APB: Finally, I Can Be A PUNK!

[Falconeer]

This is Europe:

Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

That's what you get this morning when you try to access the official APB Euro page, checking for info cause your launcher can't patch.

EDIT: It only lasted about 30 minutes. Works now.

[UnSub]

RTW guys in the forums said they were not banning them in the beta, to lull them into a false sense of security.

Given that Punkbuster kicked me several times despite not cheating, I wonder what feeling RTW was trying to inspire in me.

[Ollie]

Nausea? Hunger? Constipation? I give up.

Are you running the game via Steam, by any chance? Punkbuster and Steam don't always play nice.

[Modern Angel]

Haha, what? Whhhhaaaattttttt?

[Mosesandstick]

There's a zombie in the back.

[UnSub]

Nope - direct download from the site. I don't use Steam at all.

I'll make the point that it was beta and maybe RTW has got PB all figured out by now, but that was my experience.

[TripleDES]

I have PB figured out: It's an useless piece of shit.

At least it doesn't pretend to not be. Back in the BF1942 and BF2 days, I've played a damn lot, adminned servers and what not. All I've ever seen it doing is kick people for update time-outs and "illegal characters" in their names.

[Mrbloodworth]

Having spoken with one of the developers, they were not turning a blind eye to aimbots, they were building profiles for detection. Using a long established engine like this, they would have been silly to ignore the fact that there are aimbots for it. Having said that I think there are a number of things that would degrade your fun. Aimbots, playing solo, distance to servers, match making and upgrades. There have been a number of changes just late of beta that have been tested (to whatever degree) in an invite only test server while the beta was silent for launch. Namely, they revamped league rewards (all the good stuff now only comes from game play, 2-3 slot guns, mods, whatever), nurfed MOD bonuses, and quite a number of other things.

Anyway, you can play this game solo, but its not advised for some types of missions. Such as the bounty missions, as other above have said, those can turn into drive around the city for 5 min, however if you have some dudes hanging out the car with guns, the chase won't last that long and its really quite fun. I guess i was very lucky to get in with some people and to start a small clan, we always played together and always worked together, making sure drivers always had gunners and having get-away drivers ready, using covering fire and the like. It was ten times more fun than going it alone in contrast, we all took turns working on each others contacts and such, even if we had great divides in ranking or progression. The creators realized that its best played with a group, so now upon log in of an action zone you are confronted with questions about if you want the system to auto group you, or if you want to find one yourself, you currently have to go out of your way to go solo.

My number one concern if the progression system, and I have expounded my views on this a number of times in beta. The mod systems (That, FYI they nurferd across the board on the test server I spoke of, like everything by 20% kinda nurf) Its all pure power increases as others have noticed, there is a good deal of utility on the character side, but the gun mods, they really REALLY need to make sure every pro of a mod and a con. It is quite silly to have a system where the only way to go is up in numbers, in a shooter no less.

The matchmakeing system, to me, felt fine. Its the mods that broke it. Also, a side note, I am not sure how many of you know about "Call for back up", IF the matchmaker is forced to match you VS someone of a higher rating, you will have the option to press "B", this will look for more players for your side and use more bodies to account for the rank difference, both sides have this ability. You can find this notification just under your prestige bar area.

But really, I stand by my claim that this game is a hell of a lot of fun, because that was my experience. I did not suffer from any real lag issues, shotguns were an issue for a bit, but that was changed during beta, I mean they are still great in face to face, but by no means the go to gun anymore.  Every weapon has a role where it excelled, knowing that is a good skill to have in the big bad city. I can almost tell when in beta some of you played because of your responses.

As gambit said, I would not call this game a hardcore FPS (TPS whatever!), it doesn't even try to be, in fact I think the looseness of things like, physics, or even shooting is part of the endearing style, a lot like Plantside or GTA. Everything is just this side of over the top. If you like your shooters supper anal, this wont be the game for you, if you like a great pace of action (I love the re-spawn system) with a loose and rumble feel, boot this puppy up. Thats really the only way i can describe the "FEEL" of the game, and shooting, it is a bit like GTA4 where shooting was.... Forgiving, for lack of a better word. I highly recommend experimenting with the many gun types to find on that fits your style, also there is an mod for your person or car that will let you rearm and swap guns in the field, really dam handy if you know the situation you are about to encounter (like chasing someone down a dark ally, you may want to swap your sniper rifle out ).

I have no idea how long before I get bored, but on that notes, that's why the payment system is such a winner for me.

