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Sunday, February 6, 2011

End of Week 12 Update : A "New District" sneak peek, plus many things that were wrong

The "Third District" Sneak Peek (with new game modes):

This week we will give a VERY early sneak peek of what will eventually become the "Third District" in the game - the Asylum. Since this district will now involve a whole new set of game modes, there is a lot of work still to be done in this area to redesign it to make it work for its new purpose. But at least showing a few snapshots should provide some fodder for your imagination (and - if you have any creative ideas for how to exploit this awesome environment, feel free to make suggestions. Who knows; a good district specific game-mode idea that we have not yet considered might be lurking out there among the APB fans, and if so we would be all about trying it out :) )



More about Premium and Leased weapons.

We have actually worked out the whole initial batch of leased weapons, and premium items. But, we won't share that quite yet. But we will very very very soon (oh - the suspense is unbearable ! :) )

Things that could have been better in original APB
thus - things that are now OUR top priorities

And most importantly, our designer  Zak "Qwentle" Littwin is back - this time with a whole series of items that "should" have been different the first time around. So basically a bit of a venting session. But also should give you guys a good idea of where we are heading with more core fixes and updates.

Til next week,
Bjorn / TechMech

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The way things could have been...


Hey everyone. This week I'm going to be talking to you about things that were not really up to scratch in APB that we are now in the process of improving long term. The only thing to keep in mind that while we are fanatically dedicated to this project, we are a somewhat smaller team nowadays (or maybe the word should be “more focused”) so I won’t promise exact time scales on these changes, but they're certainly top priorities for us for the next few months to help make this game awesome.

As with last week, I've got my typing hat on, so this is going to be a pretty long one.

Missions:

To be frank, a lot of the current missions are not up to the quality bar that we expect. They focus extensively on spots that can be camped, requiring one team to do something and the other team to pick them off. While this can be fun for some of the game play, it can also be incredibly frustrating in the long term, especially in an area that's very defensible. On the other hand, there are an absolute ton of missions (around 250 or so), and changing them all is a gargantuan task. As such, we're working to fix them incrementally over a decently long period of time.

We're going to add a contact to each district that you don't level and gives out new missions that we'll add that will be more fun for all participants. As the new missions get positive feedback, we'll replace the worst offenders from the existing missions with the new ones. This should hopefully allow us to constantly be phasing out sub-par content and replacing it with great stuff, without just stripping out too many things from the beginning and accidentally leaving too little content. At the same time, we'll be fixing the mechanics on all the existing missions that are broken at a base level to improve the experience (top contenders for fixes include Hold Item, Territory Control, VIP and Chase missions).

Witnessing:

As mentioned last post, Money is going to become a lot more important with the new release (or rather – it will be incrementally more important). This of course makes the disparity between the factions’ income something that becomes a lot more important to solve. At the same time, the Ready system added to the game near its end pretty much killed witnessing, and it's something that we really feel is necessary to implement again as a part of the world.

As such, we're changing witnessing, and open world crime significantly in order to make the experience a lot more interesting for both sides. When non-mission crimes are committed, the criminal doesn't receive money directly, instead it's added to a pool of dirty money that they need to visit a money launderer to actually add to their cash. When they do so, the money is multiplied by their notoriety bonus (we'll be making this a lot more obvious for players) to give the amount they actually get, and then their notoriety is reset to the base level. This should hopefully introduce a play-style where criminals want to go on a large crime-spree before cashing in.

At the same time, when they commit a crime, any off-mission enforcer can witness them (the icon will only appear if you can witness them, rather than the previous implementation of being able to witness, but a match not occurring). When witnessed, their dirty-money pool is moved into a small task item in the criminal’s inventory that either team must drop off to end the encounter. Whichever side drops it off gets the cash. If either the criminal or enforcer was on an unopposed mission when doing the crime, that mission will immediately end and the new mechanic will kick in.

The ideal scenario we're attempting to create here is enforcers patrolling the district looking for criminals (the higher cash amount the better) to take down and gain their money, with criminals partaking in a risk-reward situation where the more crime they commit, the better rewards but the more chance they have of being spotted.

At the same time, we're also looking to add backup and dispatch calls to players not within the ready system (but prioritse players within it) so that players patrolling are not removed from the matchmaking pool.

Upgrades:

In my last blog post, I touched on upgrades. For closed beta we've added a system where upgrades are grouped into categories, and you can only add one of each type. This solves the 'stacking' problem, but we still have a problem with the power they imbue. Our goal with upgrades is to make them specialise a player, but not improve their overall power. I'll give a couple of examples based on our current upgrades below (we've also renamed most of them, but I'll refer to their previous names for clarity):

Survivor : Reduces Damage taken, reduces movement speed, adds spark effect rather than blood when shot.

Fast Regen: Reduces time before you start regenerating health, increases time before you regenerate to full health.

Nitro: Heavily increases acceleration and top speed when active but reduces handling.

Mobile Supply Unit: Allows you to resupply and switch items from the trunk of your car. Removes the ability to place items in the trunk.

Spray and Pray : Increases fire rate, decreases base accuracy, removes crosshair.

SuperMag : Increases Clip size, increases reload time.

We won't be adding downsides to every upgrade, as if you equip one, you can't equip another one in that slot (which is a downside in itself), so upgrades that don't have a substantial effect won't be seeing them. In addition, certain upgrades have built in downsides (field supplier for instance makes you very vulnerable for its duration), so those won't need negative modifiers. By adding downsides, we can also increase the benefits, to really allow players to specialise in a chosen niche. Ideally we'll also rename them 'Modifications' rather than 'Upgrades' but it's a much longer word and may screw up our UI, so not sure if that's possible yet without extensive UI changes (though to be honest, we'll want to do that at some point anyway).

On a slightly technical note, we're also spending some time into improving how they're implemented. Currently they're hard-coded, so for instance in the Take Damage function there's a line that reads 'If Survivor,  reduce damage by X%'. We're putting work into changing this to make it data driven, so instead we say 'If ReduceDamage, reduce damage by X%' and then having a section in the design tables that reads 'Survivor is: ReduceDamage 30%, ReduceSpeed 30%', HitVFX Sparks' for instance. This may not mean much to a lot of you, but it vastly increases the turnaround time of adding new modifications, so we can make and iterate a lot of upgrades a lot faster.

