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APB: Reloaded: Open Beta Preview
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
GamersFirst has launched APB Reloaded onto the gaming world in the form of the open beta. By all reports, huge numbers of players are taking advantage of the opportunity to see the game in its new iteration. MMORPG.com columnist Adam Tingle is one of those whose been entertaining his bad boy side in APB Reloaded and he's got some thoughts to share. Check it out and then leave us a comment or two.
In reality, stealing a car is wrong but in APB it feels so right. In the top right-hand corner of my screen I am told to indulge my automobile thieving skills and then bring the spoils back to a certain point; I'm like Nicholas Cage in Gone in Sixty Seconds but meaner and without such a punchable face. To compliment by criminal activities is a virtual comrade by the name of Jack Shandy; he wears makeup, has an afro, and rides shotgun whilst hanging out of the window shooting passers-by like he is on a wild game hunt. Call me crazy but he seems a little unhinged.
Read more of Adam Tingle's APB Reloaded Preview.
Comments
Nice preview.. Would have been nice to hear a bit more about what we can expect for the future.. Like the Zombie mode, the Turf wars, car races or the new map they've been talking about in early closed beta...
As for end game, pretty sure they intend on doing something to make the high level folks come back.. Leagues are supposed to come back plus the new modes.. Think G1 is on the right track with this if they can manage to deliver everything they've teased..
as a F2P it's actually really fun. shallow but fun. it definately feels like they have a great base for an awesome game but a lot of stuff is missing. as long as they can keep the cheaters/exploiters under control and the "pay to win" items aren't too game braking i really think a lot of people will love this game.
i played the pay to play version wich got shutdow and i did not liked it and i even had graphical and sound issues on that version while is have a monster of a computer.
now i am playing apb reloaded and i am having alot of fun their are alot more players its alot more smoother the gameplay is much better the graphical and sound issues i had on the p2p version dont exists on this version and everything works perfect. i do hope they do something about the queues right now in the european server: Obeya theres a high change you enter a queue and the longest queue ive seen is 3 hours with over 6 thousand players in the queue ( wich was not at the time they limited the eu servers)
Honestly I was pissed when they shut down APB, not because I loved the game but because I had just spent $50.00 on the dang thing. However the whole game confused me at launch, they wanted me to buy game time!? I had just paid for my first month (well if it was a normal MMO I would have), so after my first few hours that they gave me I promptly decided to wait untill they updated the game more before I jumped back in. To my shock, before I had a chance for round two the game was sacked and we wern't even given any form of refund or free game time before the shut down (not that I would have used it).
I don't know I feel upset going into APB Reloaded, like its my game, but not realy my game. I own it, but so does everyone else regardless of if they bought the origonal APB or not. I don't feel special when I feel like I should. I know it sounds stupid right. I guess I just realy feel like I didn't get any value out of the first launch of APB and I feel riped off by the game.
Overall I think I've moved on. I play Rift now and 'am waiting for TOR to come out. I think my days of driving around as a ganster in APB may be over. Sure I may download and try the F2P version but will I spend any money... probably not... for a while... if ever.
Hell yeah he has a comeback kid shirt on
Their cash shop will never be under control. If you have played any of the other games GamersFirst (more like GamersLAST) has administered then you will know the outcome of this game. They pretend to control hackers, like they did on MU Online when they ran it, but they can really care less. The game so far is completely infested with hackers. By now, they have a mass of reports and little to no action was taken against such reported hackers. The game content is stale, as it gets repetitive. As of now, it's not worth a investment of time for me. If you look in the Armas Shop (Cash Shop) they have OverPOWERED guns already and perks. Needless to say, anyone not willing to shell out 25$ a month or more is screwed. Hopefully it changes, but I will never come back to the game.
The game is not wortht the tim eit takes to download.
They still have not fixed the buggy aiming mechanics, driving is still as twitchy as ever, the ARMAS store items are all OP, and there are already people (cheaters) using scripts and hitboxes.
I love the game its exactly the kind of game ive been looking for but like you said the game is indeed already overrun with hackers. Out of all the missions I did Id say about 50% of them had a hacker in them that pretty much ruined the whole mission. Many of them are very blatant with names like "icheatz" and the 180 degree turns that they do while jumping out of moving vehicles and landing every shot without even aiming down the sights. I'm a huge fan of the game and would love to play it more but until they start cracking down on cheaters I regrettably won't be retuning.
HEAVEN OR HELL
Duel 1
Lets ROCK!
Don't know why I keep hearing about hackers and still I haven't seen a single one with more than 40 hours in...