EDIT: If you how have a need to walk away from the computer for whatever reason, it is advised you play enforcer, as a criminal, you can get poped while afk, enforces get to take breaks between missions. Also, there is a good deal of fun to be had with out doing missions, you can roll around the city backing people up or witnising criminals or going after level 5 prestige players.

[TripleDES]

Call for Backup is still an iffy system. There were days, I was just waiting to respond to these calls, and most of the times, the system sent me all the way across the map, taking quite a while. Sadly, there's no real way to fix this apart from instant teleports. And general APBs also need to indicate whether it is pitting you solo against another group, or whether the system's actively looking to create a group itself (by sending the same APBs to others). I often skipped APBs because I wasn't entirely sure, if it's just me against multiple others, or whether I have to spam B immediately after joining.

And in my opinion, the upgrades haven't been nerfed enough. They should have nerfed the shit out of it and then raised the values again after first evaluation, if necessary. CCP also managed to learn that lesson. At some late point, anyway.

[Mrbloodworth]

Other players have to respond (accept) to the call for back up for it to work. Of course. Using this system I have seen things escalate to 20 x 20. But yes, in that regard it can be iffy. As for APBS, in the bar, just under there will be the ranks of all the players in opposition (IIRCC).

And in my opinion, the upgrades haven't been nerfed enough. They should have nerfed the shit out of it and then raised the values again after first evaluation, if necessary. CCP also managed to learn that lesson. At some late point, anyway.

You played today? I'm waiting on some friends.

EDIT: I also have to bring up, something I witnessed with my girlfriend, she has been playing RPG's for so long, that death really frustrated her. Its a shooter, your going to die, a lot. She had a hard time getting over this i think. Me, i really appreciated the re-spawn system and the flow of keeping you in the action, its a wonderful pace IMO. Poping back up 100m from where you dies or the objective keeping downtime really low. A common complaint in some other like games that I think RTW has made a great solution to.

[TripleDES]

You played today? I'm waiting on some friends.

No. I think I'm going to skip KttC. I've played quite a bit in the beta, I need some sort of cool down, especially since everything's going to be wiped again. I'm more about tinkering in the customizations. The action district is for me just a way to unlock more of them and show off various symbols I made. Too bad that the graffiti spots aren't too prominent and easily in-your-face visible on the map. I've sprayed a lot of silly shit in the beta and practically never seen any feedback in chat.

EDIT: I also have to bring up, something I witnessed with my girlfriend, she has been playing RPG's for so long, that death really frustrated her. Its a shooter, your going to die, a lot. She had a hard time getting over this i think.

There was a while, where I played a lot of EVE and SWG, practically not touching shooters for a long while. That did actually ruin my twitch skills. I don't have a problem dieing, less so in APB, since it still is being rewarded. It just sucks, if you know that you died, because someone poopsocked their way to mods that increased his damage output by 50% without any sort of drawbacks. In a game touted to be player skill based, nonetheless.

--edit:
I just read that they didn't wipe the beta characters. Oh boy, the new guys are in for a boatload of fun.

[SnakeCharmer]

Having spoken with one of the developers, they were not turning a blind eye to aimbots, they were building profiles for detection.

Ah yes.

Because BF, BF2, TF2. L4D 1/2, CoDx, CS, Punkbuster, and anything under the sun built with the Unreal Engine have been so successful at it, that THESE guys from RTW will have it figured out.

Yeah.  I see that happening.

[Mrbloodworth]

Um, some of those do not use the unreal engine. However, your statement is a bit silly, cheating is a big problem in most shooters, and its a constant battle. Always has been. There has never been a 100% solution, so building profiles for known ones is a good idea, as well as logging and tracking behaviors that are imposable unassisted.

This title also uses Punkbuster FYI.

[Modern Angel]

"We're roping them in we promise" is as big a line as "miracle patch around the corner". Taking them at face value on that, knowing that beta (which has been more or less open for months now) is how you sell your MMO, is far too trusting. This game needs at least another six months while they actually DO work on aimbot fixes, revamp the entire matchmaking system and actually test the weapon nerfs for more than two weeks.

[Mrbloodworth]

Show me a game that doesn't have hacks, ill show you a game that doesn't boot up.

See, recall all that discussion about private servers and jank. This is a great reasoning to have them in house, you can have staff for such things.

[Ghambit]

If the game had more than 100 people per district and there werent only two maps, then progression and cheating wouldnt have such an adverse effect.
Also, RTW decided not to go the RvR/FvF route and provide some kind of synergy between districts.  Meaning, sure you can warp to district Waterfront 26, but your only reason for doing so is if your district is full or you're looking for your friends.  There's no inherent game reason to move from city to city, which if you guys remember was a talking point in here at one time.