When designing, generally the principle is to go completely over the top first, then lower it down until it's an acceptable value. This often comes up with hilarious side-effects. The nitro for instance works by multiplying the engine torque of a vehicle by a set amount, and as a test we massively increased this amount (generally we want to increase the benefit but decrease the duration and cooldown). When placed on a G20 Vegas (which I mentioned last week that we heavily increased the torque of) it has the following effect...

Extreme G20 Vegas Torque + Power-Up Nitro = Bad Idea
(aka Funniest Bug of the Week from the Dev Team):

  

This is a little bit awesome, but the mod also has a bad effect on other vehicles (the Mikro in particular bounces all over the place if we try using Nitro on it), so it's not something we can add as a general modification without heavily altering the implementation of the effect (otherwise we'd accidentally turn the game into Super-Mario-Cart Extreme Edition). 

Our current thinking is we'll make Nitro a modification that players can't normally unlock but that will appear on certain preset or mission vehicles that are done up like crazy stunt cars (though probably not like the crazy stunt above, given just how nuts that makes the world feel). We may have certain over the top fun mods spawning very occasionally on living city vehicles (though we will be careful not to go completely Cyber-Punk or 'The Matrix" style by accident).

Matchmaking and Threat:

APB doesn't use your traditional gaming matchmaking mechanics. The closest comparison I can come to is actually the handicap system in Golf. Generally the system is attempting to make you win 50% of the time, regardless of your skill level, to give each side of the match a fun experience. If you are very good at the game, it tries to match you with equally skilled players, and if it can't find them, it matches you against larger numbers of lower skilled players or lesser numbers of higher skilled players (or calls in backup for you if you are over-matched). When explained like this, you can see why determining your skill level based on mission win percentage becomes a little bit silly. In addition to this, the entire idea of determining skill based on win percentage is pretty mental. If you are at the skill level that we call Threat 13 for instance, you should be winning about half your missions against other Threat 13 opponents. But 50% win ratio is what the current system thinks Threat 6 is, so it'll lower you Threat. This leads to players bouncing around a bit too much, and is something we need to sort out. There is currently quite a bit of internal debate about this issue. One camp favors using the Chess-algorithm analogues (ie you move in rank a lot early on, but as you approach your true skill level the swings moderate considerably). Alternatively we are looking at using a non-historical system that determines your mission score (something we actually calculate at the moment, but is not shown to players, more on this later), and using this in comparison to other members of the mission to determine any changes to heat level. It's a fairly complex change, so something that will need tested extensively once it's in.   

Spawning:

Spawning in APB is currently very simple. At the moment it just checks for any nearby spawn points based on where you died, and spawns you at the closest one outside a determined range (92m in the live version). Naturally this can lead to some horrible situations where the nearest spawn zone may be 200m away from the objective, behind an entire district block, or in the face of the guy who just sniped you from max range. This naturally needs to be a little more intelligent, so we're looking to implement a formula for spawning that uses the position of your teammates and enemies to choose the point closest to your teammates, furthest away from your enemies, and away from the death locations of any group members (including yourself).

At the same time, we're also looking at some more specific spawning mechanics, such as respawning in waves, elective spawning, and potentially using player vehicles as optional spawn points.


Scoring:

Player performance during missions is governed by an internal scoring system that uses individual activities during missions to determine the amount of rewards given at the end of a mission. While you can work out why you got what you did at the end of a mission, it's rather confusing. We want to make this score visible to players and highlight the amount of score you get when doing certain activities. We can then also increase the amount of benefit that score gives. At the moment, missions award a certain amount, which is then multiplied by your score (without going under a certain minimum). We want to make it so that activities give score based on the mission, and there not to be a multiplier and minimum reward based on the mission at the end. This should give players more immediate feedback and incentives to work as a team to complete objectives, and also stop the problem of AFK bots overnight. There are still some things to be figured out, like how exactly do we reward people doing non-tracked tasks like being the designated driver or covering the person that's performing the activity (and using personal greed to promote teamplay is a great motivator) , but it's something we really feel will provide a great benefit.

Well there you have it. We've a lot of work to go to get to where we feel we have a great baseline to add content to, and there's certainly things to change that have not been mentioned in this post, but these fixes should definitely give us the game we were wanting at the previous launch. 

by Zak /  Qwentle

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Well there you guys have it for this week. As you can tell - we are picking up speed, and with some further team expansion over the next few weeks, we feel well positioned to take this game really really far. But in the meantime, we also appreciate the patience from you guys as we work out all these items. As you can imagine, the task of turning this thing around is pretty staggering.

Til next week, 

100 comments:

  1. That was a great blog entry, though I'm sad it didn't announce Closed Beta sign-ups today xD I was like "Please be this Sunday!!" Ah well at least we got a big helping of delicious planned improvements >=3

    I wish I could have done that flip on my Jericho >).<

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  2. Still no date for start of beta :-( When will closed beta start?

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  3. "The ideal scenario we're attempting to create here is enforcers patrolling the district looking for criminals (the higher cash amount the better) to take down and gain their money, with criminals partaking in a risk-reward situation where the more crime they commit, the better rewards but the more chance they have of being spotted."

    Crims will now be 10x as rich as enfo's. The majority of the time a Crim will get away with it (meaning its 50 50 if he gets witnessed but often times he wont so it more like 70, 30...) Unless it guaranteed he will be opposed, this is a game ruiner! CRIMS ALWAYS GET IT EASY! PUSS IES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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  4. @Vendor
    calm down, this system is put in place mainly to assist enforcers by getting criminals to go on longer crime sprees (but tbh if you couldn't find the main ram raid spots then you probably weren't looking). In fact the system will probably even out the cash gained between the two factions, but, you're going to have to work for it. On another note please, don't generalize half of a video games population, I really hope the game goes into the whole all criminals are...(something about QQ) all enforcers are... (something about Op) again.

