Last chance for 50% G1 Credit Bonus, ends tonight (April 30)!

[Edit: May 2nd at 3:00pm PST: The bonus credit process just completed for all players. You should now have your 50% credit bonus in your account (if you spent credits in Armas during the bonus period). Enjoy!]

Just pointing out that 11:59pm PST April 30 (or 07:59am UK time on May 1) marks the end of the "post 1.7 and tactical gear" 50% G1 credit bonus, where 50% of the G1 credits you spend in the marketplace will be redeposited into your G1 account! So if you have not yet gotten your items from Armas, you should take advantage of the last few hours of the bonus.

We threw the bonus in as another incentive to smooth all the minor issues after the 1.7 major release and to coincide with the tactical gear pack this weekend.

Here is the forum link for the actual details: http://forums.gamersfirst.com/topic/274877-urban-warfare-packs-50-g1c-refund-promotion/

Last time we had a G1 credit bonus was 10 months ago, when the game went from Closed to Open Beta (and at that time it was a 100% bonus!), so chances are that there will not be another credit bonus for quite some time after this one (though we usually try to throw them in once a year or so).

See you in San Paro!

/TechMech

Gear Up & Roll Out - Paramilitary and Tactical Armas Release!

As announced in our earlier posts we will be releasing the all new Paramilitary Pack along with a revamped re-release of the Tactical Gear Pack. When will you be able to get your hands on the new Gear?  This weekend starting Friday!

For those of you who remember, the Tactical Gear Pack first made its debut on the Armas Marketplace during Thanksgiving Weekend for a Limited Release.  The first rendition of the 'Tac Pack' had a very limited release as it was only available for purchase for that weekend only.

Five months later, we're bringing the Tac Pack back. While this release will not be quite as "Limited" as the first time we released the Tactical Gear Pack, we do have a limited offer some unique Bonus Gifts and suped up bundles that will only be available for the first couple of weeks for the release.  Here is what's in store for you:

• Paramilitary Gear Pack + FREE Paramilitary N-TEC 
• Tactical Gear Pack + FREE Tactical CR-5
• Paramilitary Urban Warfare Pack 
• (Includes Paramilitary Gear Pack, FREE Paramilitary N-TEC and Nulander Nomad Q134)
• Tactical Urban Warfare Pack 
• (Includes Tactical Gear Pack, FREE Tactical CR-5 and Seiyo Citadel V4)
• Seiyo Citadel V4 (4-Slot Vehicle)
• Nulander Nomad Q134 (4-Slot Vehicle)
• Combat Helmet
• Elbow Pads
• Knee Pads 

New Gear, new Vehicles, and new unique Weapons are here for you to gear up and roll out!

And because we want to share a little look behind the scenes of the making of this new release we have our Lead Character Artist, Peter Andersson, sharing with us the process and back story for our latest Armas release.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Written by Peter Andersson - Lead Character Artist)

With 1.7.0 we’re seeing both the release of the Paramilitary clothing and gear pack and the re-release of the Tactical pack. I wanted to give you guys an insight into some of the thought processes behind making them and also a hint at where we will be looking in the future when it comes to making more character assets.

To get the full picture I’m going to jump back to when G1 and Reloaded first took APB on. When we were asking ourselves what we could improve in our respective areas I had some pretty clear ideas of where I wanted the character assets to go. The biggest issue in my mind was that, for a game that primarily uses combat as its core game play element, there was a noticeable lack of character assets to support that notion. Work therefore started on a set of gear that was aimed entirely at pushing the combat aspect of APB. This eventually led to the release of the Tactical pack. Most of the inspiration came from professional combat units; tactical vests and webbing, ammunition pouches, Kevlar helmets, knee-pads, elbow-pads etc.

Combat gear inspiration

Upon the first release of the Tactical pack there were two things that stood out in the feedback we received. Firstly, people seemed to like this choice of a pack of gear revolving entirely around the combat aspect of the game. That part obviously made us happy and feel that we were somehow taking this in the right direction. Secondly, they seemed to think it was much more useful for kitting themselves out as an enforcer than a criminal so that for criminal players, the pack felt somewhat lacking. When I saw this feedback I felt that the players very much had a point. Knowing that this pack had drawn its inspiration heavily from combat units which was the main idea, I also knew that those units were mainly elite police and army divisions. These professions obviously have a much stronger connotation to law enforcement than crime out there in the real world so this reaction felt natural and justified.

Too similar

We decided that even though the direction seemed good enough, some tweaking of the plan was in order to better support the idea of the criminal/enforcer factions. We therefore started looking into a set of assets that would serve the criminals better, which led to the creation of the Paramilitary pack. This pack features some assets similar to the Tactical pack like the idea of an ammunition vest, separate pouches and additional webbing, only for the criminals we have gone in a different direction with the style. Their version looks more like it would have been obtained from an army surplus store or some other unofficial source, maybe dug out from a dusty attic somewhere and appropriated for urban warfare. We’re looking at the same underlying idea but executed differently for each faction.

Same thing, different look

In my mind this strengthens the perception of factions in APB and will hopefully help players feel more unique in the game world. Whatever you decide to do with your character customization, this prevents someone from the opposing faction turning up looking just like you. Not only does it feel inappropriate that somehow an opposing faction member has been able to kit themselves out exactly like you, it tends to confuse game play quite a bit too. As we have seen already in internal play tests, introducing these rather distinguishing faction-specific items has meant that all of a sudden it’s become that much easier to see who is friend and who is foe in frantic fire fights. Having the art content support the game play in that way definitely constitutes a win in my book.

A clearer faction representation

There are indeed other areas we want to support too, such as the many fashion styles and subcultures of the real world you can draw inspiration from when you’re designing a full video game wardrobe for a game like APB. More fancy clothing is definitely on the agenda, not just bulletproof vests and ammunition pouches. Exactly what they are will remain undisclosed at this point but I’d like to let you know that work has already continued in both areas: cool clothing as well as more combat related gear. We are definitely not short of ideas. On the contrary the idea list is massive and the challenge we’re facing is rather determining exactly how and when these ideas will best manifest themselves.

I hope this provides a little insight into what lead up to this asset release and some clue as to what direction we’re planning to take it in. I’m looking forward to the next time I’ll be writing an announcement of new exciting stuff for the game.

1.7 now live (a.k.a launching is hard) and... One Free 3-Day Premium for All !

[UPDATE: the code distribution completed at 4:40pm PST April 20. If you do NOT have a code in your account when you visit the Armas marketplace after 4:40pm PST / 02:40 EU time - then please submit a support ticket. Keep in mind only accounts created BEFORE the distribution started are eligible for the code]

Ok - so - launching a build with as many inter-dependent changes as 1.7 is a giant task, and while having been thoroughly tested, you never know what little trolls will rear their heads in the machinery when it hits live volumes of players.

Just after launch we experienced several unexpected server crashes, most related to an unexpected bug in the auction house when dealing with live data. Most of the issues were mitigated throughout the day, and things are becoming more stable. Also - just because the timing could not have been worse - our private backbone provider, which links our datacenters, decided to have connectivity issues at the same moment, making our troubleshooting much harder than it would normally have been, and also introducing strange lag issues. That too appears to have been mostly cleared up.