[Sky]

Eh. About an hour and a half into the NA version. Sure, lag's better, and I actually was able to kill a few people, but overall I kept feeling I would rather be playing GTA4. It doesn't occur to me to often while playing GTA4 "You know what would improve this game experience? If some jackass honking his horn would just repeatedly slam into my car while I'm trying to complete a timed objective against someone who obviously knows the map and has better fps skills than I do."

Another personal annoyance is driving with the keyboard. Digital input makes for retarded driving. Can you set up driving on a gamepad, I wasn't able to in the EU version. Although then you have to set aside the gamepad or pick it up every time you transition out of or into a vehicle. 

[caladein]

Call for Backup is still an iffy system. There were days, I was just waiting to respond to these calls, and most of the times, the system sent me all the way across the map, taking quite a while. Sadly, there's no real way to fix this apart from instant teleports. And general APBs also need to indicate whether it is pitting you solo against another group, or whether the system's actively looking to create a group itself (by sending the same APBs to others). I often skipped APBs because I wasn't entirely sure, if it's just me against multiple others, or whether I have to spam B immediately after joining.

There's also no way to opt out of the system for a bit.  When I was working on Car Thief I would constantly deny Backup requests, that's part of why I said large districts were unplayable.  Eventually it got to the point last Beta round that I just stopped denying them immediately and letting them time out.  Yeah, I felt bad a bit, but I really didn't want to get into a fight at that time, I just wanted to steal some cars...

[Mrbloodworth]

Eh. About an hour and a half into the NA version. Sure, lag's better, and I actually was able to kill a few people, but overall I kept feeling I would rather be playing GTA4. It doesn't occur to me to often while playing GTA4 "You know what would improve this game experience? If some jackass honking his horn would just repeatedly slam into my car while I'm trying to complete a timed objective against someone who obviously knows the map and has better fps skills than I do."

Another personal annoyance is driving with the keyboard. Digital input makes for retarded driving. Can you set up driving on a gamepad, I wasn't able to in the EU version. Although then you have to set aside the gamepad or pick it up every time you transition out of or into a vehicle. 

Xbox controllers are supported.

[Modern Angel]

Show me a game that doesn't have hacks, ill show you a game that doesn't boot up.

See, recall all that discussion about private servers and jank. This is a great reasoning to have them in house, you can have staff for such things.

I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not taking issue with the aimbots beyond anything I usually feel toward aimbots. I'm taking issue with the BS line that letting the aimbots roam free is completely intended behavior. That's either untrue or just so hilariously misguided I can't think of anything as laugh-worthy in a good long while. I've come to expect you to be a little less credulous in this industry, sir. I might lose sleep over your lack of fair criticism.

[Morfiend]

So my install crashed some time last night. I restarted it and, hey look at that, its starting from scratch. How awesome. At this rate it will realistically be about 4 days until the game is done downloading.

[Mrbloodworth]

Show me a game that doesn't have hacks, ill show you a game that doesn't boot up.

See, recall all that discussion about private servers and jank. This is a great reasoning to have them in house, you can have staff for such things.

I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not taking issue with the aimbots beyond anything I usually feel toward aimbots. I'm taking issue with the BS line that letting the aimbots roam free is completely intended behavior. That's either untrue or just so hilariously misguided I can't think of anything as laugh-worthy in a good long while. I've come to expect you to be a little less credulous in this industry, sir. I might lose sleep over your lack of fair criticism.

In beta they allowed it to make behavior profiles for the CS staff. Punkbuster is for the app scanning, CS staff is for the behavior and disciplinary actions. I never said it would, or would not work. But it makes sense to have profiles and flags for behavior that is impossible in normal play, and its best to know them early. They did not condone, or encourage, the watched and profiled the outcomes. Clearly, punkbuster can't catch everything, or they would be nonexistent in any games that use it, and we all know this is not the case.

As a example, Wurm staff has profiles of logs to use as comparison for macro activity.

So, I think you misunderstood me, sir.

So my install crashed some time last night. I restarted it and, hey look at that, its starting from scratch. How awesome. At this rate it will realistically be about 4 days until the game is done downloading.

If you got the 99% error, your connection went to bed. Just hit options then repair at the bottom of the window. Bond that, yeah that sucks.

[Modern Angel]

Then they're telling the truth and they're dumb. Because after the matchmaking and unbalanced weapons everyone in beta was bitching about the aimbots. The people who may have been smeared repeatedly by cheaters aren't going to remember the Master Plan to catch the bad guys; all they're going to remember is that people cheated. Beta is a marketing tool.