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  5. ok... with upgrades having categories i dont see a reason to add upgrade "downsides". whats the point of an progression system if its detimentral to your character.

    nitro getting cut? just dosent sound great

    why does the criminal has to do 2 steps to get his cash vs enforcer just 1? maybe just make it a mission and skip the non-mission crimes part ...

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  6. @Anthosjazz
    I am merely just passionate about the game. And as you can probably tell I was an enforcer mainly (I had 2 crims too). I'm unaware if you actually played or yield any common scene, but enforcers nl-9 (among others) was completely over powered. And all crims with never fight, run away tactics are puss ies. And most are! I LOVE THIS GAME, for everything it was, except when crims just make you chase them around a fuc king district uneventfully for 40 minutes. And most did, and I don't mean vip and such. No balls, just run fagatry!

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  7. thank you all people of g1 for doing this... and please give us more information every week! greetings from Spain!

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  8. @vendor we ran from the LTL's... simple reason.


    suggestion on the spawning topic, why not implement a style of spawning like in battlefield bad company? i mean battlefield uses 4 player squads, apb uses 4 player squads, being able to spawn right next to a teammate or in the same car as him would be great and it would push the pace of the game a lot more, and not leave you waiting for enemies to spawn back from spots that you can pretty much guess.. i can count too many times where i sat at a stair set cause i knew the enemy was going to be spawning there next. action would be non stop in your face and i think it would promote more tactic, everyone could move as one unit. think about it

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  9. Awesome update once again, and the screenshots from the Asylum looks fantastic!

    Loving everything that's being done.

    And Jeff B, that's a great idea tbh, either that or what they mentioned about cars being a spawn point, that way you could park your car at strategic locations to optimize your spawns. Or maybe both of those, not sure how much will have to change to make it work though.

    One thing's for sure, it's gonna be so nice to see APB-Reloaded! Every change seem to be stuff I as a gamer wanted changed in the original APB.

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  10. Great read however I wonder how fun Asylym map may be since it seems like map will contain only one big building for some reason have interest for both criminals and enforcers. Also, this map look superior compared to Financial and Waterfront districts, and they need some cosmetic updates (like more trees) to look up to date.

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  11. Nice flip!!! U guys are doing a great job, i love this game and cant wait to see the ingame changes. Many thanks for getting this amazing game back.

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  12. i feel like i have already farmed all of you at some point in apb
    -love o839795287526273

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  13. Very nice blog post there, you guys are seriously working your butts off on this game and it's wonderful that you take a moment to sit back and let us know a few bits from behind the scenes.

    Can't wait to get started on the Closed Beta.

    On a side note, any chance of leaving in that G20 + Nitro bug for the first part of the Closed Beta as it'll be a fun thing to play around with... imagine the scene; you're being chased in your G20 down a long stretch of road with some space between you and the attacker, you make a quick stop while they gain on you and just as they're about to ram you back-flip over their car and turn the tables on them!

    Obviously you'd take it out by Open Beta, but it would be fun to see what we can do with that bug in the Closed stage. :D

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  14. @ vendor ... so you think crims in real life just stand around and get into shooting matches with the cops? no .... they run if theyre smart. just saying.

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  15. Sounds greats! Oh and i told you that that would happen with the cars. Anyway asylum looks cool, looks like a prime place for zombies, by the screenshots you gave it looks like a no vehicle map.

    About the mods it looks like its going well and i cant wait to try em! Spawning in waves though? I think that takes some of the action out of the game but spawning near cars or in cars sounds great. As for Jeff.B said about spawning is a good idea assuming you can't spawn on ur squad while in combat, similar to co-op spawning in halo, otherwise that would just promote everyone using nade launchers/rocket launchers to clear out a area since everyone will more then likely be on top of each other.

    Phasing out bad missions sounds fair but the Chase mission? How do you guys plan on improving on that? I mean it seems like in my mind like a pretty solid mission and pretty important just like witnessing, i mean chase is exactly like a chase, avoid cops, avoid crashing/drawing more attention to yourself i can't really think of a way to improve it unless you turn into something different but i think a chase mission is pretty necessary in a cops vs robbers like game.

    I do agree with making hold the item, vip, territory control getting tweaked. Mainly i like to see a hold item game where it didn't end up however had the fastest car wins. A vip game where hiding on a rooftop or having the fastest car = win. As for territory control i assume that gets removed and replaced by the whole turf wars system?

    *NOTE* Being the vip with 5 cars after you setting up roadblocks etc was one of the funniest things, you needed skill with cars, creativity to avoid/get out of a sticky situation, and lastly you needed to be smarter then the 5 other guys chasing you and it was pretty damn fun.

    Oh and for some reason i want a super mario kart extreme racing district LOL!

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  16. Русский.
    Простите за мой английский.Я его не знаю)))))Перевожу через онлайн переводчик)))На счет района убежище думаю было бы круто организовать его как районы у бандитов в фильме 13 районе: Ультиматум.Например в этом районе существует несколько зон (разные мафий: Китайская, Русская, Итальянская или просто панки, байкеры и т.д.) ну и конечно же не забывать про полицейских дать им тоже свой район.Смысл вот в чем в этот район загоняем кланы и даем каждому свою зону и у каждой из этих зон есть свой пряники.Например за удержания Китайского района в течений какого либо времени открываются апгрейды на авто,у Итальянцев пушки ну и т.д.При этом если эту зону захватит другой клан время не останавливается. 10 человек из клана имеют право удерживать район остальные тоже к примеру 10 могут атаковать другие районы)))Роль полицейских накрыть район за что они к примеру получат те же апгрейды если смогут отобрать район.Ну полицейский могут нападать в 15 ppl.Imagine идет перестрелка между бандитами и тут врываются полицейский и начинается супер перестрелка.Полицейский против всех бандитов в этой зоне.Бандиты клан на клан так еще и полицейских надо выгонять)))
    Ну это такая 5 минутная идея))) Если людям понравится то будет замечательно)))