I just started playing myself and I have yet to run into a obvious hacker, however maybe I have just been lucky. Yet it seems like the major complaint at the moment is regarding the massive amount of hackers running around ruining people's play-time. While I am sure many hackers exist, maybe it is not quite a bad as people keep on saying it is.
Its because these guys go into the game, they're not GOOD at it and so they blame hackers.
Then come here and try to denounce the game as been "overrun with hackers" when in reality, they're just bad at it.
I'm bad at APB, I don't blame hackers, I blame myself.
Players can opt to be allocated an automatic group and from here take on missions from the get go. It takes a special kind of developer to realise exactly what gamers want from their product and K2 Network really have hit this on the head. - This was already a feature before RTW went under.
"The missions within APB Reloaded are admittedly a little on the slim side, but all together they work a lot better than before." - Missions were never changed...still have the "press F to do [add action here] and G1 have pointed out that they weren't working on missions as of yet - so they have to be the same for now.
Also supprised nothing was mentioned about the camping spots that are still active - to the extent of someone saying "well how else am i supposed to win?!"
Makes me wonder how much backup reserach people do before talking about the "previous iteration" and reviewing their differences
I downloaded APB yesterday. and all i have to say is, WOW. I played the game i think from 7pm intill 6am and i've haven't played a game that long in forever. Seeing i usually can't. But everytime i would tell myself. "Ok, im getting off at 1:45". It pushed into "Ok, 2:45" "OoOk 3:45" and before i knew it. the sun had came up. It was reeally fun grouping up with some people, and doing dirt all night with them while Enforcers chased us. All i have to say is. If they keep up with the game and add some great content. This game is a great breather and finally somthing new and refreshing. I recomemend anyone burned out on the over worked Fantasy genre. Give this game a try for sure. You wont regret it.
Speaking of which. I'm going to play it right now!
I find it funny how the 1 official review completely contradicts what everybody else has been saying on the forums all week. Not only that, it completely skirted major issues like the lack of the promised matchmaking system, weapon imbalance, and game-breaking performance problems.
Is the game FPS style shooting or targetted?
My gaming blog
is that the A-TEAM VAN!?!! APB wins an extra point for that
and yes pun was intended
A couple of points.
The game so far is completely infested with hackers.
No its not.
Armas Shop (Cash Shop) they have OverPOWERED guns
No they aren't.
What the game is infested with is people like you who cannot comprehend that there are players who have been playing longer and are better at the game than you are, APB takes time to learn, its not a run of the mill shooter you need to understand the mechanics behind it, regardless, hackers are few and far between and they have been frequently banning them, read the sticky in the official forums and the blogs.
ARMAS guns are not overpowered, they are niche weapons, a scope does not make a gun overpowered in APB, which is what the ARMAS NTEC has, its no different than the normal NTEC, and regardless you will still be outranged by a sniper or out gunned against a OCA close up. I have been beating ARMAS gun owners left right and center with the newbie gun (STAR) since they came out.
You also dont need to pay anything at all to play and enjoy this game, its F2P, the ARMAS is optional and isnt required to compete or enjoy the game.
There. That's better.
There is NO miracle patch.
95% of what you see in beta won't change by launch.
Hope is not a stategy.
______________________________
"This kind of topic is like one of those little cartoon boxes held up by a stick on a string, with a piece of meat under it. In other words, bait."
Game is stable and is fun.
People complaining about hackers, usually only say so from Old sayings that there was alot of hacking (cheating really) being done in the game. You will encounter some at some point yes...
But do try to understand that maybe YOU are the problem, Not others... Learn from your mistakes, Look at how you get nailed. Then get better.
and for the ARMAS Store.... I beat people with ARMAS guns any time of the day.. The Gun doesnt make the shooter.. Also ARMAS guns allow for people who doesnt wanna play 300hrs to unlock a specific weapon, to Pay for it... wich is fine by me.
I do have a bit more issues with Clothing being REMOVED from original APB and put into the ARMAS store ,same with Symbols, Notably All the Custom Fonts are now only PAYABLE items if you wish to use them..
All in All... APBr is the game i was hoping to see. They did great and as for cheaters and people complaining about it.... IT EXISTED SINCE MULTIPLAYERS CAME AROUND. IT IS IN EVERY AND EACH MULTI PLAYER GAME YOU WILL EVER EXPERIENCE..>EVER ..
So instead of Crying over something that will always be there because people pay hackers to keep hacks Updated and running... Try the game for what it is.