[Nonentity]

My biggest gripe is the way APB waffles between a skill-based game and a progression-based game like an eight-year-old on Adderall. It can't quite decide which one it wants to be. Even after some last-minute nerfs, weapon and character upgrades make such a hefty impact on performance that they render any question of skill moot. The only way new players will frag rank 200+ vets is if the latter are AFK. Since the matchmaking system seems to revolve around situational threat level, hugely unbalanced pairings continue to pop up. Three months out, APB will have a real upstairs-downstairs divide going on; newbs will get frustrated, vets will get bored, and catassing rules the day.

If RTW wants to go the item progression route, they need to make sure the barrier of entry stays manageable as the game matures. Step one would be to take a critical look at matchmaking, followed by a drastic rethinking of league rewards.

Overall, APB was the same kind of infuriating fun I had while swapping keeps in WAR during the first month of live: five minutes of awesomeness followed by 35 minutes of utter boredom. The game taunts you with its potential – you recognise the good bits and see how great it could be, but the actual gameplay never quite manages to hit the promised notes.

This, pretty much. They should have gone either a non-progression route and not charged a monthly fee, or gone all in with the progression model.

[Morfiend]

So my install crashed some time last night. I restarted it and, hey look at that, its starting from scratch. How awesome. At this rate it will realistically be about 4 days until the game is done downloading.

If you got the 99% error, your connection went to bed. Just hit options then repair at the bottom of the window. Bond that, yeah that sucks.

No, I crashed at about 40% done. It wasnt even a bad crash, the program just stopped responding. When I started the downloader up again, it started at 0%. I am now back up to about 50%, and it is just brutally slow. Been running for almost 7 hour now. So far I am not impressed.

[Ozzu]

I never did get this game to work. I was in the European beta and half the time I couldn't login and when I could login, it would immediately disconnect once I selected a character and hit play.

So, I really have no opinion on the gameplay.

[SnakeCharmer]

Um, some of those do not use the unreal engine. However, your statement is a bit silly, cheating is a big problem in most shooters, and its a constant battle. Always has been. There has never been a 100% solution, so building profiles for known ones is a good idea, as well as logging and tracking behaviors that are imposable unassisted.

This title also uses Punkbuster FYI.

That's the point, man.  Punkbuster, a company/bloatsoftware dedicated to aimbots, can't keep up with it.  Them (being RTW) keeping profiles won't do a bit of good.  And it doesn't matter one single bit that some of them aren't the Unreal engine.  The games that DO use it AND use PB are among the most exploited games in existence. 

People are having major problems with their beta key, and you seriously expect them (RTW) to have the capability to deal with hackers/aimbots - especially when companies like EA, IW, and God knows who else can't either?

Even without the rampant aimbotting that's going to be going on, it's not a game I'd be buying.

[Sky]

Xbox controllers are supported.

As secondary input? Shooting with thumbsticks = bad.  Driving with keyboard = bad. Driving with thumbsticks but shooting with mouse = clunky but good.

[Furiously]

I solo'd for a bit and hated the game. Then I hooked up with a couple guys and if you have a regular group to play with the game turns into something magical. There are moments of pure laughter, pure annoyance, pure anger, pure fun.

Shooting a rocketlauncher into a full car of people and watching it explode was hilarious. Stunning people and having them log out in frustration so you can't get an arrest on them is pretty awesome too.

Taking on a group you know is using aimbots and killling them by sending one person in as a diversion and the other people circling around to take them out from behind gives me a warm feeling in my tummy. There were a few spots in the game where you can pretty effectively camp (dead ends with only one way in that allow you to shoot them as they come at you.) that can be amazingly frustrating, (And poor map design), but once you get decent weapons, it makes it pretty easy to break their camp spot.

I can see why some people don't like the game. It requires a group to be efficient, there are times in beta when I just wanted to throw my monitor out the window, due to going up against teams far outskilling/upgraded so they could almost insta-kil our group. But, there were also times we just smashed the other team.  I'm very concerned how fun the game will be in 2 months when there are a lot of people max level, I'm not sure what there will be to do for max level players. I don't really see an "end game" for max level people. Then again, I had 120 hours in the beta. I definitely got my box value out of the beta and will be happy to do it again in release.

[Mrbloodworth]

Xbox controllers are supported.

As secondary input? Shooting with thumbsticks = bad.  Driving with keyboard = bad. Driving with thumbsticks but shooting with mouse = clunky but good.

I have no idea, I never used it, I just know it can be used.