    English.
    Forgive for my English. I don't know it))))) I Translate through online the translator))) Into the account of area a refuge I think would be to organize abruptly it as areas at gangsters in a film 13 area: the Ultimatum. For example in this area there are some zones (different mafias: Chinese, Russian, Italian or it is simple punks, bikers etc.) Well and certainly not to forget to give about policemen to them too the area. Sense here in what in this area we exhaust clans and we give everyone the zone and each of these zones has the spice-cakes. For example for deduction of the Chinese area in what currents or time upgrades on a car open, at Italians of a gun well etc. Thus if this zone other clan will grasp time doesn't stop. 10 persons from a clan have the right keep area the others too for example 10 can to attack other areas))) the Role of policemen to cover area for what they for example will receive the same upgrades if can select area. Well the policeman can attack in 15 ppl. Imagine there is a firing between gangsters and here rush the policeman and super firing begins. The policeman against all gangsters in this zone. Gangsters on a clan so also policemen should be expelled a clan)))
    Well it is such 5 minute idea))) If people like that will be remarkable)))

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  17. I'm worried about the new witnessing system as what would happen if a cop and a criminal worked together to make money?

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  19. Upgrades are finally being down-sized -_- makes me think APB going down and back up was a good thing...

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  20. Great blog yet again!!

    My idea for the asylum district, the patients are loose and the guards are over run!! Your teams job (enforcer) is to help the surviving officers and get the patients back into their 'rooms'.
    Your job (Criminal) is to kill the surviving officers and unlock more rooms unleashing more mayhem.

    The map will have capture points/ strong holds for either side that the opposing side can attack and capture.. if one side has all strongholds they unlock some sort of missions that give good loot OR by holding all strongholds you get a buff of 10%+ all attributes

    This gives what seams to me a limited area (by pics) full use and a good competivie environment for clans. :D

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  21. Sounds awesome. And I hope the matchmaking system works like you tell us. This sucked a bit in the original APB.

    Still can't wait to get my own hands on this new APB ;D

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  22. Great blog post again. Asylum looks like something straight out of a horror film. Will the map feature any Player vs. AI modes?

    I'm happy to hear about all of the changes to come, even if they do take a while. About the Crime Spree, shouldn't Enforcers get a bonus to the amount of money earned from such a bust? Any unopposed Criminal gains money from these Crime Sprees no problem, but the Enforcer MUST find and beat the Criminal to the punch in order to make bank. It just seems a little one-sided.

    As for spawning... I really hated respawning on the other side of the bay, at the furthest end of the pier, and having to hoof it back, across the ferry, and then back down towards the shipping containers. So, I'm glad this is getting changed. Quick suggestion: player/vehicle-equippable modifications that allow team mates to spawn (like Battlefield's squad spawning).

    For scoring, what about a player-voted MVP system? Every player gets two votes, player with the most votes wins MVP (second-most votes gets Runner Up), and is rewarded accordingly.

    As for scoring Non-Tracked Tasks (NTT), can't you track distance? Like distance driven and distance from team mates. So then, Distance Driven + Kill/Death score, compared to Distance Walked, versus those same statistics of team mates grants a reward bonus to the player with higher NTT score. I'm no math whiz, so don't expect any maths from me. For teamwork or cooperation, what about factoring in Time Spent near and Distance from team mates performing Mission Task Interactions?

    Actually, I think both of these should be used in combination (MVP rewards and NTT bonus) just to ensure that everyone deserving gets a piece of the cash-money pie.

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  23. Why add downsides to upgrades if you plan to put them into different categories?

    If you decide to stick with the downsides, every player should start off with all of the upgrades and be forced to fill up their upgrade slots. That could actually turn it into more of a "specialization" for each player.

    The new district looks very dull at the moment, but as you said it's just a very early sneak peak, right now it reminds me of Painkiller. :)

    @Vendor I played enforcer too, and I don't think chase missions were that hard. I think it's just that 99% of all enforcers couldn't be arsed to use their brain, and chased their opponents from behind until the mission was over.

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  24. Couldnt really bother to read all the comments (the post was long enough already :P ) but i have a few suggestions.

    First, the nitro problem.
    Im assuming youre using two separate values to determina acceleration (torque) and top speed (just speed) and the first value only decides how fast you get to the second one.
    So no actual horsepower value to the cars (determening top speed and acceleration by gearing)

    With that in mind, you could cause nitro to reduce grip in cars. This would mean that if you use nitro at low speeds or at a stand still, you will get mostly wheelspin (and not flips like the G20) whilst using it at high speeds will mostly give you speed but also loose handling in the process.

    sedond: the upgrades to modifications problem.
    Why not just call them "mods" then?

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  26. IM FROM PERU AND I WANT TO KNOW.... CAN I PLAY THE CLOSED BETA FROM HERE? BECAUSE IM A FAN OF APB RELOADED AND I REALLY WANNA PLAY IT....I DON'T KNOW IF THE CLOSED BETA KEYS ARE JUST FOR PEOPLE WHO IS LIVING IN USA, I WOULD APPRECIATE IF U GUYS LET ME PLAY THE APB BETA, IS WHAT I REALLY WANT.I DON'T HAVE THE BETA KEY AND I WANNA HELP, I LOVE THIS GAME, ITS AWESOME(MY FAVORITE) BEST OF LUCK AND THANKS FOR READ WHAT I AM SAYING. (I LEARNED ENGLISH BY MYSELF BECAUSE OF THE GAMES xD )

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  27. Oh and good thing about giving upgrades a downside... they needed some balance (even if theyre grouped, they still need a downside)

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  28. josefporta_2 they need a downside? why? can anyone give me a good reason? both factions have the same access to upgrades the same for any players...

    this is like giving epic armor on mmos stats that make your spells worse.

    PROGRESSION SHOULD NOT HAVE DOWNSIDES.. WHATS THE FREAKING POINT TO FARMING IT IF ITS GONNA SUCK?