We are likely to have a minor update patch early next week to patch lingering issues.

Now that the dust has settled, Quinzel and the APB team want to extend a general 'thanks' to everyone who have stuck it out and are now playing 1.7. It's critical to get as much play time in as possible into 1.7, so we can finalize all the changes going in to the next major version.

So just in time for the weekend she will be sending out a few million 3-day premium codes to everyone who logs in, so look for a notice in your email inbox in the next day or so that your personal code has been activated (and no - you don't really have to do anything to be eligible to receive one other than just play the game).

Once the promo has been triggered, you just need to open the Armas marketplace (and if you haven't done so before, this could be a new experience), and claim your free 3 day premium by clicking the "Redeem Code" button at the top of the Armas marketplace page.

When you get to that location, the code will "automagically" have been deposited in your account (it will appear at the bottom of the "Redeem Code" page - so you need to click the code to activate it in your account.

Once you redeem your code, you will enjoy 3 days of 20% off everything in the store, as well as faster progression and all the other premium goodies.

This is our little token of saying "thanks for playing right at the launch, in spite of any hiccups that may crop up at a major version launch!"

Check your email in the next day or so, and we'll see you in San Paro!

/TechMech

More 1.7.0 - Get Ready for Countdown!

Welcome back to the second half of our “New Breed Part 1” blog post!  As mentioned in the first half, here we will get into more details on the other new features coming with the big 1.7.0, including environmental changes, new weapon mechanics, and new character mechanics.  

As with any of the changes made to the game, we make a concerted effort to take into account the feedback given to us from the Community.  In 1.7 we have tried to address both community feedback and to implement new items that will give us room to grow the game in the future.  On that note, without further ado;

Environmental Changes: You will see that we’ve made quite a few improvements in both the Financial District and the Waterfront District.  While, most of the changes focused on Financial we think you’ll like what we’ve done for both.  And we didn’t forget about our latest maps from Fight Club. Some of the things we did to improve Fight Club maps include removing a few camping spots and adding details where we felt more depth was needed. While city planning can be a full-time job, we’ve also made sure to add a few new areas in preparation for future content updates, where some of the other New Contacts (cough – New Breed Part 2 – cough) will have a home.

Financial

Gaijin Club: A smoking area has been added to the back of Gaijin for late night clubbers. This is accessible through a new entrance on the top floor and from the alleyways around the rear. This extra entrance helps make the area a lot less impenetrable as a defensive location.  Now you can dance, hang out, and assault other players all in the same locale.  Sounds like a fun night to us!

St Medina's Incinerator: The Incinerator Building (opposite Wilson LeBoyce) will now have an extra rear entrance added to the roof, so take advantage of this new route of attack. The rear courtyard now contains overflow waste waiting to be incinerated.  This place might be ideal to hide a dead body or two – I mean – an ideal place to recycle a thing or two!

Alexandra Park and Display: The top two floors of the car park have been opened up, with the top floor TipToe’s stomping ground. Multiple entrances and a gaping hole in the floor for access to the level below make this a great combat space also. Remodelled parking complex in the Financial District now gives players access to its top floor.  Keep one thing in mind – only visit the top floor if you have business with TipToe. If you don’t she might give you a one-way express ticket to the ground floor (courtesy of the gaping hole in the floor)…

New-Cross Skate Park:  You might remember getting a first glance at this area from our sneak peek video of the new Brick Mod. The Skate Park has extensively been rebuild and re-envisioned. This area now features a number of ramps and jumps, and has access to vehicles. The perfect place for all you aspiring stunt car drivers and extreme sportsmen/women.

Pretorian Offices (Justin Teng): A new stairwell has been installed in the rear of the building allowing access to the upper section of the building, making this popular camping ground far harder to hold.
SSPD Offices (Violet Prentiss, Ty Durrant & Grissom): The interior decorator has been in and given these offices a fresh lick of paint and installed some new lighting fixtures. 

Waterfront

Prentiss Boxing Club: For all you real contenders out there head to his spot to train in the “noble art” and maybe learn a few more “unorthodox” methods of combat. The gym itself is not currently open to the public but its break area and upper balcony are, offering a strongly defensible location to set up in. A stairwell and offices have been created inside the Prentiss Boxing Club to give better access to the roof-top as well.

Villanueva Hotel: The luxurious sea front property has had some work done to its upper balcony, allowing Michael Simeone to relax in style - though he’s thinking of hiring some security to keep to riffraff out… An extra stairway has been created to the top level, and the area has had some graphical improvements to bring out the hotel class.

Rimbaud Cocktails: A new cocktail bar has been opened in the down town area the Waterfront district, just across from the Tsunami Casino. An exclusive bar, its popularity among the wealthier of San Paro inhabitants has blessed it with a 24-hour alcohol licence. The cocktail menu is mixed Mandarin and Renaissance Italian. Apparently, the house Absinthe is the best in the city.

Baylan

There has been an extra 'base' area added near the cranes, and the enforcer spawn point has been moved to the Dog-Crate in the north-west. The previous enforcer spawn has also had a small makeover, with extra entrances in and out. This is primarily to facilitate the new 'Scavenger' Game-type (I'll cover that in the Fight Club Challenges section).

A shipment of new creates was recently “commandeered” by the factions and relocated (with some planks they also “borrowed”) to give them new routes to navigate the Baylan container yard. The Criminal faction have also set up a new, better fortified, base at the feet of the crane. The billboards by the Enforcer’s base are now free for anyone looking to throw up some of their tags.

Beacon

The top floor of the north tower in the beacon has had a few changes to make it less defensible. In addition, the scaffolding on the west side has been extended, giving an extra (though risky) fast access from the fifth to eleventh floors.

The construction site has recently had some new scaffolding installed, making it easier to ascend to the roof from the front of the building. General work has been on going, so you find various tweak and changes to this decadent high rise building. Some blank billboards, that are just asking to be tagged, have also been installed at the entrance to the construction offices.

Vehicle Changes

New ambient taxi with a roof mounted advertising board. Mobile billboard sounds like a good place to advertise and recruit new clan members? Maybe you are planning on having a player event and want to spread the word. The sky is the limit for things you might want to show on that cab! (Just keep in mind the limit for the things you CANNOT show, and you will avoid the banhammer).
We also will have new vehicle kits for both the Enforcer and Criminal carrying kits for you to carry your group in style.  And as hinted here and there we’ll have a few new Uber Packs, new Vehicles and Kits in store for you soon.

New Weapon & Character Mechanics

Now, Qwentle, our Lead Designer spent some late evenings a long with the rest of our team, trying to make some of these needed adjustments become a reality.  So if you see him around be sure to say ‘Thanks’ or emote some happy dance.

Marksmanship and sprinting mobility improvements: Now we have different speeds for Marksmanship, depending on type. For all but the heavy weapons, this has either increased or stayed the same. Large weapons such as the heavy-snipers and LMGs have had their marksmanship and run speeds reduced, but have been given the ability to sprint, albeit at a much lower speed than normal weapons. This removes an arbitrary constraint (not being able to sprint) while still maintaining the effect (the weapon is bulky and slow).