[Ollie]

My number one concern if the progression system, and I have expounded my views on this a number of times in beta. The mod systems (That, FYI they nurferd across the board on the test server I spoke of, like everything by 20% kinda nurf) Its all pure power increases as others have noticed, there is a good deal of utility on the character side, but the gun mods, they really REALLY need to make sure every pro of a mod and a con. It is quite silly to have a system where the only way to go is up in numbers, in a shooter no less.

That's true, giving upgrades both benefits and drawbacks would be one way of tempering the effects. Another would be to go lateral instead of vertical with upgrades. Think Planetside, Guild Wars and a dash of Modern Warfare, not just pure WoW silliness. Rank should give access to more options, fluff and unique vanity items, not simply more powerful upgrades.

For what it's worth, I don't think RTW will take the upgrade system to a more lateral direction, though. It would be too big a departure from what they have now. However, if RTW wants to keep the power gap between a R1 and a R200 player as significant as it was in beta, then they need to look at matchmaking.

The matchmakeing system, to me, felt fine. Its the mods that broke it.

I agree, but only to an extent.  Once APB goes live, we'll see a lot more bodies thrown at the system, which will ameliorate the problems but not erase them. Things will probably seem fine for the first couple of weeks or so, since triple-slotted guns and character upgrades are yet to emerge. But give it a month, and APB will turn into curbstomp city.

The fix seems pretty simple: make player rank and the number of upgrades factor more heavily in matchmaking. Also consider hard brackets at the extreme ends of the spectrum. A newb should never be paired against a rank 200+ vet, not even if they are the only two players in the instance. Those two changes alone should prevent a few rage-quits, and give players a more of a fighting chance in encounters.

[UnSub]

As mentioned above, one of the big issues is requiring a group for fun. That's not good for casual players who just want to log in - sure, they can take their chances on a PUG, but that path seems to be labelled 'assisted suicide'. So it requires a bit more commitment and teamwork, plus hopefully access to the guns and mods you need to stay competitive.

Going back, their was a little back on forth on the business model being 'GTA Online and watch the dollars roll in'. I'm not a GTA fan, but even I know that there is more to GTA than just driving and shooting - there are side games to break up that routine and a storyline to follow Things can change in the gameworld based on your actions. APB is 'the shooting and driving parts of GTA', minus the ability to have any significant impact on the world (well, you can earn a statue) or play mini-games. Customisation is one of APB's key selling points but access to that is given away for simply the box cost.

There are some nice ideas in APB, but it lacks the hook to keep me (a casual player who doesn't have an optimal rig and connection speed) playing.

[TripleDES]

That's why I'm advocating a larger gameworld. That allows you for more stuff. Like renting billboards, statues, locations to leave an impression of you or your clan, and have things be permanent. Plus you could do territorial control (like the shops in GTA, plus takeover gameplay semantics). A large territory allows you to integrate different game modes into the actual world, like GTA, instead of creating different districts with idiotic load times. Might have been trickier on the netcode, but not impossible, by means of seamless zoning.

The ideal case would be someone trying the same concept but grander, or RTW doing an APB2 a few years down the road, if they survive this release.

[schpain]

Thanks for the heads up unsub.

[Sky]

Played with the music editor a bit, you can tell what kind of music the dev in charge of that likes. Obviously a midi/loop style editor is going to be limited, but not that limited! It's been almost twenty years since I programmed in music using such an editor, when I was in music school...and the experience was almost exactly as I remember it. That's not a good thing, given twenty intervening years of technology.

Actually, the program we used in school was better, because it basically functioned as the one in APB, but also gave you staff input and had a vastly wider array of patches. Unless I wanted to make electronica/techno/house/whatever, I had maybe four patches to use. Really I had a single piano and acoustic guitar patch. Is it so hard to give me an orchestral suite of patches, or is that unlocked by playing the unbalanced 'game'? Anyway, since I'm not a keyboard player and read notation pretty slowly, having to translate from standard notation to a keyboard, while being a good refresher on both, was obnoxious. I got maybe five measures into the piece I was transcribing and gave up, there's no reason for me to waste my time with that when I have actual music irl to transcribe.

Also, kind of missed an opportunity with the social areas by making the music editor a weird looking terminal in a bland building, it just felt and looked odd. Also, I was instantly put off by the LOUD FUCKING SHIT MUSIC someone was blaring from a spot they apparently "own" because they were the first to click on it. And they get to blare their shitty club music I have to try to run past to get to the music editor. Ouch. Although I guess this title seems marketed toward fans of electronic music, so maybe it won't be a problem to them.