and actually making the weapons have ANY form of balance would be great. Just started playing again this week. I really hope we don’t lose most of the customization options though. There are no other TPS shooters where you can dress up as The Great Papyrus and use stun guns to CAPTURE THE HUMANS

The customization is the one thing in the game that isn't flawed to the core it'd be kinda silly to touch it I imagine

I believe this alone is what kept the game alive so long. The customization, the ability to do anything as down to earth or absurd as you wanted.

I think it was after, but that was ages ago https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/938127448274596206/A518D05E649FEF7011BB7F75D758CCAEB8F32357/ Also found this while I was pic hunting https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/938128895037980349/9A231C2C7066C10A63185CA8625672CCF8E26383/

https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/542895373905920578/E9A4D79FE713332679435F8B84049D3E3A610392/ I miss this game lmao

most of the armas weapons you got whether through j-boxes/tickets/buying/loyalty were niche anyway. a good amount of them were reskinned already existing weapons, "new" weapons that were just already existing weapons with a few modifications, and new weapons that had weird unique mods that made them hard to use for general purpose gameplay. the rest of the weapons that did have multi-purpose usage were still capable of being countered with vanilla weapons and could be countered with their j-box legendary counterparts if you grinded enough money to buy them off the marketplace. in the end it didn't matter what gun you used, as long as you were good enough in the game. there were plenty of people i steamrolled with the STAR (beginner rifle) and obeya pistol that used armas weapons and slotted guns. nice to see that this games getting some changes though, about fuckin' time, even if it isn't going to be ground breaking.

I started really thinking about this game again and how much fun I had playing it, and now I really do hope they breathe new life into it. But I had a dream last night that the only meaningful update they made to the game was a Battle Royale district.

I lowkey expect them to replace fight club with BR in near future.

I don't see why it shouldn't work! Put people into the Waterfront action district map, drop a bunch of weapons in there, slap as many people as it'd be reasonable to (like 40 should be cool) n see wot comes about, I could see it being pretty alright. Be great if they could disable health regen for it, too.

I believe they G1 actually tried making an action district with PUBG rules which was planned to be released in summer of last year and I joked that it would be out just in time for Halloween. It hasn’t come out since.

People still defending pay to win mechanics after a game is this far dead is pathetic. Literal game mechanics you cant access without paying money. It's part of why it died, and defending those practices makes you really, really dumb.

So uh, who died and made you the authority on what's pathetic/dumb and what isn't? Or perhaps tossing boxes at people you disagree with is a more simple way of participating in the discussion? Papa Gator raised valid points regarding the supposed pay-to-win factor of the game - namely, the fact that nothing in Armas gave you a straight advantage, which, surprise surprise, would be what "pay to win" means. All the core mechanics are in the game; Armas gear is, as mentioned before, reskins or variants - but nothing that would be a literal ticket to victory with absolutely no fucking counter.

G1's incompetence is astounding. My favourite G1 tale is the one where they hired a teenager, and this teenager used his employee powers to ban people he didn't like, and unban friends who were caught cheating.

Those weapons have mechanics like silencers that do not exist outside the pay to win store you tool. Even if something is "just different" it is still a pay to win mechanic. People said the hero mechs that had unique loadout in MWO weren't pay to win because "its just different not better" but obviously a unique loadout or unique mechanic or stat distribution fucking matters. The niche *is* the advantage, because you can do something nobody else can. A weapon with a stat or customization slots nobody else can use may be vaguely "balanced" but your exclusive ability to abuse those items is absolutely pay to win.

You really convinced me there by calling me a tool and rating my post 'dumb'. That's how real champions lead a discussion. "you can do something nobody else can" is not the definition of "pay to win". It means locking behind a monetary charge something that directly outclasses every single alternative available to non-paying players. Which, once again, is not a thing in this game. And if you really want to define the silencers as something that can be abused for an advantage, be my guest; silenced weapons deal less hard damage (i.e. damage against vehicles) and have lower effective range, and just about the only advantage is a slightly quieter firing sound and the absence of tracers - which aren't a thing anyway because no bullet-based weapon fires tracer rounds nowadays. Feel free to refute that, unless your preferred method of arguing is throwing more boxes at my post.

I really don't care how you define pay to win, the point is that if you're a game developer where people are directly paying for an advantage, you're a scumbag game developer and the gameplay is compromised, and that's exactly what this is. If we want to be literal, there could be a game out there where you literally "pay to win" where the grandma literally just pays more money and wins as a result despite not even knowing what the buttons do, but there arent any games like that at least that i'm aware of. The term pay to win is used more broadly than that, even in your definition. Maybe you should stop getting distracted by ratings and instead notice that the game is dead and whether or not they convinced you that it was fair, the majority of the playerbase fucking left at least in part due to the issue.

Weren't there planned racing districts that didn't go anywhere too ? Better that way tbh. Driving in APB is terrible.

Once again, for clarity, APB players who use the cash store are not paying for an advantage. Unless you provide examples of weapons and/or mods which let players completely stomp, steamroll and pound other players into a bloody pulp, my stance on this subject will not change. As for the game dying - this is precisely why the LOrbit buyout happened. They intend to revive the game, partially for profit, partially for interest in what APB has to offer as a game. They'd have to be properly braindead to spend money on a buyout and proceed to do nothing that would result in a profit. And no, the players haven't left because of the supposed P2W issues. What did play a large factor in massive player dropouts was G1's failure at communicating with the fanbase, ignoring player feedback, being unable to meet their promises etc. - which is exactly what LOrbit intends to fix. As a matter of fact, the post that announced the LOrbit takeover was written by its CEO, Matthew Scott, himself, with the community manager, Tiggs, being asked to step away from the issue for a bit. The new owners are aware of GamersFirst's image in the eyes of the playerbase, hence why Matt Scott took over the role and answered the players' questions for several hours. Truth be told, I don't know why I even bother trying to have a discussion here. You're unwilling to accept things people have said here and provided arguments in support of their views. (Shit, even in the post I'm quoting you've stated that you "don't care" about definitions I provide. Why bother talking to someone who doesn't give three shits of a fuck?) I suppose being passive-aggressive is a more viable alternative - and that's great, don't let other people stop you, champ!

It's not my fault that you can't see the advantage in having more gameplay options or niches nobody else can use, and yes i've already made this argument even if you keep going "why dont you make any arguments i guess im right :^) hoho what a smart person i am why would i even bother discussing this with a lesser being!" Dude, you're not "accepting" what i'm writing either, you need to chill out, if you want to talk about passive aggressive posting your posts are a tutorial for that shit. Unless we're discussing absolute trash entry level players where nobody knows what they're doing, there is more to advantages in gameplay than "your weapon does double damage", having more options means you're more adaptable to more situations and can respond to the other players changing strategies more easily. It also means, in the case of unique silenced weapons, that players used to relying on audio queues (humans react significantly faster to audio than visual cues btw) need to rely on visual cues which is objectively slower, and obviously louder audio cues travel further and make you stand out more. In the generalized case of *any* item or ability that functions differently, being an unusual item means it creates unusual situations, and players will have a harder time dealing with your paid item simply because it's less common! Thanks to tools like you maybe they'll just make the same mistakes again and insist on pay to win mechanics, though. Whatever you want to label the system we're both describing, it does make players leave and stop playing. We can argue about how many players leave as a result of pay to win mechanics but people do leave because of them.