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  29. Unlike last week's update, this week's update is really quite nice ;)
    Good stuff. Really liking more inside-fighting. Please please please, consider adding such things to existing districts. More inside district fighting would be.. amazing. It would really make the city feel more than just a maze to navigate through.

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  30. Hi there! While i was reading the part about the matchmaking system and the debate u guys have about it for the while.

    My idea is something like a score table in cs or cod... were the match's are made depending on the score that the player have that day or in that session...

    that would prevent the ones that dont kill much from playing vs the ones that kill much.

    Of course that just logged players will have score 0 0 0 (for kills deaths assists)for example, consider it an warm up, if they play it that well they will get better fast and play vs equals, its just a question of K/D ratio.

    And if that K/D ratio is measured by session, it wont force players to play always vs equals, adding some opportunities to improve and stuff...

    About the matchs, i think u guys should implement auto-call-for-help after reaching a certain score, for example, if the match is like 8-1 in kills, is somewhat certain that the losing team needs help, caling 1 good player or 3 not that good could fix the situation.

    just ideas, if you are asking for them :)

    hope to hear news from CB soon ;) and good work, impressive until now!

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  31. Woah, the Asylum map looks crazy (awesome). O_o Completely different from the Waterfront and Financial district, I'd love to explore a place like that. 8]

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  33. Asylum looks cheap. Not SP design at all. If it is a part of SanParo, partly ruined, it should look like ruined part of San Paro... At that moment it looks like somethin taken from L4D or may be CrimeCraft universe... not APB look like at all. IMHO

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  34. Looking Good, can't wait for the Closed Beta, Send me a key, haha.

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  35. Nice. This starts to explain why APB's implantation systems were so bad-Realtime just didn't understand MMO's at all. I'm happy to see that you guys are fixing these issues. All the power to ya.

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  36. That is one sexy district however it looks as if there is no room for roads which means more on foot missions. Also will I get to keep the Jericho I bought 5 days before the servers closed because that thing was sexy too?

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  37. I would say a good game idea would be criminals starting off with weak weapons, trying to escape the asylum. With each enforcer they kill, they get a better weapon or maybe a weapon upgrade. I feel like this would be a cool introduction to the district as a starter mission the first time you enter it.

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  38. "Spray and Pray : Increases fire rate, decreases base accuracy, removes crosshair."

    That is an really bad idea because it allows people to safely cheat by using monitor markers.

    Please do try and find another penalty then removing the crosshair so we don't have to worry about this form of undetectable analog cheating.

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  39. Would be nice to credit the Original RTW Environment guys who made that 'new' district... cos it's not 'new' as you put it... :)

    J

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  40. If I may suggest what I did back in the old APB beta, put in a bank robbery, 'nuff said there.

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  41. the asylum map looks awesome, cant wait to actually see it, though it does seem(at least in the screens) more like a big mansion where death matches might take place.

    love the idea of the modifications having downsides to them, should create some more interesting weapon upgrade load outs then savage(removed thankfully:P), spray and pray and dampening.

    and for the reward at the end, perhaps have car based kills count a bit for the driver as well? since he is an accomplice and a good driver can make all the difference when shooting out of a window.

    but i see there's a lot of good stuff going on with APB behind closed doors.

    and very nice to see qwentle is still around, hopefully we'll have a nice fight in the CB or OB just like in the original APB... still gotta get back at him for all those death's >.<

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  42. Nice new District, now I wish more to be a part of the Beta then before...

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  43. ZOMBIE MODE. ZOMBIE MODE. ZOMBIE SURVIVAL MODE IN THE ASYLUM DISTRICT.

    Yeah, that's a bit overrated huh?
    Still be cool though. :)

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  44. Well to me Extreme G20 Vegas Torque + Power-Up Nitro is pretty awesome since well think when your getting chased & you find yourself getting rammed against a wall & you can easily escape that by doin a flip & the person rammin you hits the wall.

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  45. SO EXCITED about all the changes to the gameplay. The new district looks amazing, I could really see zombies being worked into it as well (Dont listen to players who say they don't want it, the bulk of the non-forum players do) Keep it up G1!!!

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  46. A few things that I want to comment on.

    I don't think you should remove Nitro as an upgrade for player vehicles. The stock cars should be crap, the preset cars should be intermediate vehicles that have good upgrades but can't be customized, and the high-slot player vehicles should be tricked out monsters. If I drop 2mil on a 4slot bishada, I sure as hell want it to be faster than some guy's cheapo preset bishada. If I take the time to work on my car, it should be godly.

    Also, the vehicle spawnpoint idea might also be a good vehicle upgrade instead of a core mechanic. The different levels could be how many players can spawn there within a given time limit (say 30sec). After that limit is hit, the vehicle can no longer be used as a spawn point.

    I also liked how you included some pseudo-code. Keep up the good work, and announce the CB already!

    -PublikDomain

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  47. Do be very careful with Elo system. I understand that APB can weigh the two opposing sides in a match much easier than Riot could because APB is not always 5 on 5, but the system is inherently flawed for teams with no fixed roster.

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  48. Another great post that gives me hope :)

    APB Reloaded is going to be fantastic!

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  49. Very cool. Not crazy about the asylum map, I saw a ramp but I'm wondering if cars will still have a role on the map.

    Designated Driver : Scored based on how far (or long) they drove with other players in the car. X minutes/distance in the car with Y players. Although that risks, having a running total or a delayed sense of achievement. Another idea is whenever a player arrives at an objective in a car it gives X points for every person in the car. Just make sure to only give the points once per person per objective or else we might see people backing in and out of objectives. ;P

    Pack Mule: Scored based on how much ammo teammates restock off the character and their vehicle. Problem is people might just crowd around an ammo car and unload their guns into nothing giving away free points. Maybe tie it to the player who is getting the ammo? If the teammate kills 3 people since last restocking ammo they'd get X by 3 points. Rewards resupplying teammates, as opposed to doing it so you get more grenades.

    IF you do form some kind spawn system linked to teammates, give points for successive friendly spawns. Rewards staying alive.

    Some quick ideas :) Looking forward to APB Reloaded Beta.

