APB: Finally, I Can Be A PUNK!

[01101010]

Psst. SOE. Do this with Planetside.

How much dress-up customization is available in Planetside anyway? 

Well, there's about five faces as I recall, and you can wear stealth, light, heavy, or MAX armor.  That's about it.  Your rank also determines a few additional graphics that appear on your armor once you achieve high enough rank.

Planetside - or any other game based around being in an army - doesn't really seem like an appropriate place for customization though.  You're in the army.  They give you a uniform and you wear it, you don't get to customize.  Customization pretty much consists of your unit patch, at best.  At least for me, and I really like fiddling around with character appearances in most games, that's not something I ever thought of in Planetside.  Never really occurred to me that what the game really needed was being able to customize my own combat armor or whatever.

Well you did get outfit patches that appeared usually on your armor on the right chest in terms of your character. Any vehicle you owned or jacked also had that graphic placed on it. But yeah, that was it and probably all that could work in that game at that time.

[Stormwaltz]

How to sign up for the APB Reloaded beta, for MBW and whoever else.

http://apbreloaded.blogspot.com/2011/01/end-of-week-8-update-steps-to-join-beta.html

[01101010]

How to sign up for the APB Reloaded beta, for MBW and whoever else.

http://apbreloaded.blogspot.com/2011/01/end-of-week-8-update-steps-to-join-beta.html

ANyone else get an email invite today?

[NiX]

ANyone else get an email invite today?

Yup, tempted, but not sure how this will pan out.

[Modern Angel]

Yep. I never signed up, though. Someone else can prod this thing's bloated corpse.

[Lantyssa]

Vu and I got one.  I figure I'll wait for release since it'll be f2p.  I've already beta'd it once.  No point losing everything again.

[Mrbloodworth]

Ha, thats just what I was sitting there thinking, I already betaed this. I'll wait till release.

[Stormwaltz]

I did. Passed. It wasn't the game for me.

[NiX]

I signed up. Nothing has started yet, I'll let you all know how it compares to last time.

[Kageru]

Signed up. Always wanted to play with it but wasn't going to pay box+sub price for something which was obviously going to crash and burn.

[Chinchilla]

I signed up, but no beta invite yet.  I'll take anyone else's invite that doesn't want to use it.  I'm itching to try this out again on my new computer.

[NiX]

I signed up, but no beta invite yet.  I'll take anyone else's invite that doesn't want to use it.  I'm itching to try this out again on my new computer.

Not invites have gone out yet, so I wouldn't wait too long for someone to send you one.

[Kageru]

Yep. It mentions in the text this is just an expression of interest and there'll be an eventual information request (DXDiag etc) before an even more eventual beta.

[Mrbloodworth]

Looks like they are mostly on the right path: End of Week 11 Update : Game Changes and Closed Beta Features

Not so sure about making the TTK shorter though.

[Hoax]

How can it be so complicated for them to take a gun from CS:S or MW2 and port it into the game then do that 14 more times. Done. Weapons balanced enough (guns don't need to be balanced), working in a way gamers are familiar with and using guns gamers are familiar with.

As for the weapon gem system...  I dunno that was a really poorly designed system in open beta.

[Mrbloodworth]

How can it be so complicated for them to take a gun from CS:S or MW2 and port it into the game then do that 14 more times. Done. Weapons balanced enough (guns don't need to be balanced), working in a way gamers are familiar with and using guns gamers are familiar with.

That would be a huge mistake. you can't just port things over like that, there are more factors to balance then just damage values. CS:S and MW2 have different player movements rates for one.

[Hoax]

If you are trying to "balance" you are doing it wrong already. Just make guns that feel and sound good and move on. Also I'm pretty sure if they imitated as best they could select weapons from those games they would end up with much better "feel" to the guns than they had when I played in OB.

[Mrbloodworth]

Um, yeah. Good luck with that. 

[NiX]

Um, yeah. Good luck with that. 

Yeah, one of the most vocal complaints were the weapons and how anyone with an N-TEC and some mods could take on 8 or so people who didn't have that gun.

[Mrbloodworth]

They removed the mods in question in this version. Something RTW should have done a long time ago, they are also to use a +/- system to each mod, and only allow one of each class. All good moves I supported heavily during APBgate.

To say start with real world values or to say copy X game, is ridiculous, the AK-47 (N-Tec) has an effective range of 300m full auto. Guns modeled in other games are not comparable to the real world versions, not to mention the guns alone are not the only considerations. As far as "feel" APB guns were as close as you can get, or at the very least similar to other games of the CS style combat, this was further reinforced with he addition of recoil shortly before closing. Again, the N-Tec was a jack of all in a world surrounded by niche guns, of course it had issues all by itself.

Having said that, I'm not really a fan of the CS style shooters ( They lack shootouts ), part of the saving grace for me with this game was the TTK and regenerating health and no head shots.

Still, if you read the blog, they are doing some good work on paper.

[SnakeCharmer]

TTK?

[Threash]

Time to kill, meaning no insta gibs i assume.

[Mrbloodworth]

Time to kill. ROF + Damage assuming none miss. Not just about one-shots but how much damage you could sustain and give back before death by weapon. Some games an AK47 is one or two shots, some its 4-5 Depends on damage of each round, and or health and regeneration or not (and speed of that in between hits).

CS:S has at its lowest something in the milliseconds, as it has one shots, most of its guns can achieve oneshots.

APB is a odd creature, as it had no shots bellow two to kill (One exception). Yet sustained a CS:S level of TTK with most other guns.

GA, Planetside, hopefully Tribes universe have a longer TTK that is more allowing for time to think and encourages shootouts (Mostly provided by health pools).

FUN Fact: APB has an actor range of 120m.

Off hand I don't recall the walk/run speed setting in CS, but I believe it was rather inhuman.

[SnakeCharmer]

Ah, ok (TTK).  Thought that's what it was, but wasn't sure.

I've read their blog things and it all sounds good, but I wonder what their plans are to keep aimbots at bay.

[Mrbloodworth]

Ah, ok (TTK).  Thought that's what it was, but wasn't sure.

I've read their blog things and it all sounds good, but I wonder what their plans are to keep aimbots at bay.

That was the previous blog entry.

[Lantyssa]

Did it involve Punk Buster?

[Mrbloodworth]

It does.

[WayAbvPar]

PB is bound to get it right one of these decades!

 

[UnSub]

For mass shootouts to occur in APB required either the (proposed?) chaos ruleset, for large groups of opposing players to be on the same mission or for groups of lvl 5 notoriety players to go up against each other.  My experiences was a lot of 1v1 or 2v2 missions that were over before they began because you could never catch your opponents.

[Koyasha]

FUN Fact: APB has an actor range of 120m.

This was one of my biggest angry points back when I was playing and using the sniper rifles.  If I remember right the HVR had a max range of far beyond the range you could see other players at, so you had this weapon with great range that wasn't usable over the last portion of its range because you would never actually be able to see your target at that range.

I hope they either fix that or take out sniper rifles entirely in this reloaded thing.  It's silly to have a class of weapon that's rendered unusable because of things like that.

I do think most of what I read in that blog was positive, so it should be interesting to see when they re-release this one.

[Der Helm]

Got something that looks like a beta-invite, but can't check since I am at work.

[Chinchilla]

Got a beta invite key. Had me fill out an app where I had to send DXDiag and some Ping tests.  Waiting to see if I'm selected.

[Kageru]

Thanks for mentioning... went straight into the spam folder.

[HaemishM]

Same here. Registration process is a bit ass backward, but finally got the beta app done.

[Hoax]

My pings were pretty high. Strange beta app, but I think I finished it.