Thought I would throw in my thoughts on the game. I've played about 60 hours total of Reloaded's closed and now open beta. I always played over 400 hours of the RTW beta and original release of APB.
Gamer's first has made some minor changes to the game that I really like so far. The first thing is what they have changed with weapon and character modifications. In RTW's release, you could purchase weapon mods that would give you boosts like +10% damage per round, or +10% rate of fire. These mods had no negative effects to go along with their added stats, so a lot of times newer players would be paired up against veterans using these mods giving them a huge advantage. The mods now have been changed to give you a positive and negative effect. You can have a gun that fires faster, but it will also have much more recoil. This change may have been implemented before RTW shut it down, but either way it was a necessary change that had to be made. The weapon imbalance in the original game made it almost impossible to win against players that had 3 level-3 mods in their weapons.
I'm not sure how I feel about the cash-shop items. I understand that the game needs to be supported in some way, but I don't necessarily like the fact that anyone can buy upgraded weapons with real cash. I would've prefered purely cosmetic items, or even vehicles with custom paint-jobs and graphics. With that said, if you run into someone with a cash-shop weapon, you just need to know how to fight against them. Any time you are in a mission, you can see the equipment that the other players are using and plan accordingly. The most popular cash-shop weapon I've seen thus far is the scoped n-tek. This weapon is very accurate if the user is standing still and aiming. Otherwise, it's very difficult to use as it has accuracy penalties if the user moves and shoots at the same time. So get close to them and use a SMG or Shotty and you'll win every time.
My thoughts on hackers.... Whoever claims this game is 'filled' with hackers is more than likely just getting outplayed. I've been accused of hacks on a few occasions. Really the difference is that I have played this game for a very long time, and when I do play, I'm in a vent server with the other people in my group. It is not difficult to shoot and kill people in this game. It's more of a team-based shooter than a third-person twitch shooter, so if you work with your team and communicate well, you'll win more often than lose, guaranteed. I would highly recommend that anyone playing this game always be in a group, and preferably a group of clannies that you know are decent players. You will have far more success doing that than if you play solo or in PUGs.
Those are my thoughts for now. To sum it all up, it's largely the same game, especially when you're talking about the core gameplay and shooting aspects. There have been some good weapon balance changes regarding mods, and some other minor changes, and a new threat system. Get in, give it a try, it's free after all. Make sure to play with a group.
I'll just wait for Guild Wars 2, but thanks.
Adam - Not sure precisely what you mean or how much you have played but I have been playing for quite a while and as your advance through the contacts and increase your Rank the missions you get become longer & more varied. As a new player you will see touches of this if your group is ever called in as backup to some higher rank players with missions up to 7-9 stages long I think.
The objectives themselves are usually drive to location/locations & then do something or defend something with the odd capture an object and hold it or be the most to capture certain points, capture and hold the most points, set and protect your bomb, assasinate/protect a VIP (which is a designated player) etc. The Objectives themselves are pretty standard shooter fare with some minor variety ie: break into object/torch object/bomb object so I guess you may find the various goals repetitive as the missions are generally a mixture of several goal types in each stage.
That said fans of FPS/TPS and even the saints row or GTA games will enjoy this I think, I know I am still enjoying it despite being in closed beta for a long while and my friends are ennjoying it now too in Open Beta.
Can't comment on the game now, but a couple of months after the game was released... at higher ranks (300+) the game was FULL of hackers. It's pretty damn obvious who hacked or not, people doing 180 spins and locking to target instantly, people shooting you from across the map with oca's and ntech's without missing a shot etc...
Hopefully things have improved, but I have my doubts.
still have my doubts about the game, it has a nasty habit of overheating laptops and some desktops... even swapping from high to low settings (even though my laptop is 3.33 ghz and a nvidia 480M card with 12 gigs of ram) the game has a habit of overheating my laptop
i can run unreal tournament 3 and 2k4 for over 24 hours before a slight change in performance and even crysis for roughly 16 hours before a change in performance... but on this it only lasts about 3 hours or less (pending on the time mylaptop is turned on) and it will cause shutdowns.
games fun and all...but i feel like their recent update has caused some coding errors... APB original didnt have this issue with me, and APBr Closed beta before two week announcement of Open Beta I never had this issue...
also, Gold weapons are a bitch for lower ranks, since it turns their weapons into instant sniper rifles (IE the shotgun has rifling 3 which gives it perfect circles all around everywhere they shoot)
a HVR can dispatch them but the thing i hate is when they unload a shotgun faster than a SMG can into a car...
there are pros and cons to this game... just wish things were come to more pros than what im looking at