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  50. Na skrinah ubezhishche dlya krimov, ya tak ponyal ? Yesli da , to luchshe vse steny grafiti i sataninskimi piktogrammami raspisatʹ, po uglam pustye shpritsy i ispolʹzovannye prezirvativy razbrosatʹ, na stolah i tumbochkah butylki iz pod pivandriya postavitʹ,stupenʹki na lestnytsah zaharkatʹ, poly krovʹyu zabryzgatʹ i obossatʹ, a potolok kopotʹyu i sazhyeĭ zalyapatʹ. U nas v Lyubertsah, vse ubezhishcha dlya krimov vyglyadyat imenno tak. Pered vhodom sheluhi ot semechek nasypatʹ, a na zaborah napisatʹ : "Kino" "Tsoĭ zhiv"

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  51. I was hoping to hear the time Closed Beta will start, then we can test these improvements and get open beta and full game out soon!

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  52. one question/request: Is it possible to give 32bit users the opportunity to play the game in HQ, or is it only 64bit users?

    Btw: i love the effort youre putting into this, and i cant f***ing wait play this new improved APB, ty guys you rock! :D

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  53. i have been folowig this game long long time and i played in the last beta previus (fail version) was good anyways but needed to be worked and you guys are doing such awesome job on this game and I cant friggin wait to play it(test it) on the beta

    its gonna be such an awesome game ^^

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  54. Excellent work by the team of G1, remain so, I can not wait for the closed beta, Greetings from Peru.

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  55. @dreamss

    Upgrades with downsides add a bit more variety into the builds rather than seeing the same 3 crop up constantly (Resistant to bullets, More health, resistant to stun).

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  56. Sounds great, you guys are indeed picking up speed. Might I suggest a new mode, possibly for the asylum district, but it could work for any district really.

    It involves the use of LTL weapons and their inherent overpoweredness. Due to the fact that survivor (used to) increase only HEALTH damage resistance and not stamina damage resistance, criminals were almost always forced to take energizer because LTL weapons were so commonly utilized. This left enforcers with an extra upgrade slot at higher levels. This is a tricky system to deal with because LTL weapons are a cool part of the game, and essential to arrests, but there are so many balance issues involved with them.

    I propose a "Riot" mode or "Riot" bar. This could work in a multitude of ways and add a new dynamic to game play. In a "Riot Mission" the object would be for the criminals to incite a riot by causing massive amounts of property damage by ram raiding, blowing up cars, mugging pedestrians and tagging walls, all the while building enough "damage" to fill a "damage meter" that would then unlock a 1-3 part objective, say, raze an office building? All additional damage done after the damage bar had been filled would go towards multiplying the payout for the mission should the criminals win, but also opens the option of enforcers calling for backup. All of these actions would be fairly easy to commit and would be confined to a portion of the district (say the "docks" portion of the waterfront district)but to even the odds the enforcers would get LTL weapons and ammunition, free of charge, to use just for the duration of that mission. The way enforcers would win would be by arresting -not killing- all of the criminals. It would also have to be removed from regular match making as the mission doesn't work in the same way the rest of the missions do. It could be a mode unlocked by becoming a certain level, playing x amount of missions in x amount of time, or just a special mission type that is held in a special instanced district, I suggest "chaos districts".

    There are many ways to handle LTL weapons but one thing that would simply ruin the game is making them cash shop only. I usually play crim, so I do have a biased standpoint on LTLs, but I know they are staple of the enforcer play style. While they are OP, they can be balanced, but perhaps you could offer the secondary LTL weapons as cash shop items as opposed to all LTL weapons?

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  57. @Vendor
    The general idea behind APB is a cops and robbers based game where criminals run and enforcers chase, occasionally a show-down would take place. But, this mechanic was the entire basis on how the game was made, and sometimes it didn't work but sometimes it worked incredibly well (anyone remember those stay alive for x minutes missions, those were insanely fun :) )

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  58. About the witnessing feature... One thing that might be annoying is that criminals have to do all the work to earn money only to have an enforcer merely "witness" them to get a chance at the cash. How is that balanced exactly? What do the enforcers have to do to earn that money? Crims = do all the crimes, then also win against an enforcer if they are witnessed. Enforcer = just witness the crim and win the mission.

    Also I hope you guys do something about enforcers witnessing and then instantly killing the person they witnessed... Let a mission start right away, but make both sides invulnerable for a moment so the crim at least has a chance to start escaping.

    Witnessing was heavily abused in the old APB where you'd get several enforcers who would witness one crim, the APB goes out, the enforcers take it and instantly kill the crim for a free kill and make it much more of an imbalanced mission.

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  59. when it comes to fixing chases, just let us shoot out the driver's side window, problem solved.

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  60. Some updates are cool, some aren't.

    Please don't remove ALL of the old missions. One of my favorite parts about the original game was the repetition. Playing a mission with the exact same objectives 50 different times and seeing it play out 50 different ways was one of my favorite aspects of the game, and it emphasized the diversity of options you had as a player.

    It's going to be good, but stop changing it so much. I still want to have almost the exact experience I had than when I was playing the old APB. Not a completely new game.

    Asylum looks dumb, to be honest. This is APB, not post-apocalypse burned out buildings.

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  61. Good post, shows you're really making headway on the game. I personally say take your time. I see a lot of people posting "when is the beta", I want it too but I'd rather have a good game. Granted if you bring the beta out sooner then we can test it and give opinions and you'd just have more beta updates and a longer beta period. Either way is fine with me as long as the end product is good.

    I do have some suggestions.

    1. as for respawning. This is tough in a game because you want it to be fair you don't want the other team that just killed you camping out waiting for you. My thought on this is to have different spawn points that you can pick. They can be any hospital, vendor, or near your car (as long as its not to close to where the mission is). I think picking your spawn point will keep the other guys on their toes because they won't know what direction you're coming from.

    The only other thing I can think of is that when someone dies the mission is reset. This way the player doing the mission has to pick the mission again (or another if he/she wants to), and the person who's (maybe) camping on the roof will have to pick another mission and another enforcer will be called on. Also in this case you should make the criminal spawn further away so it gives the new enforcer a chance so the criminal doesn't camp waiting for the cop. The whole idea is to make the game fair for both sides so both have an equal chance.