Marksmanship and sprinting movement speed is now modified by the weight and encumbrance of a weapon. This means that you can technically sprint with every weapon, but how fast you move will be determined by the aforementioned modifiers.

Kevlar Change: Kevlar will now only adjust movement speeds, and not acceleration. It now slows as follows:
L1: +10%hp, -10% Sprint Speed
L2: +20%hp, -10% Sprint Speed, -10% run speed
L3: +30%hp, -15% Sprint Speed, -15% run speed

ACT44 ‘Last Stand’ Change: Qwentle wanted to ensure the retail box magnum was not overpowered, and perhaps erred too much on the side of caution.  But to re-balance things, we’re switching out the mod for this weapon and replacing it with a mobility sling mod. This should allow it to move faster when aiming. This should fit it into a fairly interesting place, being a high damage side-arm that can be aimed and fired when moving at near run-speed.

So there you have it folks!  We hope all of you are prepared for New Breed Part 1 (1.7.0) and as you get to make your way with exploring the new content please feel free to share your feedback with us.  For more nitty-gritty details, we’ve pre-emptively posted Release Notes on our Official Forums - http://forums.gamersfirst.com/topic/270423-170-patch-notes/

There have of course been many additional improvements that will make life harder for unpleasant players and for cheaters, though we will not discuss those in an open forum. That's an ongoing battle which continues unabated behind the scenes.


So stay tuned for more news about 1.7 when we go LIVE and keep your eyes peeled for some special upcoming promotions and Armas Releases around the release of 1.7, by visiting the Armas or checking your registered GamersFirst e-mail.

Genitalia and Bigotry - "Drawing the Line" !

(Post by Quinzel, Producer of APB)

San Paro - a city where anarchy and iron-fisted justice clash.  Who is to say what is “right” or “wrong” in this concrete jungle?  Where does that leave you in this M-rated game?  What does “rated M for Mature” even mean in San Paro?

It would surprise me if anyone playing the game has not seen an inappropriate player-created image.  Whether it is a customized van with a “graphic” paint job or a topless toon on one of the display points in Social District – we have seen it all!  Now, what happens when players do this?  Some players get banned and some players are warned and you are left scratching your head asking, “Where do we draw the line?”

Apparently we (the production team) are all-powerful and as noted before we reserve the right to ban people for any reason what-so-ever. But as the producer of the game, I really do want to help define what we think “our community standards” are supposed to mean, even in a game intended for a 18+ audience.

One morning, I found an e-mail thread reported by our Community Team that there were some questionable nudity images in Social:

G1 Staffer 1, “We need a clean-up in aisle Colby – display points section. Is there anything we can do about this – I have the name of the players that posted this stuff. Let me know please.”

G1 Staffer 2, “I don’t see the problem. It’s just some boobs :P?”

G1 Staffer 3, “I second that  J 18+ Rated game J

G1 Staffer 4, “I actually find it kinda comforting…”

G1 Staffer 5, “Unless she has a swastika for a nipple or something I don’t think we have to remove it, 18+ game.”

We discussed this thread in one of our weekly team meetings to make sure we define our general policy and refreshed messaging to the community.  One point mentioned was that the game by design has characters that show a lot of skin.  If you go to our Character Customization Editor you can get characters down to their underwear.  Seeing as this was something we built how can we fault the community for doing the same?  

Quick answer – we can’t and we won’t. 

But what about more “disturbing” images involving nudity?  We were already taking actions towards players who created and displayed images that were “disturbing” to both us and other players.  Were nipples acceptable?  How about butt-cheeks?  

So one take away from the meeting was - genitalia is where we draw the line; we did not create that by design.  That line is the base.   Certainly, there are things that exist beyond that line which I’m sure if your imagination wonders far enough you will find.  Furthermore, our rated M for Mature is based off of content we created and have designed for the game.

Looking back at some of the legacy APB Sourcebooks, (documentation from RTW days), I found the following text in one of the design documents:

1.1.1      Adult Material

·         Adult material must be sensitively handled – we are not trying to needlessly shock or offend, but we are trying to put across a real seeming world with a definite edge.

o   No story elements should be gratuitous.

·         Hardcore brutality or cruelty, etc. must be played down.

o   However, the world must feel capable of such things (e.g. such events may be referenced in the story).

·         Explicit sex must not be depicted.

There you have it!  So here is where we can roughly define what our take on “disturbing” might mean; it says right there “Explicit sex must not be depicted.”  It also states, “we are not trying to needlessly shock or offend.”  So here is the general rule of thumb next time you ask yourself, “Can I put this image that I’ve created out on display?”

The last reply from G1 Staffer 5, (“Unless she has a swastika for a nipple…”), is a perfect segue to my next point of discussion – bigotry!

While my office is based in the U.S. my team (GamersFirst and Reloaded) are spread over different continents.  Our APB Reloaded team is an international bunch not to different from our player-base; we have an international player community spread across the world.  With that said, we all should recognize that as an international community we have a diversity of players from a wide range of cultural backgrounds.

We have zero tolerance for any disrespect of diversity. 

It’s not uncommon practice for us to ban accounts that are infringing that respect between players so think twice before you create a characters, symbols, or images in game that are racist, sexist, or discriminate against any of the Protected Classes (based off U.S. anti-discrimination laws).  We clearly DO draw the line at Bigotry, and we also reserve the right to enforce 'community standards' when it comes to sexual imagery.

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the “Protected Classes” generally include race, color, religion, national origin, age, sex and disability (and in some states sexual preference as well).

As an example, there were players in game who were going around wearing swastikas. The symbols were making players around them feel uncomfortable and so we asked that they please remove those symbols.  They refused so we blocked their accounts.  Soon after the banned players tried to contact us through customer support and dispute that we (GamersFirst) were the ones acting discriminatory; they claimed that they were banned for expressing their political views while other players with religious character names were allowed to run around in-game.  These players who were sporting the Nazi symbols in game were defending themselves saying that they never griefed any players in game, never used hacks or exploits, and further more felt uncomfortable seeing players in game with names that had some religious reference or players wearing religious symbols or national flags.

While I don’t want to go into a whole WWII dissertation or lesson in auspicious Asian symbols, let’s just say that in general - in today’s society - Nazi symbols are taken as symbols of hatred. Any symbols or actions that actively and deliberately are aimed to express such hatred are not tolerated. 

While one can argue that swastikas are a political symbol rather than a hate symbol, political affiliation is not a protected class.  There is a difference between a character named “STFU [FILL IN PROTECTED CLASS]” vs.  a character named “iLUVBuddha." And in plain English, if we think you are being overtly and actively offensive, we will ban you. 

Generally we DO try to give players a warning first. So, take this post (and also previous forum posts that have informed the same) as an official first warning.  We are not obligated to warn players but we’d like to think that everyone can make a mistake and try to give people a chance to correct themselves.

We hope that this post has helped clarified any mystical questions about what the boundaries are and why.  If you have to ask yourself twice better not chance it. 

GAME ON!

