Written By Qwentle, Lead Designer
Now that Halloween is out of the way, it’s time to talk about APB Reloaded v 10 (aka 1.10.0), which will appear in the next few weeks. This is New Breed Part 3, and introduces two new T5 contacts, "Birth" and "Templeton," which will be available to anyone that has completed the two boss contacts from their faction’s organisations.
Birth
and Templeton bring with them a large number of goodies that players can unlock
through pledging and completing missions with them. Along with a selection of vehicles, presets and
Capacity increases, they also bring a number of new modifications and weapons
to the table. Let’s take a look:
With
Birth and Templeton, we’re mainly focusing on character modifications. With a
number of very useful modifications in all categories, we hope to see a much
larger amount of diversity on the streets of San Paro.
Field
Supplier – Wide Radius: This field supplier can supply teammates from a longer
range at the cost of a slightly shorter deployed time. In addition all ammo
suppliers will now automatically resupply any valid targets in range that are
not actively firing.
Spotter: An activatable character modification, this works similar to
tagger but without requiring you to hit an enemy. Simply activate and paint
enemy targets to show them to all teammates, even through walls.
Car Surfer: A utility character mod, this allows you to ride on the roofs of moving vehicles. Great for hitching a ride when there’s not enough seats, or when using a heavy weapon, it does however leave you heavily exposed and without the safety of the car interior to hide when you are hit.
Flak
Jacket: A Health modification, this heavily reduces damage taken from
explosions. This comes at the cost of your ability to dish out explosive damage
however, reducing the number of grenades you have available by 1.
Fragile: A Health modification, this slightly reduces health (14%, just enough that
you won’t be 1-shotted by an HVR), but increases your sprint and run speed by
the same amount. Perfect for fast assaults and task item carrying.
High-Magnification
Scope: An upper-rail modification for weapons, this is functionally similar to
a Hunting Sight. It also sets your weapons zoom to a very high value (4.66x
normal magnification) and replaces your reticule with a Sniper crosshair at the
cost of removing your non-marksmanship crosshair completely.
New
Weapons
Half-Brick
/ Eight-Ball: These are new Grenades that physically hit the target for high
damage, depending on how long they have been in the air. At extreme ranges,
these can kill instantly, though require high skill to land hits on an aware
target. The Eight-Ball flies faster, but the Half-Brick kills earlier in its
flight-time. Due to the lack of noise, these can be devastating as stealth
weapons, for targeting stationary campers from long range, or just for a bit of
fun.
OSCAR
: Obeya Corps. Armory have made several modifications to their successful OBIR
range in order to provide a weapon for the close-quarters urban market. With
the brake removed, iron sights, a 2 round burst and a CQC stock, the Obeya
Systems Carbine is much more accurate on the move, giving a burst fire
alternative to the Joker Carbine.
We’re
also making a number of substantial bug fixes and changes to the game. The most
noticeable one is the OSMAW. We wanted to keep our Rocket Launcher feel very
powerful, but be primarily useful in an anti-vehicular role, and be very counterable
while on foot. In this regard
we’ve implemented a Wind-Up system for it. When firing you now need to hold the
button for 1.75 seconds while the rocket is primed then fired. This stops
players firing it directly after exiting a vehicle, or directly at your feet
from point blank. Due to the balancing brought about by this change, we’ve been
able to buff the launcher in several other areas to keep its power. It now
carries three spare rockets (so can be affected by Bandolier), has a larger
kill-radius, and has a faster travel time. While this may seem like a lot of
improvements to an already very formidable weapon, the wind-up timer ensures
that it performs most actions either the same or slower than before.
Here's
a bit of maths on the subject.
Old OSMAW
|
New OSMAW
|
|
Firing
after leaving a vehicle
|
Instant
|
1.75 seconds
|
Switching
to an OSMAW and firing
|
2 seconds
|
0.7+1.75=2.45 seconds
|
Reloading
and Firing
|
3.5 seconds
|
2.25+1.75=4 seconds
|
Overall
it takes longer to perform actions with the OSMAW, hence the improvements to
projectile speed, ammo capacity and kill radius. This should make it a more
effective primary weapon, and feel snappier to use, but in reality be quite easy
to counter by an aware team.
Other
improvements include weapon damage visually affecting vehicles, a new
alternative weapon skin for players that have progressed past tier 1, changing
the default pistol to the FBW, and a lot more. We’ll have full patch notes for
you soon.
Next
time we'll be talking about the next patch, 1.10.1, which includes a number of
fundamental balance changes among other additions, and our upcoming plans for
Christmas Fun.
