APB

wow. i was looking forward to this game. i wonder if it will get better, or if they think it's nearly ready for release. i can't find a release date, though i haven't looked too hard.

It's planning on being released in 2011...

The concept is good, but the horrible gameplay and the lack of content is ftm a killer, hopefully another year will make it playable at least.

This got boring fast in the beta and driving the cars was fuck all day. I could spend hours on customization, but that'd probably be all I'd do if I every bought the game.

I'd also probably pick this up if they dropped the subscription.

Plus lack of content judging from beta.

The subscription is optional, you can pay it also in in game currency (from what I've heard, doesn't cost much). They also plan to add free-DLC sort of things to the city to add more life as the game ages.

Eh, I thought there was an hourly or subscription based fee to use the action districts.

Yeah it is.

But as you said, it's only for action district, you can sell your designs and stuff in the social. I earn a lot from that.

i'd probably buy it if the price tag was super cheap and just spend all my time in the social district.

I believe it costs $50, it also comes with 50 hours action district time. Also, if you want to pay monthly, the monthly fee actually costs less than other MMOs ($9 dollars, unlimited time per month).

that sounds dope. also the part about paying for time with in game money. i'm not sure if my comp is tough enough to handle it, but i want to play this.

i still think it's gonna be pretty lop sided though. i can see many more people picking crimanal for the precieved 'cool' factor. but i think arresting people is way more bad ass than just killing. like when i play paintball, barale tagging some stooge with a $2k electric that dumps half a case of paint a second. that is the true meaning of pwnd. all that fire power, and i was sick enough to walk up and nail your ass to the wall.


EDIT: bump
it seems they canned the whole thing, i looked on the EA site and i can find nothing about it. i found an article else where that said EA has canceled it. has anyone else heard anything?

Yeah, the game was officially shut down in September.

I heard that Epic Games (guys who created Gears of War) are interested in acquiring APB. Of course, it's all still pretty hush hush, no official word yet.

To everyone who bought APB, you can contact EA Live Chat to receive a partial refund, in the form of a free EA game download as compensation. You can choose any game which has already been released (no pre-purchase or reservations) to download for free from EA Download Manager. They require proof of purchase, so be ready with that information.

If you purchased APB from Steam and have misplaced the confirmation E-Mail sent to you, you can request to have the EA representative perform a "screen-share" with you, which lets them see your computer screen. From there you can show the representative your Steam Library and Steam Purchase History account to verify your purchase.

I hope this helps some fellow APB players make up some of their investment in the failed game. It's always sad to see a game or development studio shut down.

This makes me sad. it looked like it could have been a really great game that could have eaten up a large portion of my life. oh well. i guess i'll go outside instead.

The premise was very good, but the execution was very flawed. There is a comment post, as seen at RockPaperShotgun, which blames much of the game's failure on the game's management by RTW CEO Dave Jones.

As I see it, the only quality feature of APB was the foundation on which it was based; highly customizable avatars battling for control of a city in a GTA style combat. The driving, shooting, missions, leveling, balance, and almost every other feature of APB was substandard. Almost the entirety of the development cycle was focused around the player Customization and the rest of the game's quality suffered for it.

I don't get why they were so in love with the avatar customizeattion. to me, that is one of the last pieces of a game i consider(if at all). the FPS/RPG/sandbox/MMO combo was what had me interested.

It's the type of draw that keeps games like Second Life around. People want to insert a version of themselves into a game and be a part of the world. The experience is much more engaging when it is "you" taking out an enemy hideout, instead of a pre-set avatar that you are emotionally detached from.

The reason Realtime Worlds was so determined to work on the customization was, from what I understand, mainly an upper management decision. Perhaps they felt that was the only truly unique part of the game, and they needed to expunge upon that uniqueness in order to make a game that appealed to people.

I was looking forward to APB for both the customization (I'm usually a remarkably vain person) and the open world layout. When I tried the game in the Key To the City event, I was generally unimpressed with the missions and shooting, but the customization really wow'd me. I wanted to keep playing in order to make my avatar look more to my liking. I wasn't satisfied with the basic equipment, and every time I leveled up I would look for ways to modify my appearance. I spent hours of time in the Garage and Wardrobe, with a decent amount of time making symbols.

Hopefuly some other developer will be able to pick it up and try to balance the game play with the customization.

Okay, the game is up again in the form APB: Reloaded from Gamerfirst.
It just went to Open beta at least, balance is quite fair. Even the starter gun (Star 556) can do quite well against the higher end guns, though there's still some serious balancing required on the OCA and PMG Smgs. Both have retarded accuracy, which makes long distance shooting fairly easy.
PMG also barely loses any accuracy when firing in longer burst so yeah.

Been playing this for a while on the US East server, got a R60 TL 1 Crim and R42 TL2 Enforcer (They recently wiped Threat levels due to rebuilding the matchmaking).