New Breed Part 1 (1.7.0 Update)

(Post by Quinzel, Producer of APB)

Thank you, TechMech for the formal introductions!  So as promised, with mic in hand, I’ll start getting into all of the juicy details of “New Breed Part 1” – our 1.7.0 Update.    

You might ask yourselves, “Where did the name ‘New Breed Part 1’ come from? Does this mean there will be a Part 2, Part 3…?”  While 1.7.0 might not be considered a major expansion by MMO standards, we felt this MEGA-Update was worthy of a name.  That name is inspired from our added progression content – our “New Breed” of contacts you will get to meet in game very soon. 

For all you Criminals out there, we have a special lady waiting to wreak havoc with you.  Her name is Tiptoe, and she is the long lost daughter of one well-known Bloodrose - Tyron Sennet!  She’s employed by the Blood Roses but runs with her own brood of elite sociopaths. You can find Tip Toe hanging out on top of the APD car park in Financial.  But be warned - the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree!

As for all of you Enforcers out for blood, we have a Prentiss Tiger on the prowl and he’s got a pedigree for taking people out.  Meet DevilDog, an ex-sniper who was honorably discharged from the Marines on medical grounds. DevilDog can be found on the roof (naturally) of the abandoned “Munson’s Screw & Bolt” factory in Financial. 

Should you get on either of these two new contacts’ good graces then you will be rewarded with unlocks for high level Vehicles, Inventory space increases, New Modifications, and new Weapons / Weapon skins.

As some of you have noticed in the past couple of weeks we have been releasing some sneak-peek images and videos for some of the New Modifications through our Official Forums and Facebook.  Here is the full list of Mods and Weapons below:

New Modifications:

• Radar Jammer: This is an activatable character modification that jams all enemy radars within a 50m radius. At the same time, it covers their radar screen with your personal graffiti (or a generic one if you don't have any equipped). It also obscures your own radar (but not your teammates) so it's best to fire just before an engagement when you know where the enemy is but they don't know where you are coming from.
•  Hard Landing: This utility character mod completely removes the 'Heavy Landing' animation, meaning you can drop from heights and be ready to go right away. It comes at the cost of a slight increase in fall damage taken.
• Brick: An office favourite, this activatable vehicle mod places a brick on the accelerator, allowing you to exit your vehicle and have it fly off into the distance. It's great as a distraction tool when entering a combat situation, or coupled with Explosives on a damaged vehicle for a semi-guided bomb.
• Valzipram Tablets: Fairly simple one this, it's a utility character modification that allows you to be hit by vehicles at higher speed without dying. Fairly niche, but good as a utility improvement (though naturally it’s mutually exclusive with Happy Landings and Hard Landing).
• Mobility Sling: This receiver weapon modification improves the speed at which you can move in marksmanship mode, but increasing your equip time.
• Tagger: Familiar to anyone online during the Valentine’s event, we’ve added this to the first contact’s progression. It’s a receiver modification that adds a target above anyone that is hit by your weapon, allowing easier coordinating of fire between groups.
• Muzzle Brake (Horizontal): A barrel modification for weapons, this takes propulsion gases and steers them horizontally, lessening the recoil in that direction at the expense of vertical.

New Weapons:

•  Low Yield Fragmentation Grenades:  lighter frag grenade with the same range but damage similar to percussions. The light nature means you can carry three, along with allowing them to be faster flying and having a shorter fuse timer. Great for flushing enemies or steering combat.
• Tommy Gun: Those that completed the Valentine's event will already have seen this. It's a high capacity, high recoil SMG best fired in marksmanship mode.
• Unique NTEC5 Skin: As a final reward, both DevilDog and Tiptoe give out a personalised NTEC. These have a solid stock with unique colouring and decals.

New Weapons and new Modifications are not the only new things you will get to play with. With the new patch we’ll be adding a number of new character Gear items to purchase on Armas. There’s been a lot of speculation about where the Tactical Pack went after the Thanksgiving sale, and the reason has been because we felt that we were being a little bit unfair. The Tactical pack was very Enforcer themed, and we wanted a Criminal themed set to add as a counterpart. As such, with 1.7.0, we’ll be bringing back a revamped Tactical Pack and adding a Paramilitary Pack for the criminals.

Last but not least, the other major feature to this colossal update will be the highly anticipated Fight Club Challenges! These occur weekly and give players the chance to complete for various prizes. These prizes will range from straight up APB$ (low end prize) to unique vehicles and weapons (top end prize), along with things such as limited usage of Armas weapons and inventory increases.

Each week, both fight clubs will be set to a specific map, game-type and challenge. As we only currently have two maps, these will stay the same until more are complete, while the game-type and challenge will change weekly. The challenges will have three tiers, with the third and second prizes being straight up requirements, and the top prize requiring you to be in the top X% of players that have taken part in the challenge. Our first week’s challenges are as follows:

Deathmatch


Challenge 1: Deal Damage to Enemies in The Beacon and you will qualify for these prizes:

• 1^st Prize: (Top 10% of players). An OCA-626 'Fireball' - a uniquely skinned OCA with a new stock and 3 Open Slots. This prize both gifts a 10-Day version of the weapon and unlocks it for purchase.
• 2^nd Prize: +2 Clothing Inventory Space.
• 3^rd Prize: $10,000 APB$

Scavenger

Challenge 2: Win Matches in Baylan Shipping Storage and you could win these prizes;

• 1^st Prize: Vegas G20 'Firebomb” -A flaming muscle car with a twist, this version contains a unique modification called 'Meteor' which acts like Brick but also causes your car to explode when it next hits something. It also causes it to become much more susceptible to gunfire when active. This prize is both a 10-Day lease and the unlock to purchase.
• 2^nd Prize: NTEC-5 Solid Stock: A 2 Slot Solid Stock NTEC with Mobility Sling and Hunting Sight. This prize is a 20 day lease.
• 3^rd Prize: $10,000 APB$

Seeing as this post is getting a bit lengthy, we’ll save Environmental changes and New Weapon mechanics for our next blog post.  So stay tuned and get ready for New Breeds Part 1!!!!!!!

Now, I should probably explain Scavenger. When the mission starts, both teams are given a base. A number of task items will spawn in the map, and the player's goal is to grab the items and take them back to the base. The difference to the normal 'Grab and Deliver' style modes is that once you have captured the item, it doesn't disappear. Instead you drop the item (you can no longer interact with it) in your base and you gain points for every second you hold it. The enemy can steal the items back. It's kind of like capture the flag, only there are multiple flags and the enemy has to come and get them back.

So that’s what’s coming up in the near future. This work is currently sitting with our QA Team, so we’ll have more for you on dates once we’ve finalized things.

We're back!

Now THAT was a serious hiatus!

A lot of stuff has happened since the last blog entry in October. Between the Greek debt crisis, US Presidential politics and an incredible focus by our Game Studio on the next version of APB, there just never seemed to be time to make a full blog post. And now it's already spring-time again!