    2. I think there should be a cover system. This would make things more challenging because people would just run and gun or camp. If there was a good cover system and it seemed like a stalemate then the criminal would either have to move to try and get closer to the objective or in a better place to take out the enforcer or the enforcer would have to move to get into a better vantage point to take out the criminal. I would say make a cover system like Splinter Call or Gears of War. Make it easy to run in and out of cover if you have new cover near you.

    I know this wouldn't be easy to implement but maybe you can make it part of an update after the game is gold (if you feel it would be a good thing to build into the game after the fact). I know when I play a game with a good cover system I play totally different than when I play a game without one.

    3. Witnessing. I'm on the wall on this one. Aidan brought up a good point. What if a criminal and a cop work together to make money. I'm not sure how this could be fixed either. I like the idea behind witnessing but it seems like it could easily be exploited. You could make it so the same cop can't witness the same criminal twice in the same "X" amount of time. Or keep a database of cops that witness criminals and make it so if the same cop witnesses the same criminal over and over that he will be put on a block list for the criminal? Not sure how easy that would be to implement though.

    4. Matchmaking. This is another one that could get tricky. I think the easiest way would be to match via skill. I mean say I went on 10 missions and got killed 4 times you would match make me with someone of similar skill, maybe like 10 missions and 3 deaths or 5.

    5. I don't know how well this would work, probably wouldn't work very well in an MMO but in reality a cop (unless he's dirty) gets paid a salary. So what if cops got all their upgrades for free and the criminals had to pay for them? The cops in this way are basically just trying to get promoted and capture as many bad guys as he/she can, to get a bump in salary which he/she can buy specialty items. You can also make it so a cop can become a "dirty" cop and skim off the top of a bust if he/she wants to (and take the chance of getting caught. If the cop does get caught then he gets kicked off the force and becomes a criminal. This would give people to play enforcers a choice to be either good or bad.

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  62. 6. Another idea that I'm not sure if it would work well or not in an MMO is undercover. A cop can get an upgrade that lets him/her go undercover. This way he/she can become friends with criminals. The upside of this is more pay and if he gets caught he doesn't pay a penalty (as long as he isn't caught stealing money for himself, in which case he'd become a bad cop). The downside of this is not all cops would know he's undercover (only his friends and clan) so a cop that doesn't know he's undercover could kill him. Also on the other side if a criminal kills a cop he could take on the role of a cop. The plus on this would be that it would make it a little easier to pull off crimes.

    To make this even I think names should not be visible unless a criminal is arrested. Everyone walks (drives) around with no on even ground, it would make it easier for a cop to go undercover or a criminal to pretend he's a cop. You can also let criminals and cops wear disguises to make themselves look different. Maybe even let people change the look of their character (add or take off tats, change hair color and other looks), but at a major cost so you don't have people doing it several times a day. If you change your look enough then your name will not show up again.

    7. Death penalty. It seems like without one people just go wild because they have no reason to use real strategy. I'm not saying do permadeath but have some sort of death penalty to make people think twice about just running and gunning it. Maybe you delevel when you die, maybe you get some kind of a death penalty for a certain amount of time and the more you die (maybe meaning the more you run and gun), the longer the death penalty lasts.

    I'm not sure how good these ideas are (they sound good in my head), or how easy they would be to implement. Maybe the game is to far along to even put any of these into effect. They're just ideas I thought of.

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  63. yes stop change all , the game is already to start before and now you add bug , and the people wait for play the game not a new shit , apb is a big flop game , rtw crash and nothing best now , lunch the game and do a patch after , lunch the old game , and after test the new patch , apb is a big flop ! nobuddy want wait for your update of shit

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  65. @Robert

    1) I like the idea of choosing the spawn point. Even if it was just a simple program that picked 2-3 landmarks at a reasonable distance from the objective.

    2) People run and gun'd / camped already. The 3rd person camera let you sit around corners with shotguns or duck down out of sight, popping up to shoot. And you could switch the shoulder that the camera was looking over allowing you to hide yourself. Ontop of that you could lean in that direction allowing you to peek out around corners.

    3) Sounds like a start although the block list seems like it'd make more work for admins. An easier way would just be to decrease the reward for cops each time they witness the same group within a certain time. Plus it'd give incentive for one group enforcers not to just grief another group of criminals by constantly hopping on their group.

    5) In reality yes, cops are issued equipment and paid salary. But ingame it's not cops and robbers. The closest analogies to either side would be mercenaries paid for the job they're hired; and they're allowed to use lethal force against either side. But I digress, the problem I can see with enforcers getting all their upgrades for free, is that it lopsides the gameplay for "realism". If they're cops they get equipment issued to them, and somehow I doubt the SPPD is just going to be handing out machineguns to every new recruit on the force.

    6) I don't get the point to this at all. An enforcer goes undercover, but they're only criminals if they take money? What about when they shoot enforcers? Or when they destroy property?

    7) The death penalty was that you'd lose the mission. Meaning you make less money. There wasn't much in the original game to really fight over. It was kind of like playing a deathmatch game with a huge playerbase; which is cool. But I wouldn't mind something to fight over other than being top place on the leaderboards for pistol kills (for example).

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  66. dont add downforce to upgrade !
    put out the t3 upgrade cheat !
    add new car ! new thing ! new social district ! but the new action map is look very bad

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  67. @master775

    Hey, we all want the game to come out soon. And some of these proposed changes may make the game much better.

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  68. lunch the game in the old style and patch it after ! is not hard to understand ! , wait 2 more year for do a new shit game and lose 87% of the player noway ! mabey in 1 year a game copy of apb is on and best of this team of shit

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  69. the game is already good , the only thing her do is add bug , the gamer hate wait again because we know the game is a flop , only the idiot can buy a game in money lose , look the team of idiot , look the flip car , is a stupid team , lunch the game , do a patch after if the people want a patch

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  70. @Master775

    I'd hazard a guess there's not much hype for APB outside of the people who read this blog (and their friends). And if they do actually read the blog they're willing to wait till beta. They said February for closed beta, it's still February; until March rolls around I'm willing to wait.

