Mayor Jane Derren's San Paro First Ever Open Conflict Easter Egg Hunt 2015

Hello Citizens,

Wanted to provide an update on where we are at this week.

After reviewing our options, we have decided to remove the TROUBLEMAKER from the ARMAS store later this week.

The plan is to give it a proper review and balanced the weapon accordingly, once the weapon has been balanced we will announce its return to the ARMAS store.

Those that have purchased the TROUBLEMAKER will still be able to utilize it in game.

The other topic is the Easter Event for this year. Much like with the Halloween Event last year, I felt that we needed just a few issues addressed in order to provide the best experience possible. We were planning to release the event on Wednesday but instead will be releasing it on the Thursday (at the usual maintenance time 9 AM UTC).

That one extra day will allow us to be confident with what was created and to properly review the final changes prior to release.



THE RULES FOR THIS YEAR'S :

Mayor Jane Derren's San Paro First Ever Open Conflict Easter Egg Hunt 2015

OBJECTIVE: 

Collect as many EGGS as possible by MUGGING BUNNIES, CHICKENS as well as other PLAYERS. Collect as many EGGS as you can during the Easter Egg Hunt 2015 to earn TITLES, REWARDS and the coveted TROPHY.

• The EASTER EGG HUNT 2015 EVENT is a free for all, no teams and no factions.
• AT START NPC BUNNIES and CHICKENS will be spawned in the district, the first BUNNY/CHICKEN MUGGED will start the game (20 Min playtime)

MUGGING SCORING:

BUNNIES: 1 POINT
CHICKENS: 5 POINTS

RULES:

• PLAYER successfully KILLS another PLAYER EARNS HALF OF THEIR COLLECTED EGGS (NOT ONES THAT ARE BANKED).
• PLAYER that has been KILLED will LOSE HALF OF THEIR COLLECTED EGGS (NOT ONES THAT ARE BANKED).
• PLAYER that has been MUGGED will LOSE ALL OF THEIR COLLECTED EGGS (NOT ONES THAT ARE BANKED).
• PLAYER successfully MUGS another PLAYER EARNS ALL OF THEIR COLLECTED EGGS (NOT ONES THAT ARE BANKED). 
• PLAYERS THAT SUCCESSFULLY MUG will be invulnerable and receive a speed boost to allow them to make a quick escape in case they are under threat from others. The invulnerable player will also have their weapons unequipped for the duration of this effect. The effect will be cancelled if you enter a vehicle or activate certain character mods.
• It’s not possible for other PLAYERS to interfere with a MUGGING

Egg Bonuses:

Once a PLAYER have EGGS, you can bank the amount by delivering them to a contact. Delivered EGGS can earn a PLAYER a BONUS amount.
DELIVER EGGS TO A CONTACT to BANK YOUR EGGS AND EARN A BONUS:

1st Time is a 5X BONUS
2nd Time is a 3X BONUS
3rd Time is a 2X BONUS

All others DELIVERIES HAVE no BONUS APPLIED, but the EGGS will be BANKED

ADDED NOTES:

• In order to allow players to sneak up on others to mug them, players won’t be displayed on the radar
• HUD markers will display where the CHICKENS are located.
• HUD markers will be displayed for the top 20% of Players.
• BUNNIES and OTHER PLAYERS will not have a HUD marker and can only be displayed by line of sight.

PRIZES TO BE WON: THREE NEW TITLES, EGG HEAD MASK TROPHY AND JOKER TICKETS (MAX 100 A DAY).

These rules will also appear on the APB Forums.

Thank you again for your patience regarding the EASTER EVENT delay, as well as the upcoming removal of the TROUBLEMAKER from ARMAS. Expect its return as soon as it is properly been reviewed and tweaked.

Till later Citizens,

MoK

Easter Egg Hunt 2015

Hello Citizens,

I would like to start off with a thank you, to the members of our community that have taken the time to answer my Q&A questions. The responses you provide will better help us to refine APB.

The next Q&A will be started shortly, when it does please feel free to ask a few more questions and I will answer them in the same time span as my last.

Now on to the meat of my blog post J

The Easter weekend is approaching and what better way to celebrate than with a brand new event. The goal for this event was to take last year’s theme and change it up in order to make it fresh.