Separate from the intense work at our Game Studio, our back-end team has been finalizing a brand new stand-alone MMO publishing platform for people who want to spare themselves the trouble of spending years creating their own MMO publishing system and just want focus on making a great game. Our new platform comes with complete payment systems, in-game analytics, fraud management, in game product management, marketing tools and hosting services, so you can publish your own hard-core free2play MMO to millions of players (just in case YOU, or any of your friends, happen to have built a serious free2play MMO in your garage and you need to reach a global audience) But that is a whole other topic that will be announced completely separately from this blog (at www.reloadedinc.com). So with that interlude... back to APB!

Springtime For APB

We have a TON of game changes coming up in our big 1.7 patch. 1.7 introduces a large number of features, an extended progression system and major changes to core features that we think will make the game a lot more fun for many players.

On the global front we partnered with Innova Systems in Russia last year, and last month Innova launched the APB Open Beta in Russia, and they very quickly hit some pretty impressive player numbers on their Russian servers!

Over the last few months we were also battling a few 'snafu's' of our own making - including some messed up threat ratings (which were fixed, but not before causing some major havoc in the game), and some issues around people suddenly having the ability to 'de-threat' almost at will (something that we also curtailed). We did try hard to not let those distract us from the critical work on 1.7.

New in 1.7 is brand new progression content, brand new modifications (like the ability to put a 'brick' on the accelerator in your car, jump out and turn the whole thing into semi-guided cruise missile), updates to missions that continue our long running work of making them more fun and engaging, map updates, as well as major updates to Fight Club with the launch of the Fight Club Challenge system (to give Fight Club a lot more definition and purpose).

We will be updating the Test World with 1.7 this weekend so people can start the process of testing out several of these new features, and then after our final semi-public test-run, we are hoping to go fully live to everyone in mid-April with the first set of 1.7 features.

Permanent Weapon Changes Coming

Last but not least... We will be changing the way you buy permanent weapons in the game in the future (!). Right now most permanent weapons are NOT account bound - but purchased for each character. In the near future we will (finally) be switching to a system that the most common permanent weapon will be account bound and apply to ALL your characters. For those who have already bought those permanent weapons in the past, those will then apply to all your characters. For those who bought more than one of the same permanent weapon, you will get some extra-special compensation and your credits back after this change goes into effect. More details to be provided soon.

More Bloggers!

In order to provide a lot more frequent updates to this blog I am also adding some new faces and posters who will start providing many more hands-on updates and news.

This was just a quick 'hello' to tell you guys that 'we are back.' Over the next week I am handing over the mic to APB's Producer 'Quinzel' to start sharing the gory 1.7 details, and then we will open up the floor to a bunch of different team members who will be able to share all the exciting new things we will finally be able to release.

Oh - and don't forget to go check out the latest stuff on the forums (specifically the revamped items that Quinzel just put up: http://forums.gamersfirst.com/topic/266582-armas-spring-sale-this-weekend/ ). See you all in San Paro!

/TechMech

Do we need some sort of 'cheater amnesty' as we crack down on cheaters?

Wow - so yes - we have been tracking cheaters for quite some time, and with the launch of patch 130 we basically KILLED almost every cheater from all three major cheatmakers - in spite of their claims to the PB shield and other BS that they have been working on.

I clearly will not tell you HOW you were observed. Let's just say you were observed. And we can say with unequivocal certainty that the account you used has now or in the past been used for cheating. Sorry.

Some people posting in reply to the last post clearly stated things like 'I borrowed the account from a friend' or 'I got the account from a cheater friend.'

So - what do we do now? And what do the cheaters do now?

Sure - as a cheater you can go make a new account and RAGE CHEAT on the servers this weekend. Sure you can get some cheat-time in. But for what? Of course it just means you will be banned again, and with the next couple of builds we are ratcheting up the cheat hunting in such a manner that you cannot return. Ever.

Come Clean Instead!
Instead I have a MUCH better idea. If you feel remorseful. If you think you want to come back to the game. Then uninstall the cheat (or in some cases - because several of the cheats are root-kits that have actually BORKED your machine, you may have to re-install Windows), make a new account - and then play nice in the community for the next few weeks while we roll out the next several changes, and then pray we MAY let you continue on the new account before we launch the next anti-cheat patch. If someone TRULY comes back and plays clean - we may consider it. However, under no circumstances will you get back anything from the banned account. Don't even ask.

There are some interesting stats for the crew we banned (and to give you an indication how this was NOT a 'public' or 'easy' cheat ban). Nearly 50% were paid accounts (!). Some had 1500 HORUS of game play (that's 240 hours a month for the period one of the players played!). Some had spent a lot of money. And they STILL could not keep themselves from breaking the rules and destroying the game experience for those around them. It's all VERY SAD.

Based on the bans we can now even compute the revenues of the major cheat makers. We estimate that the three cheat makers make from $15,000 to $50,000 in revenue per month (depending on the cheat maker) from their cheats from the APB portion of cheats. So - for those of you out there will to pay a farg-ing $30 PER MONTH for a cheat - AND as much for items in APB - WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? AND - why on earth do you support the cheat makers to begin with. THEY are the ones that just cost you a boat-load of money, time and effort.

No cheat will go undetected forever. So I say it again - just don't do it!

Here are some interesting screenshots from the 'top-three' cheatmakers. Anyone feel pity?

You have ONE LAST CHANCE to stay with this game before we go live. Don't F-that last chance up.

/TechMech

Quick "version 130" update

Today we released patch 130 of the game. This intermediate patches fixes various minor items, but also further tightens security in the game. We expect 1000s of accounts will be banned as a result of this patch.

And again, surprisingly, why people PAY for game items and STILL cheat blows our minds. You will be caught (eventually), and what fun can that ever be?

Patch 130 resolves one of the 'rubberbanding' issues that was introduced in patch 123, though further testing is required for a permanent solution.

We are continuing to rapidly move toward the critical 1.5.4 version of the game, which introduces the first iteration of the new maps and game modes. Also 1.5.4 will also further tighten cheat resilience another notch.

Finally, the game will be in retail in North America in December. This means that the 'LIVE' version of the game will be scheduled to coincide with the retail release.

/TechMech

Entering the Open Beta "Home Stretch" - Part I

Player Motivation, Player Control and Cheats


First a quick note; from September 15 - September 20 we are offering a 100% rebate G1C bonus for everyone who buys any items in the new APB Reloaded (version 1.5.3) which we launched September 15. Click here for some more information about this promotion. There are always issues with a major new version, and this promo will let people make purchases while knowing they get a complete 'redo' later on.

Hi everyone! I cannot believe it's been more than four weeks since my last post! 

A lot has happened in the past four weeks, so this post is going to be quite long (and hopefully filled with some great information). After the last entry, we left our offices and went on a pilgrimage to Cologne where the team participated in GDC Europe (we discussed APB in some of the seminars) and GamesCom (which is one of the largest consumer game shows in the world).

GamesCom was great, especially since it gave us a chance to meet players, many who offered us a lot of great feedback and good ideas for the development team to mull over (though it was also a little bit entertaining to watch some new APB players search for the XBox game-pad controllers), and it was also a chance for us to meet some of the more well-known APB players in person.

