APB: Finally, I Can Be A PUNK!

[IainC]

We evaluated Atlas (which is Epic China's MMO framework for UE3). It addresses some of the limitations and adds things like merchants but you're still looking at a lot of work to implement a classic MMO style experience. Vanguard spent a lot of money and time doing that for 2.5, your average indy studio (like us) isn't likely to have the resources to do that.

[Musashi]

Neither did Sigil!   

[Margalis]

Pick the right tools for the job?

Pick either an engine that works for what you need or an engine you can make work, or give up on your game design and try something else.

When a team has 5 years and a hundred million dollars blaming middleware for fundamental issues like bad multiplayer in a multiplayer only game is absurd.

[TripleDES]

How do you know that? Because it plays kinda like a shooter?

Yea, sure, an 80 player isolated instance is the epitome of technical multiplayer complexity.

[Kageru]

Apparently they've now sold myworld which might give them some breathing space... but I suspect it was bordering on a fire-sale.

[LK]

After what I've seen at PAX it's a wonder I ever got excited by this game. It's been a real drought of quality MMO games when APB was considered a good game based solely on a hope and sexy graphics (that failed to live up to it's own hype when you got the game off a demo station).

[sam, an eggplant]

They made crackdown, which was awesome, and the pitch was solid. A Star Wars^H^H^H^H^H^H^HGTA MMO, how can they possibly lose? APB failed in implementation, not in vision.

[Kageru]

It failed in design first. Even if their implementation had been bug-free the fundamental game design was lacking and full of exploits. Which is confusing since they were making a derivative product (GTA the MMO).

[Lantyssa]

People continue to fail to remake WoW.  It really shouldn't be that surprising.

[UnSub]

It was GTA by way of Counterstrike. The MMO. With only PvP options and lousy / limited cheat protection. And a confusing business model that was heavily beneficial to players and not the developer. Plus sub fees. On a title that was too long in the oven and cost too much. Featuring in-game systems that gave long-term players greater power / bonuses than newbs so that the newbs couldn't compete and then quit (aka baby eating).

RTW is where it is because of the cost and the lack of a good business model, but there are lots of reasons why APB had issues.

[Margalis]

APB failed both in execution and in answering the fundamental question "why would someone pay for this?" But I don't think it suffered from copying WOW.

[Lantyssa]

It was an analogy.  Dozens have failed to copy WoW.  They failed to copy GTA+Counterstrike.

[Der Helm]

(aka baby eating).

I agree with this article and I am still pissed at myself that I gave money to that company. I should have seen it comming.

[statisticalfool]

Can we count you on "Team No Preorders" now?

[Der Helm]

Can we count you on "Team No Preorders" now?

I don't think I have preorderd a game in my whole life... 

[UnSub]

Luke Halliwell, ex-RTW, on some of the RTW cultural factors that saw APB fail.

[Outlawedprod]

Luke Halliwell, ex-RTW, on some of the RTW cultural factors that saw APB fail.

My two favorite parts:

Our team of QA ninjas trained night and day so as to be able to act out the same scripted combat scenario on demand (they were actually pretty impressive to watch doing this!).  At first, the press would just watch these sessions as examples of “live” gameplay.  Later, they’d be allowed to join in, but would be so outnumbered by our staff that they would be forced to stay on the rails of our script.

Pro.  I have no other words.

I once heard one of our fine QA staff being berated for – wait for it – emailing a summary of forum activity around QA.  This guy had gone through every single forum post looking for complaints that might signify bugs, and summarised it in a plan of action for the QA team to investigate further.  Commendable stuff indeed, but here he was, being told that ONLY OUR DEDICATED COMMUNITY TEAM were allowed to summarise forum activity for others (usually in the form of a number from 1-100 representing how favourable forum feedback was that week.  Never found out how they computed that or what we were supposed to do with it.)

This reminds me of the story from a relative working an office job at an industrial manufacturing complex.  To get a test item off the floor he had to submit a work order so the union guys would pull one off the shop floor and bring it to him.  After nearly 2 weeks of no action on his work order and people getting mad he had not turned in any recent floor reports on samples he walked 100 feet down the stairwell to the shop floor, pulled one off a skid, reviewed it and took it back down.  3 days later union officials arrived to review the union grievance that was filed regarding his behavior of "stealing union wages."

[WayAbvPar]

Luke Halliwell, ex-RTW, on some of the RTW cultural factors that saw APB fail.

Is it short enough to post in a spoiler tag? I can't hit blog sites from my work computer 

[Rendakor]

Yea, here ya go:

[sam, an eggplant]

Nothing wrong with choreographed "live" demos. Everybody does that.

Yelling at that QA guy for showing initiative is pretty crazy, though.

[Musashi]

I really think that, though it's honorable for this guy to accept responsibility, he's wrong about the design decisions not bearing the brunt of the responsibility here.  The brass tacks are that this game is GTA multi-player that you have to pay extra for.  More than mismanagement, you could talk about how GTA multi-player really isn't even very good.  It's just sort of a thing they put in there that's sort of fun for 15 minutes on top of awesome single player content.  By itself, it's not even a fully fleshed out genre.  Making it an MMO was stupid from the jump.

There are these kinds of poor management decisions in every environment I've ever been in.  It's part of that whole not being perfect humanity thing.  But if they'd have had a better game design to work with, then the game is less bad and these management errors are much less significant.  They're still silly.  But who cares if the game comes out and doesn't flop.

[Mrbloodworth]

Well, if money from investors did not get fluttered away on non game things, then APB would have had more breathing room to find its place, even with the questionable design decisions. All of this reads like they blew the wad and spent way to much for far to little and then had to bank on launch.

[WayAbvPar]

Yea, here ya go:

Thanks!

The idea of modern 'gang' urban PvP combat was a sound one. They derailed shortly after that, however. I would love to see a similar post mortem by someone on the design team. It sounds like even if they had the best design on the planet the management structure would have found a way to fuck it up.

[pohsyb]

Game Over Man....Game Over

[LK]

gg

[fuser]

Wow, thats just wow.. has an mmo ever cratered this fast? 

What about people that just topped up their hours.

[Mrbloodworth]

Quite sad.

[NiX]

Wow, thats just wow.. has an mmo ever cratered this fast? 

What about people that just topped up their hours.

I think it's the fastest failure in terms of launching and closing.

[fuser]

Website posting with more info.

[01101010]

ZING!

Ok, ok...it sucks for them. 

[sam, an eggplant]

Wow, thats just wow.. has an mmo ever cratered this fast?

Never. Even hellgate:london lasted longer.

APB will be used as a cautionary tale for years to come.

[fuser]

APB will be used as a cautionary tale for years to come.

I hope its the tale includes the danger of relying punkbuster 

Wasn't end user client related. But I think the discussion is still within the thread subject. The concept of punkbuster is fine but the implementation and running of it never jived. BC2 had punkbuster on, then off because of end client disconnects, then on, then off again because it kept crashing servers. Even at about 1 month in the streaming database showed they had banned ~300 users. There were tons of other issues (admin functionality) thats out of scope.

I hope APB fairs a bit better.

[HaemishM]

MMOG's are harder to kill than a fucking mummy. How do you fuck this up this bad? Oh right, spend $100 million on it.

[Samprimary]

Yelling at that QA guy for showing initiative is pretty crazy, though.

Common, in my admittedly limited experience!

[WayAbvPar]

They should release a new box with nothing but  on the cover.

Jesus what a clusterfuck. The pure scope of the incompetence leaves me in awe. Pity- I really wanted to like the game.