APB: Finally, I Can Be A PUNK!

[SnakeCharmer]

This game is so 'Not Me', but I have such a compulsive urge to play it. 

[TripleDES]

Last.fm streaming will probably be an optional setting. However I'm more interested on how they're going to moderate graphics content, given the freeform graphics editor.

I've only heard that the content you can use is pre-determined. I'm sure people will come up with ridiculous things, but the game will carry an M rating anyway.

Their demo shows them arranging, cropping, skewering, coloring and whatever of various predefined patterns. It's pretty likely that there's also a boolean tool there, practically enabling creation of any shapes you want. That includes the clicheed penises.

Thing is, EA is involved and you've seen the moderation faggotry that went on with Spore. Down to the silly level of people getting tempbans for words like "damn" and such.

[Ghambit]

This game needs to be the template for a Shadowrun MMO.

Other ponderings:
How are they going to handle servers with low populations?  Kind of ruins the whole stat-tracking experience that makes these games what they are if you suddenly have to switch cities because yours is dead.

[TripleDES]

If I understood it right from what was said in the past, it's a large world with several districts, each which can hold 100 players. Naturally remains to be seen what happens if more than 100 people try to enter a district. Hope these restrictions will be improved on in time.

[NiX]

Did you watch the video linked earlier? He explains exactly how the "matchmaking" works.

EA owns Maxis, they don't own Realtime Worlds. I also said people will come up with ridiculous stuff, which was to imply the dick stuff. Who cares? It's juvenile, but it won't hurt you. I'm sure they'll have a method for reporting people anyway.

[schild]

http://www.apb.com/beta-application/

They're asking for way too much information for me to be comfortable. But, ya know. You can at least put that you're a minority.

[ashrik]

I see that notion in every single thread with a beta-test sign up. Is this some sort of weird generalized old-folky paranoia regarding a simple questionnaire that you won't be held accountable for should you lie, or were you all burned before?

[schild]

Oh, lying is fine. I just choose not to.

[Malakili]

Damn it, I need to stop attempting to fill out beta applications on this computer, because I inevitably fill out a long form, get to the bottom and it says "attach your dxdiag" and then I've wasted me time.

[ashrik]

weird generalized old-folky paranoia regarding a simple questionnaire

So that's all it really is? It just seems to be a recurring theme on this forum and I wonder why.

[FatuousTwat]

I'm not old, and I don't like it.

They just DON'T NEED IT.

They don't need my street address, they don't need to know if I own a home, my income level, my level of education or if I'm married. ALL of which are required.

And do they really need to ask all those questions about your computer when you are attaching your DXDIAG? Fuck this.

[Modern Angel]

That was admittedly a LOT of information they didn't need. More than any other beta test I've seen. Of course I signed up for it. 

[fuser]

annnnd its down 

[Righ]

Damn it, I need to stop attempting to fill out beta applications on this computer, because I inevitably fill out a long form, get to the bottom and it says "attach your dxdiag" and then I've wasted me time.

Why don't you put your dxdiag output on some online server or service? That way, if you can get online to fill in the beta application form, you can also get to your dxdaig. Shit, you can even google dxdiag and just submit somebody else's. There are some really good ones out there.

[tmp]

So, are there already angry threads about the weird selection of choices in that ethnicity box?

btw attaching dxdiag thing seems optional for this one, this is why the other hardware questions are mandatory i guess.

[FatuousTwat]

And what is with having to re-name your dxdiag? UGH.

[TripleDES]

Probably some sort of idiot test.

And do they really need to ask all those questions about your computer when you are attaching your DXDIAG? Fuck this.

Actually I like that they're doing this, because ultimately, there's bound to be these lying fucktards that enter any information that makes them hope to get an invite. Not that I expect their dropdown choices to be matched with the dxdiag.

[fuser]

Probably some sort of idiot test.

They must be doing something some other tests, as my awnser for "Why do you want to be a beta tester for APB?" would fail with any sort of punctuation. It's a free form text box so their validation was failing on commas, periods and trailing whitespace.

[Modern Angel]

Really? My punctuation went just fine.

[Sky]

Shit, you can even google dxdiag and just submit somebody else's. There are some really good ones out there.

I feel so dumb for not having thought of that before!

[WayAbvPar]

Damn it, I need to stop attempting to fill out beta applications on this computer, because I inevitably fill out a long form, get to the bottom and it says "attach your dxdiag" and then I've wasted me time.

Heh same here. Goddman it! I just got a new PC, so I haven't forwarded a copy of my dxdiag to work yet.

[TripleDES]

Probably some sort of idiot test.

They must be doing something some other tests, as my awnser for "Why do you want to be a beta tester for APB?" would fail with any sort of punctuation. It's a free form text box so their validation was failing on commas, periods and trailing whitespace.

I have punctuation in it. But I had to pad it out with X's to get the 250 letters.

[Signe]

That beta form has made me discombobulated.

[FatuousTwat]

Probably some sort of idiot test.

They must be doing something some other tests, as my awnser for "Why do you want to be a beta tester for APB?" would fail with any sort of punctuation. It's a free form text box so their validation was failing on commas, periods and trailing whitespace.

I have punctuation in it. But I had to pad it out with X's to get the 250 letters.

Mine somehow turned out to be exactly 250 characters with correct punctuation.

[tmp]

Well, it looks like there's answer to a qustion some were asking... "it's just 100 people per server so why should i want to pay monthly fee for it"

and it's "guess what, you don't have to".

How much will APB cost?

The actual price for the game itself is still under discussion but we’ll keep you up to date. We can confirm that APB will not require a monthly subscription.