To make it even better, we gave away tens of thousands of codes to players who stopped by the booth, and a lot of other swag and items. It's always good when you get a chance to play Santa in the middle of summer.

Upcoming Development Roadmap

In August the development team focused on finishing up the first 1.5.3 version build (which we released today). Builds 1.5.3 through 1.5.7 represent the "Home Stretch" for the entire Open Beta process, and after 1.5.7 we anticipate considering making the fateful leap to the Live version of the game (wooo!).

Version 1.6 is scheduled as the first Live (non-Beta) release, but before we actually get to 1.6, we still have a lot of work to complete, so today I will cover the most drastic upcoming changes, discuss a lot of the overall issues in the game and what we are doing to address them, and finally next week I will share the 1.5.3 through 1.5.7 roadmap as a link at the top of this page so you can see some more details about the upcoming changes.

Issues spotted in Open Beta

The first 90+ days of Open Beta have been great in helping us identify how players actually interact with the game, where players (like yourself) go, what you do, what you are willing to pay for, what you like to spend time on, what customizations you like, what cars you drive, what players you group up with, how you make your clan, what you hate, what you like and what activities motivate someone to continue playing the game (and sending virtual love-letters to the staff), and what issues and problems drives someone to rage-quit (and makes them email us 15 tickets in a row that all start with FFFF---KKK). The amount of data collected in Open Beta has been staggering. Unfortunately we have to now prioritize and structure this insane amount of feedback into actionable things.

Issue (1): Lack of Player Control

One of the core issues the game suffers from is the lack of player control. Not 'control' in terms of changing your character or designing a clan (which obviously are great customization features in APBR), but simply the inability to pick the types of missions and gameplay you like to play when you want to play them.

Unlike traditional games, APB Reloaded uses the "Mission System" to assign you missions while you drive/walk/sprint around the city (of course only if you remember to 'press K' - which is another annoyance of those we observed from watching people play at GamesCom).

The main problem with this fundamental design is that you may not be in the mood for the next mission you will be assigned. Even if it's a good mission, you might not have the right crew, time etc. for that particular game type. But as soon as the mission is assigned - that's it - you are committed (or if you quit, you of course lose Threat Level and thus risking your "Motivation" - so the Threat Level system is ANOTHER problem altogether which I will address below).

How are we going to return player control to the game, while still letting people have a wide open 'Living City' experience?

The first answer we are pursuing is "Fight Club" / "Proving Grounds," now scheduled as our 1.5.4 release. These missions, which you will be able to trigger directly from the district select screen, are the first iteration of what will become a series of dedicated matches that teams and players can launch and get a pre-defined "tweak-able" experience. We will also be able to tune what is included in the pre-defined experience on a weekly or monthly basis until we have given it the right length/content/feel (and take player feedback on which encounters are the most engaging and fun).

The idea is to give you the chance to jump in to a violent 10 v 10 (or similar) death-match or territory capture in a very small isolated portion of a district (which - by the way - also solves some 32-bit and low spec machine issues by being much smaller than the standard districts) for intense short-burst action. Think of it as a PuG clan fight, but with open ended groups/teams on each side and without all the Clan Mechanics.

While this provides insta-match content for players to experience, it also helps us try out new map changes and game-types which if successful, will be added to the main game maps as well.

We will have a whole post about these insta-missions, and how it relates to other districts and features still under development. In the current schedule Fight Club / Proving Grounds are in version 1.5.4 and Clan Warfare is in version 1.5.7 (check back next week for the details of the roadmap). We are really excited about the possibilities of this system, and letting players use it to get to the 'meat' of various types of action in just one click (again - without removing the current open ended districts).

Issue (2): Cheaters - and the Perception of Cheaters

APB is a Server-Side game. This means that barring various programming snafu's, there really are very few things you can do in the game to actually cheat. Unlike peer-to-peer games or games that rely more on the client being authoritative, APB is impossible to cheat with things like 'one shot kills' or 'invincibility cheats' and similar cheats of those types. The server rules all. Therefore (again barring coding mistakes, which do happen on occasion) most of these types of cheats are useless against the game.

However - there ARE things that the game is vulnerable to - specifically two items; aimbots and wallhacks (opponent 'ESP tags') since those two types attack the local client and exploit locally hidden information (players behind walls etc.). There is nothing quite as frustrating as finding a good hiding spot, only to be 'magically' found by your opponent. We agree.

We have two ways of attacking this issue, one is to change actual game code that will make certain exploits much harder, and the other is to work with an enhanced cheat deterrent system. The pros and cons of PunkBuster (or according to the community - the Cons) are quite well known, even though just last week it banned 2,000 players in one swoop when it was able to suddenly detect the latest evasion attempt from a cheat maker. The issue with PB is that it remains one step behind the aimbot/wallhack makers. But there is a solution for this issue in the pipeline as well.

Cheat solutions in 1.5.3 through 1.5.7

Starting with 1.5.3 we are making various aspects of cheat coding much harder to perform and/or easier to detect. Because it's cheating we are talking about we cannot really disclose exactly what we are doing, but as of this patch key cheat functions are starting to break in really odd ways. There should be plenty of frustration in the cheat maker side over the next several builds, though 1.5.3 has only implemented a portion of these changes. The goal is to get to make cheating a non-issue by the time we go formally "Live" with the game. As you can imagine, that's a tall order, but based on recent progress (some not yet in the game), we are starting to feel better about the prospects of solving this issue.

In a later patch closer to Live we have a much more drastic change that will also be rolled out, in addition to the road we have started down in 1.5.3. The goal is to have the full suite of changes in place before we release 1.6.0. 

So - What do you mean by the "Perception" of cheating?

IF there are only TWO serious types of cheats that even work in the game, how about the 'perception' of cheating going on? Why is this perception rampant? (see Issue 3 for another critical problem - that also causes rage and/or cheat anger - so all these issues are tied together).

First Perception - Snapping
First - there is an oddity with the game itself. Snapping is part of the game (!). If you run in one direction, but are looking behind you, the moment you hit 'fire' your character on all opponent computers will appear to make an instant 180 and 'snap' in the opposite direction while firing the shot. Good players can make it appear they are 'multi-snapping' by being very exact. The effect is very easy to test with two computers opposed to each other.

The result is that in many matches you often perceive your opponent 'snapping' to you (almost magically), since you don't actually get a copy of the opponent's camera movement, only the end-shot (snap). That's not cheating. That's normal game play. When you face an extremely good player, it's very hard to NOT think they are cheating. Mostly because the visual appearance of the opponent (snapping around to different targets) makes it look like something is amiss (compared to playing MW2), but also because most of us think NOONE can possible beat us or have better map awareness :) . We know we are awesome :) (again - not saying that aimbotting and wallhacking cannot happen - just that often it also appears to be happening while it's really NOT taking place). Snapping CAN indicating cheating, but only when players target multiple targets that are large angles apart in a split second. Unfortunately the two types of snapping (legitimate and the real cheatin' kind) are hard to tell apart.

We will release some videos to show this in action as well.

