Steady's Gaming Blog

APB made a nice post in their forums yesterday, addressing some of the issues the game has. See the post here. Here are the highlights.

Cheaters, catching them and removing them, I always like this one.

Vehicle Handling – A major overhaul to make the vehicles less slippery. I am not too sure about this one. I found the learning curve for driving a bit steep, but after a bit of practice, I did not have any trouble. The other day I was doing some nice slides, and moving between cars in traffic rather well. My biggest problem is the other live players; they tend to run into me quite a bit. In fact some people are just grieving, by putting up burnt car barricades, and playing demolition derby. So I hope they do not change it too much.

Combat- they are looking at every aspect. I do have a problem killing people. That has more to do with me, then it does the game. I have trouble aiming, but with that being said, I think it does need a bit of work, so that is a good thing.

Camping- going to address this issue as well, another one of those human factors, that if peoples would just play fair, and play as the game right this would not be a problem, but hey always has to be that camper.

Missions- making them a bit more complex, and deeper, a bit more strategy. I am all for that, I am an old dude, no hand eye coordination, strategy is my friend.

They also mentioned matchmaking; I will address that in another post, as I have pretty long opinion on this subject.

Again, I like this game. It is very entertaining to play. For me it is not about kill to death ratio, more about fun, which I have. I have to give the devs of APB credit; they have not crawled under a rock, and hidden from their player base. They post in the forums, and on their webpage they have a twitter feed, which does not always shed a positive light on APB. So that is pretty good, they cannot please everyone, someone is always going to have a problem, so it is nice to see them moving in a positive direction.

Here is some video from APB. I am driving the Combat Engineer car. Ashton, my partner in law enforcement (or as I like to call him, Starsky) is hanging out the window. Notice it took about 30 seconds for the right color of the car to kick in. It turns pink and then looks right. We were on a mission where we had to pick up a stolen car. Also as you can tell, driving takes a bit of practice, but is very fun. Each car in the game has a different feel to it, very realistic.

I really am enjoying All Points Bulletin. Don’t believe all the bad reviews. The game is fun. One of the problems I do have however, is the lack of documentation. So I thought I would try to figure out how some of it works. These are just my personal findings on this subject, if you have more information, please share it. Because I am not sure if I have it right.

Threat level has 15 levels. I think it measures how good a player you are. If you die a lot, and fail missions it goes down. If you are the next Godfather or Magnum P. I., it goes up. I also think the only bearing it has on the game is matchmaking, but I am not sure. It also is not an actual number, but a symbol.

The blue vertical bar next to your name with the five stars next to it measures prestige; I am not sure what the criminals call it. This can change during each gaming session. I am not sure exactly what makes prestige go up. I can tell you on the enforcer side, running over a pedestrian makes it go down. I think stealing a car, or kicking someone out of their car, also makes it go down. I am guessing killing bad guys makes it go up. I also think making an arrest instead of killing a criminal will get you more prestige.

The next two are rank, and rating, they work together a bit. Your rating is the number next to the letter “r” in your character info. This number is the closest thing you are going to what actual level you are in the game. I do not believe it goes down, and I have no clue how high it goes. The highest I have seen is in the two hundreds.

Rank is the most confusing of all. Let’s say you are an enforcer and your rank with the Praetorians is 13. You have run missions for this organization, like returning stolen cars, money, that type of thing. Each successful mission gets you a point total, which adds to your rank. I know that rank and rating work together to get you better weapons and gear.
The higher both of them are the better gear you get.

So that is as much as I know. Again a lot of this is theory, so if you know more, please post.

The first thing I liked was that I could make a character just like me. A very old, slow, slightly overweight (ok fat) guy. I roll up an Enforcer, one of the good guys. So I run the tutorial, pretty easy. I zone into the social district. I make sure all my weapons are ready to go, and then I zone into an action zone.

This is where the fun really begins. There are two types of missions. The first is a “Call to Back-up” type mission. Another enforcer is running a mission, and needs help, so you help him out. The second type of mission was from a contact. In my case, it was pretty simple. I needed to pick up three cars that had been stolen, and drive them to the police holding lot. When I accepted the mission, a call goes out on the criminal side for someone to stop me from performing this task. In my case a mini skirt wearing criminal named Valentine Raine answered the call. So for the next five minutes or so, we played a nice game of cat and mouse. I managed to get one car back to the lot, but not before we killed each other a few times. She was waiting for me at the second car. She had picked out a nice spot on top of a building. I saw her, but she got me. So I snuck up behind her the next time, and got here. Jumped into the second car and drove off. I did not make it to the holding lot, my driving skills are bad, and I crashed the car. I failed the mission, but had fun.

I have read a lot of reviews about this game, and seen a lot of bad reviews. I don’t get it. I do not have a high end computer, and seems to run the game just fine. The load times are a bit long, but nothing that bad. Some people are complaining about the matchmaking system, I had no trouble with this. I managed to kill several players with my starter weapon. I would say my kill to death ratio was about even. I certainly did not feel like I was unable to complete my mission. Use some skill, people just want to run and gun. Stop and think, and you will have success. Also they are complaining about the payment plan being confusing. Can they read English, it is pretty simple. The social zone is free. When you purchase the game you get 50 hours of action zone play. After that you can buy unlimited play for $9.99 a month, or purchase 20 hours for $7.00. Personally, I think that is a pretty good payment model.

The only complaint I have is that the knowledge base is not working yet. Also I have no clue how I advance in the game. I found the driving a bit difficult, but that most likely has more to do with my old hand-eye coordination, then it does with the game.

Disclaimer, I have only played this game for about three hours. I had a blast; I really do not see any reason why I would not keep playing. It was very entertaining. I think a lot of the bad reviews are wrong. If an old, slow, slightly overweight (ok fat) guy like me enjoys the game, I am sure anyone can.