(from their faq page)

[IainC]

Well, it looks like there's answer to a qustion some were asking... "it's just 100 people per server so why should i want to pay monthly fee for it"

It's not 100 people per server, it's 100 people per zone.

[Malakili]

Well, it looks like there's answer to a qustion some were asking... "it's just 100 people per server so why should i want to pay monthly fee for it"

and it's "guess what, you don't have to".

How much will APB cost?

The actual price for the game itself is still under discussion but we’ll keep you up to date. We can confirm that APB will not require a monthly subscription.

(from their faq page)

This suddenly got way more interesting to me.

[NiX]

I wonder if in-game advertising will be their solution to cover some of the cost. I doubt they're put character info on users local machine.

[UnSub]

I'm guessing microtrans in some way is going to be standard. Advertising revenue isn't going to bring in that much extra.

[ashrik]

A cool interview I saw posted on the SA forums, in case anyone was interested
source:

Mark Rein’s spent the last few days at Realtime World’s offices in Dundee, Scotland, playing what-Dave-Jones-did-next MMO, APB.

Want to know what it’s like? The Epic VP gave us an exclusive overview of what to expect at GDC Europe today. Hit the link.

VG247: You’ve spent the last few days playing APB?

Mark Rein: Oh, it’s fantastic.

Tell me about it.

It’s hard to describe. It’s everything you’d expect that sort of game to be. If the Rockstar guys ever made an MMO out of the best version of Grand Theft Auto, this would be it.

How shooty is it?

Very shooty. It’s really, really fun to shoot. There’s tons of weapons. That’s part of the whole game, is upgrading weapons all the time, upgrading your vehicles. All the customisation is completely awesome. The missions are a lot of fun. It’s very easy to play. Somebody who’s familiar with shooters will pick it up in seconds.

Its your typical WASD controls. You know, in Gears of War we have the A button? We call it the “anything button”. They have the F button. I nicknamed it the “frigging anything” button. Jumping over crates and climbing fences, climbing ladders and kicking in doors: that’s all with the F key. It’s very, very natural for shooter players.

Were you playing it online or on a LAN?

I think we were connected to a server in Stockholm. I was in there offices [In Dundee - Ed]. And the performance was excellent.

Did you play with the character customisation stuff?

I did, yeah. I kind of made a fool out of myself, putting a big M in the middle of my face. Before I got there, they made me in the game. I got to actually play as me. They put a “powered by Unreal technology” logo on my t-shirt. But then after a few minutes they made me take it off, because they were recording it. They’re going to show the play session here [In the EA press conference - Ed], the thing that I played with Chris Collins from Realtime Worlds. We have this back and forth banter. We played it, they recorded this one main session where they want to show everything all the way through, and then we banter about it afterwards. It was kind of fun.

When you start, you go into a character customisation bit at the beginning?

Yes.

How long is it from there to actually playing the game?

Well, you don’t have to customise a character. They’ll just give you a random one if you want. It’s very easy. What’s really cool is that you can choose a main character and randomise a few things, like skin tone or face. There seem to be a lot of randomise buttons. I created a new character in, like, 15 minutes. It’s very easy. Probably the easiest I’ve ever seen.

The really impressive thing is that they’ve got this awesome stencilling system. They keep memory usage down by, instead of allowing you to just stick textures on - which, of course, would be a huge bottleneck online, as they have to send textures to everybody - they have all these stencils, and they do intersections and cuts of them, so people make really amazing logos out of cutting and pasting stencils and they remember the deltas of how you did it all.

It uses very little memory. It’s very cool. It’s surprisingly easy. I was shocked. It’s the same with the vehicles. You’ll be able to go and put graffiti on walls too.

The game itself is running around and killing people, right? Is it objective-based?

I hate to use GTA, because the comparisons are so obvious, but it’s similar to that. You get missions. You pledge allegiance; you can either be an enforcer, or a criminal, and you pledge allegiances to contacts. If you’re an enforcer, then your contacts are sometimes police, sometimes they’re vigilante characters, and they give you missions. You can actually play the game in single-player if you wanted to, but with all these other real, live players going on around you.

That’s the most impressive thing. We’re driving around, we’re going on a mission, and there’s this big crime scene going on over here. And we’re in the middle of a firefight, but we’re not involved in it. That’s basically the way it works. You can call in back-up, real live players, and the system automatically matches you up against enforcer or criminals in that mission. They’re always real people. They’re never NPCs.

Say you’re an enforcer and it matches you up against a villain, does it then show you where the villain is?

Once they start shooting at you, they start to appear on your compass, but if they haven’t shot at you and they’re being stealthy, they’re sneaking up on you. But it’s really cool. You can call in other groups. The social aspects of it are dead easy. Being able to get into a group or invite people into a group, see what your friends are doing: that stuff works really well.

They actually have a social server, with no missions going on, and that’s where you can do customisation. There’s going to be an auction house in there where you can actually sell items you’ve made or earned throughout the game. They have a pretty cool little social environment. You can watch movies, things like that. Comparable to PlayStation Home, but more of a real game environment than that.

Out of ten, how pumped are you?

Eleven. I’m serious. I might be one of the best games I’ve ever played. And I’m not just saying that because it uses our engine. It is unbelievable. After the first night of playing, all I could think about was playing it again. And I have a log-in now. So I can play.

[Musashi]

It all sounds good, but while reading that all I could think about was who the fuck are they going to find to roll good guys?

[schild]

It all sounds good, but while reading that all I could think about was who the fuck are they going to find to roll good guys?

White people.
















I'LL BE HERE ALL WEEK, FOLKS.
GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAN

[ashrik]

Why wouldn't you want to roll a cop? My squad of baton-wielding English bobbies would like to have a word with you out back

[schild]

I rest my case.

[Ghambit]

Are there tasers?