Second Perception - Magic Bullets

Second - not all misses are noticed by opponents, often due to how bullet flight is handled. If you are being shot by an enemy all bullets that HIT your avatar will always be readily apparent. Bullets that MISS are still sent to your computer, but we often see test players in our focus tests that do not realize that a large number of bullets were fired in their direction during an intense firefight, and that many of them missed. This can lead to a perception that opponents magically HIT YOU with every shot they fire (and magically never missed!), though in reality your enemy is shooting more shots in your direction than you might realize. 

Third Perception - Cheats that Aren't

Third - there are some supposed cheats (some that are even sold to people) - that in fact are not cheats at all. The best example is the 'no-spread' supposed cheat. If you use a 'no-spread' cheat and fire at a wall - you will THINK that bullets are hitting a wall and strike a tight area (or even easier - you can muck with local INI files and see visual changes in your client without having any effect on the server or opponent games). That's because it's a client side change. But, in spite of what you might see on a wall, shooting another player is handled entirely on the server. Turning on a 'no-spread cheat' might make you FEEL you are aiming better (and maybe you DO aim better because you 'feel' better) - but you are actually just as spread-y against opponent players as you were before the 'cheat' from the point of view of the server and the opponent player. Ie the cheat has no effect other than on your computer.

Are there any cheats right now?
Yep. No bones about it - that some people are using wallhacks and aimbots (or after the current update, are certainly trying to use them with the 1.5.3 build), and there clearly is a delay before they get banned. Therefore we are very interested in seeing the changing pattern during this patch version (1.5.3) and then followed by the upcoming 1.5.4 through 1.5.7 series of builds. What will players do? What will the cheatmakers do? We will all find out!

Other possible solutions - player kicks?

We often get the request to implement cheat-vote-kicking. A small sidenote, when Zak/Qwentle jumped in to Combat Arms for some quick analysis on how they handle something he was trying to work on, he was quickly vote-kicked by the Combat Arms players for being a 'cheater' (something you can do in CA). He clearly was NOT cheating, but he was simply just very good at playing the game, even though he had a brand new character. So player-banning also have problems.

So - what are we going to do?

In 1.5.3 we have done some interesting stuff. In x.x.4, 5, 6 and 7 we are doing additional interesting things. Depending on how they work out, we will start disclosing exactly what has changed. Let's first see how people react to them...

Third issue: Wrong Motivation Goal - and Driving People Nuts (aka the evils of Threat Levels)

So - not only do you have a lack of player control (ie you get handed a random mission, and if you quit it you lose Threat Level) you also start thinking (incorrectly) that Threat Level is actually something you really want to care about as a progression metric and a community status symbol. It was never intended to be either.

We really apologize for not addressing this earlier... Threat Level (or ELO rankings or Glicko Rankings) should actually never be a driving factor for your enjoyment of the game, but partly because of how they are presented, it's become the ultimate status symbol.

To use a golf analogy, if I had to continually show my golf handicap (which is not great) and every day I played I was constantly shown Tiger Woods' handicap (which, even in his current slump is probably a sub-zero handicap), I would simply not feel all that great about myself. Or having my high-school football team compared to a professional football team every day (American football or European football - same issue :) )

In games like Golf (or Tennis, or Football) we get around this comparison problem by simply 'grouping' ourselves in logical cagegories, divisions and leagues. NFL teams (or Premiership / Bundesliga teams for the football games where you actually use your FOOT) are never ranked against or compared with high-school or low category club teams. And that's for a good reason. It doesn't make sense.

We are working on a drastically different way of representing Threat Level and progression in the game. Some aspects will be the same (a cool symbol), but what the symbol means will be radically different (and potentially more informative).

Here is our latest idea of how we will do this. You will be assigned a skill rating and a progression. The skill rating (based on the underlying system we have today) will give you one of four colors; Green, Bronze, Silver and Gold. Players will be assigned one of those four colors based on skill rank.

The actual symbol will be one of 20 different symbols (initially) representing the progression you have made in the game; 0-9, 10-19, 20-29 etc. So you will get a different progression symbol every 10 levels from 1 through 195 (until we expand the 195 to permit higher levels as well).

In all matchmaking locations where today you see the Threat Level symbol, you will instead see the new combined Skill / Progression symbol giving opponents information both about your general threat, as well as your progression through the game.

This way you actually get better information about the gear and content that a player is likely to have equipped. Especially for Gold players there is significant difference between a Gold who is progression 25 and one who is progression 125,since the higher progression player has a lot more versatility in equipping the right gear for the right encounter. With the current TL system, this critical information is never communicated.

Will you EVER get to see the 'real' underlying detailed skill information? Potentially yes - in particular in our upcoming Clan Warfare system you are likely going to have the ability to 'see' your mates detailed data (partly so you can build the most competitive clan fighting team to defend your clan ladder rankings). There is becomes important info (and not unlike how WoW deals with the ELO levels, and the same reason you can only see your own team's detailed rankings, but not your opponents).


New contacts coming soon


Now in order to expand the game for those player who are already high level, we are also working hard at adding new levels of progression above the current contacts.  Those who have completed both organisations for their faction will be given the chance to work with several specialists which we are adding in the next several versions of the game leading up to the Live Launch.

In addition to expanding the Progression range above 195, new rewards for working with these contacts will also include High level Vehicles, Symbols and the first parts of Tactical Gear / SWAT Gear (Helmets, Pads, Loadouts, Webbing Armor etc).

More importantly, they’ll also unlock a plethora of new Modifications that are not yet in the game, giving players new options and choices to make when deciding on the best mods for Weapons, Vehicles and their Character.

Back to the Grind-Stone...

These are the three areas where we are really putting a lot of focus as we race toward the first 'Live' finished game. As we roll these features out, we hope to continue getting your feedback (though, you may want to wait with final feedback until the features are live :) ), and then get to a successful 1.6 Live Launch.

Next week I will post the updated Roadmap at the top of this page, so, check back then for more details about the upcoming changes, as well as the design details of Proving Grounds.

Until next week,

Server lag = solved, TL-ratings changed, NVidia SLI support and patch 116 improvements

Today's patch caps lots of different tracks of optimizations and improvements that have been worked on in parallel for quite some time, so this post will outline all these changes.


Server Side Lag Solved

First up - as of this week we have officially sorted out all the items related to server side lag that were killing some servers at various strange intervals (5, 10 and 20 minutes generally). Without going in to extreme technical detail, the issue turned out to be the method used to invoke various external libraries that under certain conditions could cause network congestion on the server itself. That issue was fixed in the last 10 days, and combined with new networking equipment from Internap that optimizes the route selection from individual players, most server side lag conditions have now been completely eliminated.

The network routing optimization boxes are quite cool, as we were able to observe in real time some players connecting from Australia to Frankfurt (maybe not the best idea to connect that far) and see them drop from 1500ms ping times to 500ms ping times. Of course the 500 we cannot do anything about (given the physical distance), but the 1000ms improvement was very significant.

Will you or some of your friends still see game lag? Sure - under three conditions; (1) your home network runs in to congestion, (2) your ISP has a freak-out and messes up its routes to its peers or (3) your home computer is not up to spec and you end up lagging all the time (but that's of course client side lag which is a whole different beast).


