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.

My Gaming Community the Combat Engineers is looking for more active gamers. So here is what what we are all about, and what we are looking for.

1. Mature, must be over the age of 18..

2. Respect. We do not do DRAMA, (let me repeat, we do not do DRAMA), fight over gear, taunt or harass. Profanity is not allowed. Any type of racial, religious, gender, sexual orientation, or political slurs are not allowed. Stealing from us will get you booted out of the group for sure.

3. Helpful. If you cannot be kind, and helpful to other players, this is not the place for you.

4. We are not in a hurry, if you are looking for farming or power leveling; you are most likely in the wrong place. I am not saying it does not take place in this group, I am just saying it is not the norm.

5. Have fun. We like to have fun. If we fail an instance, or a task force, it is not the end of the world. We will make every effort to complete a task, mission, instance or raid, but we are not going to do it at the expense of not having fun.

6. Able to function on a team. Each event or team will have a clear leader. All we ask is that you follow the direction of the team leader. If you have a suggestion, speaks up, just do it in the right way. The leader may or may not use you suggestion. If you have a better way to do something, sign up to be the leader for the next run.
7. Register for the forums. If you are a leader, list events and other thing there.

Where will you find us.

www.combatengineers.net is our main webpage

http://www.xfire.com/communities/moonb on xfire.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Combat-Engineers-Gaming-Community/248825615272 on Facebook

http://twitter.com/Steadycombateng to follow us on Twitter.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/combatengineers on Steam

Feel free to join any and all of these groups. I encourage all of our current active members to join these groups if they can.

What are we playing; more like what are we not playing.

City of Heroes- We have established SGs on the Freedom, Liberty, Justice, and Virtue Server. Freedom is the most popular. Liberty is dead, Justice and Virtue are very small.

City of Villains- Established VG on Freedom. It is dead, needs active members, willing to run teams and recruit.

Aion- Have a legion on the Kaisinel Server, Elyos. Have a some Asmodians on the Meslamtada Server. Needs leadership and active members.

World of Warcraft, we have a pretty active group, Alliance, Elune server. Running instances and leveling right now. Some day we would like to start running some 10 mans. Gear hounds, thief’s, immature people, need not apply.

Champions Online – semi established SG. Lacks leadership, nice for active players that would like to run an established SG.

Dungeons and Dragons Online – Old dead Guild on the Sarlona server. Needs active members, leadership.

Everquest II, on the Bazaar server, have a few active players. Do not have a guild yet, like to find more to start a guild.

Global Agenda- One man agency. Looking for leadership, and active members.

Star Trek Online- Yet another dead, one man fleet. Needs active members, and leadership.

Lord of the Rings- Two man kinship, is at the maxed out level. Needs active members and leadership.

Warhammer Online- No guilds, but we play Destruction on Badlands, and Order on Iron Rock. Looking for more to start a guild

All Points Bulletin – Have a group, just started playing, get in on the ground floor.

Games that we sometimes play and have teamed in are Team Fortress 2, Planetside, Battlefield Bad Company 2, and Battlefield Heroes.

So if you are interested in joining the Combat Engineers, contact me at steady@combatengineers.net.