We took last year’s Bunny Mugging gameplay and changed it up a considerable amount in order to present to you:

Mayor Jane Derren's San Paro First Ever Open Conflict Easter Egg Hunt 2015 aka The M.J.D.S.P.F.E.O.C.E.E.H 2015 (J)



Go out and capture as many eggs as possible. Mug a BUNNY, A CHICKEN or even other PLAYERS in order to claim as many eggs your grubby little hands can hold. Squirrel your eggs safely with a contact or carry all the eggs with you, till the very end. Play your way… choose to play alone, play with friends (no groups), back stab friends or just sneak around grabbing all you can. The event is yours to enjoy, so go MUG, SHOOT and BANK your way to new titles, rewards and the new Easter Egg Event Trophy.

The official rules will be posted in our forums.

So I look forward to continuing our Q&A, reading your answers and hope you enjoy this year’s Easter Event.

The fun starts on 4/1/2015!

So have a safe holiday weekend everyone, till later gang.

MoK

Prepare for Migration to New San Paro World Servers

In our last post, we talked about how we plan to make your APB experience run more smoothly by upgrading the district server hardware to the latest generation technology. Today we'll share our plans to address your calls for server merges, how that fits with the console release, and what you can expect during this process.

Migration Considerations

Two critical factors that affect your gameplay quality are latency (ping time) and population size. Lower ping times mean more responsive combat and driving mechanics (not to mention the separate projected currently underway to change the entire matchmaking system).

Generally higher population size on its own also helps improve matchmaking and creates more vibrant social interactions. Having more servers throughout the world reduces latency for some players by reducing their physical distance, but that comes at the expense of server population size. Our new design should strike a reasonable balance between the two.

First, our new World Server hardware allows us to effectively double the capacity of the original World Servers, which avoids the need now and in the future to have multiple "worlds" in any one location.

Second, APB:R currently has 5 distinct 'worlds' - Colby (US West), Joker (US East), Obeya (EU1), Patriot (EU2), and Han (Asia). After analyzing millions of player data including connection quality, feedback, and even social patterns, we concluded that running 5 worlds overly limits the kinds of social interaction that the APB community thrives on. By combining these into 3 larger servers, we effectively double the population size of each and open up a massive number of potential new connections between characters - by 2,253,728,674,140 in the EU to be exact.

One "World" per continent, per platform.

The plan for the PC game is to construct two new high-capacity, high-performance centrally located world servers for PC, one in the US and one in the EU. In the EU, Obeya and Patriot will be combined into a single world that will remain in Frankfurt, Germany but hosted on the new hardware. Likewise in the US, Colby and Joker will be combined into a new world that will now be based in Dallas, TX. Han (the Asian world) will live either in Singapore or Sydney, and there is still a fierce debate about the best location for that world. 

These new world servers will be both larger and faster than the current ones, with the US server to be hosted on the Softlayer platform outlined in the previous post, and the EU server to run on a combination of Softlayer and the same type of blade servers that outperform even the Overkill servers.

Since the Han server exclusively serves the entire Asia region, we do not plan to make significant changes to it in the near future.

What Should You Expect?

The migration schedule to the New Worlds is as follows:

• EU - April 22nd
• US - May 6th

Character Names: Two characters on the combining servers might have the same name. Whenever this occurs, we will choose which character has priority to keep the name. This will be based on: total play time, last login time and character age. Any character that is not given priority will instead be given a free name change option.

So be sure to login and play on your characters over the next 30 days, especially ones that you haven't played on in a while. While we cannot guarantee naming priority, doing so will improve your odds. We will be sending email notifications shortly to make sure most players have received at least a 30 day warning prior to the upcoming New World Migration.

Clan Names: Like characters, clans names might also conflict during the merge. Should this happen, we will give priority to the clan based on its size and the total playtime/recent activity/age of its members. Clans that are not given priority will have their names slightly modified, and the clan leader can submit a ticket to request a new name.

World Names: While we like the current names (Colby, Joker etc.) we are open to calling the new worlds by new names. Any name suggestions would be greatly appreciated on the forums (you can visit the forums here).

Console Worlds

Along with the new location for the PC Worlds in Dallas and Frankfurt, each of those two locations will also host 2 new World Servers dedicated to the Console version, for a total of 6 World servers; Dallas-PC, Dallas-X1, Dallas-PS4, and Frankfurt-PC, Frankfurt-X1, Frankfurt-PS4 (each of those of course need brand new names as well).

We look forward to bringing you more details as we get closer to the live migration start, but in the meantime, stay connected and simply play APB Reloaded to cement your claim to any existing character and clan names.