NVidia SLI support in the new 280.26 WHQL drivers

NVidia notified us this week that the new WHQL drivers now have the APB profiles included. This is the link to the drivers. The SLI profiles are NOT listed in the release notes, but, if you install these drivers and attempt to run the game using NVidia SLI card config, you will see that the game FINALLY runs as expected.

Download the final release drivers from here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/win7-winvista-64bit-280.26-whql-driver.html

(and again - the listed games in their notes is for NVidia 3D vision support, something we have not yet added, but is also on our list of optimizations to come at some point in the future).


Threat Level Revisions

A few weeks ago we released code which altered the matchmaking, but in doing so, the code also (actually at my request) included a new 'uncertainty' modifier value which basically made the matches made with new players slightly more 'uncertain' (and for a longer discussion about the matchmaking changes you can look at the earlier blog posts).

Due to some interesting math behavior - the rating system has been properly rating people (so everyone on a relative basis has the proper rating). Here is a histogram of a set of 15,000 ratings from one world from one day in the game using the RAW (underlying) rating data.

Keep in mind that this data DOES NOT equal the game Threat Levels (as you can tell from the above diagram, the ratings are from negative to positive rating levels and don't line up with TL values). However for those who like math, the ratings DO fall on a nice even bellcurve, which in fact IS the expected outcome of our rating system.

So if the RAW ratings look nice and curve-like, then what on earth went wrong when 'translating' the ratings to in-game Threat Levels? 

In short - the location of the middle of the bellcurve is NOT where we had expected it to be when we implemented the formulas. In fact - in the live data the bellcurve center appears around the value "5.5" and not at the expected value (which was expected to happen much higher up on the translation scale). There are a lot of math reasons for this 'real world' outcome (after all - that's what we use Beta to figure out), some of the reasons had to do with the formulas and parameters used, and some were the result of the APB mission system and how players of different ratings group for missions.

So what happened in the current translation in game? Well - we accidentally ended up with THIS lopsided translation to threat levels that people saw in the game:

What actually happened was that the translation from RAW rating data to visual game information (threat levels) pushed 35% of players into TL 1 (aka Bronze 1). In fact a total of 50% of ALL players were rated Bronze 1, 2, 3 (!). That means there is an ENORMOUS difference in skill between players within those three rating levels - and then everyone else were spread out across the rest of the spectrum. Or another way to think of it - the difference in skill between the lowest Bronze 1 player and the highest Bronze 3 player was just as great as the difference in skill between a Bronze 4 player and a Gold 10 player (!). 

Clearly that was NOT the expected amount of players in those threat levels, and the TL values became pretty useless to gauge overall skill between players. 

In spite of the above translation issue, even though the underlying RAW data was correct, the visual translation into the actual game certainly did not work as intended, and has lead to a LOT of concerns and complaints in the game.

As a result - with patch 116 we have re-translated all the RAW data, into new TL values. When 116 goes live, then the ACTUAL threat level distribution will look like this:

The idea with this distribution is that 30% of players will be Bronze (1-10 in the above chart), 60% will be Silver (11-20 above) and 10% will be Gold (21-30). In this rating system only 0.2% of players will be Gold 10.

The vast majority of players will end up in the range Bronze 6 to Silver 8 (80% of players), and then players above (Silver 9 and up) or below (Bronze 5 and less) will be quite rare (roughly 10% above and below that middle set of values).

Silver 5 will be the most common rating, with 9% of players being a Silver 5.

So when you log back in to the game tonight - don't be surprised that your level has changed. In fact - it may have jumped from a Bronze 1 to a Silver 2 (if you were at the very top of the Bronze 1 range).

Therefore the new threat translation should give you a lot more useful information about the matches you have with opposing players.

Will there be other TL related issues in the future? Potentially - but the plan going forward will be to re-balance the TL display at least monthly.


Hong Kong Premium Server Launch, and the upcoming Russian and CIS world.

Tonight we also enabled the "premium" server in Hong Kong. This is entirely a system meant to give low-latency access to a region that we don't really support yet (given the very high prices for connectivity in the region), and you can ONLY access this server if you are a premium player. That's a little counter-intuitive for a Free2Play© game, but, since you can continue playing for free on the Los Angeles server (where our cost of operations is 10X lower than in Asia), we felt that we would offer a premium access choice for those who really want low ping times to the games locally in that region.

If this experiment works, then we will also consider adding an Australian Premium server given the tremendous amount of interest we seem to have from Australia and NZ as well, where the cost of internet service is equally astronomical.

We have made progress on launching the game in Russia and CIS as its own separate territory, and I will update the blog when we have more details on that launch. When that happen we will also be able to re-enable the use of Cyrillic characters in chat, game names etc. for the Russian and CIS worlds and will migrate all Russian characters over to that world.


Going to GamesCom or GDC Europe?

We do have a contingent at GamesCom and GDC Europe. If you are going as a gamer (to GamesCom) or an industry person (to GDC), certainly feel free to come by.

We have a pretty small presence at GamesCom (mostly for 'fun') but we WILL be giving out quite a few free codes and other swag, so stop by the APB 'alley' if you plan to be at the conference. You can also meet with some of the APB Devs, Artists and Designers who will be there handing things out.



Patch 116;  Various fixes plus 'spammy popup reduction'

For patch 116, please see the patch notes on the forums, but one of the bigger changes involves reducing the annoyance factor of the popup we added in earlier builds meant to point out the clear difference between premium and non-premium players. We may have gone a LITTLE bit wild (yes I know - maybe VERY wild) with the earlier version of the popup with the sheer amount of notifications. In build 116 we relaxed the spammy nature of the notifications to a much more manageable level.

In the new build the popup does NOT appear in the Tutorial (which was a little over the top), and does not appear when you hit Heat 5, and it ONLY appears after 50% of the missions during normal play. Of course getting a premium account completely removes the popup (yay!), just like premium cable TV has no commercials.

However - for all the people that expressed their concern about this popup, it is worth noting that premium conversions JUMPED nearly 40% over the old conversion rate when we added this notification (potentially people didn't realize what they were missing :) ), so we are going to continue using the popup (albeit in a much milder form). After all, this increases our ability to launch more stuff by being able to increase our staff to work on all the remaining issues in the game. After the popup was added about 33% of all the CCU at any given moment on any server are now Premium players, and the number is growing.



Future Changes

Next up - we are continuing to work very hard on optimizations and exploit fixes as well as the next set of feature changes. Based on some really interesting work we are doing right now we have been making some tremendous progress and at some point (when things thoroughly QA-ed and ready) we plan to release of a lot of changes simultaneously, which likely will take the edge of many current and future exploits. I won't be sharing more than that until it's ready to go (given the enormous amount stuff involved), but as soon as we are ready we will share much more data.

Finally the new features (ClanWarfare, Racing and Asylum) all are progressing, though with a relatively small team progress is taking a little bit of time. Once these features are close to release, we will share that here and then we will start preparing for the final 'formal' (non-beta) release of the entire APB Reloaded game.

Stay tuned - and see you at GDC and/or GamesCom in case you are stopping by!

Cheers,