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  71. the web site is bad , 70 % of the old gamer is lose anyway , a best game of apb? on apb facebook a pub for crimecraft and soon a best game , because the team su ck here

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  72. @master775

    Meh. I was there for the end of APB, I can wait a little while long for the start of reloaded. And every time they put up a blog post I'm interested because they're taking their time with it. Talking about alot of the problems many people had with the first version and they seem to be trying to fix them.

    I have no proof of that; I can't see the future and I don't know anyone in the company so I have no idea if reloaded will be any good. All we can do is wait and speculate about it. On the other hand, I know posting on this blog probably won't change anything, but neither is ranting incoherently.

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  73. don't bother answering him, master775 is obviously a bad troll.

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  74. I think it would be cool if there was a residential/university like district. You could have your player made homes on the dorm area, and the chaos on the main campus. You could have parking lots on different ends of the campus. The only things left to add are PETS, MEDIC, and HOMES.

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  75. @King

    Hehe. That assumes that some of these toons are smart enough to get an education. ;P

    I WOULD love to see some kind of "headquarters" scattered around the maps. Maybe have specific missions in the area work towards earning them, with the clan that owns it able to stylize it to their tastes.

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  76. good job nice to see this game going up and up.

    Just Didn't like the district map, its like horror not action and light map (its not like our old apb, we need more light and more streets ;) ), this map more like Resident evil or Silent hill or even zombie map, we need action game with light, please.

    Can't wait to play Closed Beta :)

    P.S. wonder when will be closed beta ??? ?

    In game nickname: Krrris

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  77. The 3rd district should have a zombie mode! Maybe even implement a enforcer + Crim gameplay (The enemy of my enemy is my friend....mode)

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  78. I have been unwell since quite some time now. The various treatments did not seem to work on me to a great extent, but after reading your article and after following the instructions given by you, I surely can feel the difference.

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  79. I hope the premium weapons arent too overpowered. A good way is to make premium items available ingame but make them very diffcult to get.

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  81. Oh s*** the enforce is coming! Quick hit the nitro and let get the hell out of here. -flip- LOL

    Keep the good work, I like how APB been developing up to now. I trust in your decisions.

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  82. Writing from 3Crows Studio (www.3crowsstudio.net);

    You mention in the balancing of the matches, that it bases it's decision on skill of the player, yet my personal experience of play the original game was that it was only how much armor and powerful guns that won the fight, there is no system of skill, no particular or priority hit detection *(ie weakspots/headshots) So where exactly have you changed the game to include gamers being gamers and showing off reaction times and skills?

    If you are a developer and would/can be interviewed for publication please get in touch.

    www.3CrowsStudio.net

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  83. @Si Tye

    You couldn't be more wrong. Upgrades hardly meant anything if you had proper skill. Me and my clan would reroll criminal alts (as enforcers) and still win from fully upgraded teams simply through teamwork.

    Perhaps you felt upgrades decided who would win because you had none and those who did have them also had skill, because they had been playing a considerable amount of time...

    Sure it helped but skill could still easily counter upgrades. A lot of missions could be won without having to kill the enemy. Or like I said, using teamwork, 2vs1 without upgrades is way better than the 1 guy with upgrades...

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  84. @Raul

    Yep. Notably the JG and HVR killed in 2 shots no matter if they had full upgrades or no upgrades. And both of those weapons are quite easy to get through contacts, or off the market; can't remember the exact price but it wasn't much.

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  85. Remember, abandoned asylums must have a frightening, poorly lit basement. ... with 'rave' party. ;)

    Its after all a reoccurring scene in many crime movies to have a manhunt going through a stacked, low lit dance floor.

    Furthermore one of the problems with the old APB, was it had had almost no consequence for enforcers to hurt a NPC, and it just seemed like one of those things that broke the illusion of playing the game.

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  86. That little video alone makes me yearn for the streets of San Paro once more!

    PLEASE let me into the closed beta! I even have my original copy of the game STILL installed on my h/d and all of the screenhots I took. :D

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  87. I've never played APB, but it sounds like you guys know what you're doing with a game that went down the drain. :D

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  88. Will there be any way to pay for a beta spot. Maybe in form of buying a form of Collector Edition or similar? I'd be happy to pay atleast :) Sure the same goes for alot of others.

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  89. I run a new Fansite and I find it pretty hard to get in touch with G1. Can anyone tell me how to contact the community manager for APB?
    Thanks a lot!

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  92. Maybe you should make that a free-for-all area along with the chaos worlds.... asylums ARE for the insane and chaotic.

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  93. you nee to put in a survival mode, with zombies or waves of enemies whith funny physics so they just fly about the place if blown up or something

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  94. First of all watch that money system for witnessing I could still see a problem with that.

    For the upgrades make a class call. In otherwords, make all the upgrades in one class, that way all you have to do is change the one class and it effects everything. (Atleast that's how I would do it, or global variables).

    As for the Vegas, thank you for the tourque boost again, and the Nitro video was a great laugh. The upgrade system I like, the trade offs sound good (look at TF2 they did well)

    The rank system and who to match, I would like to point out Halo 3. It works similar to that Chess algorithm, and seemed to balance the game well.

    I think that's everything, oh speaking of money, I will say it again, please do not put preset prices on customizations in the game (like designs) that's how I made my money, and sometimes the design wasn't complex but I spent alot of time making sure it looked accurate. To do this would really change my interest in the game as this was my money maker and I was good at it.

    Well looks like everything is awesome (oh btw those maps remind me of Scarface, Bioshock 2, and gears of war. And for ideas a kind of hill would be fun, or survival mode again waves of zombies or something, ever better crims and enforcers have to work together, put a nice twist on things.)

    Can't wait to get back to APB, sometihng has been missing in my life ever since it closed

    Ange1ofD4rknes, M3dusa - Zombie
    APB FOREVER!

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