The APB coverage here at Keen and Graev’s has been non-existent. I got a “Key to the City” but apparently missed the playtime allotted. Neither of us have been looking forward to the game for various reasons ranging from EA to bad memories of CrimeCraft to the simple design of the game. There hasn’t even been any interesting news about the game to really comment on and I’m bored to tears of explaining why I think instanced lobbies are not a MMO. Finally found something to comment on though!
When I was investigating the “My Account” section of APB’s website to learn more about it, it felt to me like the game is meant to be one of those arcade machines you need to keep feeding quarters into. Even if it ends up costing about the same price to play 365 days a year as a $14.99/m game there’s a not-so-subtle “wanna buy a watch?” look to the whole way they’re getting you to play. This is all an aside anyway but I wanted to go on the record for saying “meh”.
Seeing the link to the VOIP ads though really hit home how overboard they’re going with their pricing model.
The official details followed what quickly became a storm of horrific speculation about what this could mean for gameplay.
“You will receive a short audio ad once every 3 hours. HOWEVER ads will only be heard when first entering a social district.” Basically, you enter a new district (Lobby) and you get an ad played over your headphones. When you change districts (apparently social, not combat) after the 3 hour timer has expired you get another ad. What kind of ad? Don’t know yet. I think that’s the best part of the whole thing since we don’t know if it will be a commercial for Big Macs and having it your way or how to get relief from that burning itch down there.
The APB Defense Force is going to raid my comments section screaming at me that RTW needs some way to pay for their servers or that you can just turn your volume down if you don’t like it. That’s all true. I think this way is really bad marketing though and it highlights my suspicions about this being a fail boat preparing to set sail. There are better ways to charge a buck than to force people to hear VOIP ads unless they pay a premium. This just alienates people regardless how minimally invasive these ads are in the game. APB is being defended as a “pay to play game” and I’ll even give them a nod that their point system and buying days of gametime is indeed pay to play. If it’s pay to play though, there isn’t a need to jerk people around like this. If your game can stand on its own then charge people what it is worth and be done with it.
If I can find a way to try the game on a trial account then I’ll let you guys know what I think about the actual gameplay. I really can’t see myself paying any money though when there are this many red flags before launch.
I got a key to the city, but they never sent the validation email, and their “click to resend” link never managed to connect to a server over four days of trying, even when the domain it was behind was up (which wasn’t often). If these people can’t even keep their website up more than half the time, how can they be trusted with hosting a game server? This one’s going to be a pass unless they realize how much less their product is worth than what they expect for it.
Lets just say, I spent about 10x as long downloading this game than i did playing it. Wasn’t for me at all.
The character creation looks awesome, the actual game looks uninteresting. That’s just my 2 cents.
lol @ Fail boat preparing to set sail hahahha!
Ohhh also what bugs me more then this nickle and diming is the $14.99 monthly charge PLUS cash shop ala WoW and EQ2. Whatever happend to the days of being able to get everything in game?
Whatever happened to the vast open worlds….
never heard of it :/
guess ill go search for it lol.
and russell: Gaming becoming mainstream is what happend
@Russell
Welcome to the new age of gaming. AAA titles from here on out are ramping up to be small and isolated.
SWTOR here we come.
If I recall Anarchy Online was the first game to use in game ads of this sort shortly after they went free to play. If you paid monthly fee you would not hear the ads if you were free you would hear pepsi ads, pontiac car jingles etc but only in shopping areas in the city.
i would just mute the volume when i was shopping 😛
Same experience as some of you. Took hours to download the game. Finally get it going and anytime you’d change areas (from tutorial area to business area to action area) would take about 10 minutes to load. My computer, that runs most games pretty well, was nearly crippled by this game. Car and character customization is the best part …very deep and realistic. However, the mission system has a pretty steep learning curve and it seemed like I was getting beat to the objectives almost every time. After running about five missions against a random player bad-guy I pretty much saw all I needed to.
Coolest features besides customization? The fact that you can hear what music another player is listening to as they drive by you …including the doppler effect if they pass you. Same with voice. If they are talking nearby you can hear them and it gets louder or softer or uses different speakers depending on your perspective to them. Other MMOs want to use those features that would be cool but this game is not an MMO.
I was going to look into this game, but it really is becoming less and less interesting. Shame, I was looking for a decent MMO. Probably will head back to Eve eventually.
No particular interest in this game, but I think it’s worth pointing out that I have seen plenty of people on forums and blogs saying that they’d love to see someone try out an advertising model to fund a game – presumably because they don’t want to spend any money.
Of course if this one is advertising PLUS nickel & diming, then all aboard the failtrain, choo choo!
“or how to get relief from that burning itch down there.”
LMAO Dude don’t you mean “for” not “from”? l m f
silly double post. I forgot to mention, thanks for bringing up these red flags. I’m wondering why they don’t just charge a box fee.
You guys have presented some very valid points.
Let me clarify though: social district time is free apart from the initial cost of the actual game. The subscription options are all related to the action district time. Players can actually gain playtime by crafting (i.e. designing symbols, clothes, cars, even music) in the social district and selling their products to other players for RTW points, which are used to buy action district playtime.
I imagine RTW thought they’d get away with commercialising the “free” part of their game. Only it’s not really free and crafters/designers will be setting up ads themselves. There are ad spaces all over the district and what’s stopping them to use the VOIP feature to run around yelling, being even more obnoxious as professionally produced ads? Writing this and thinking it through, I’m really getting worried…
The actual gameplay in the action districts may seem very simplified to some, but there is a quality of a “GTA Online” like game with emergent player driven awesome shit happening. That’s what I liked when playing in the KTTC event. The missions and the city merely provide a framework for conflict, the rest is up to the players.
I believe subscribers don’t hear these ads, only those using the pay by the hour method will. I think this is a pretty good business model myself, as I think F2P with a VIP sub option opens MMO’s to larger audiences(mostly minors).
If you played the kttc event, you would realize how big a pain in the ass the game would be without instancing. I do believe they need an open world server for this game to be playable long term, as doing the random missions is fun but becomes repetitive, and there is no real way to have a true rivalry. I wish more games were like Eve and Darkfall, but with less of the skill grinding, and more player skill involved.
I took one look at this and was “meh”. Their pricing model, in-game ads, whatever… all irrelevant — this isn’t the sort of MMO I even want to play.
I had some of coolest moments in recent gaming in APB, then again I dont remeber a game that made me go total rage mode so often and so much.
If you give a try here are some tips:
NEVER PLAY ALONE
Play Criminal
Check Contacts rewards beforehand.
Regarding the pricing, its way overboard, they charge for game, charge for game time, have cash shop that you trade stuff with, have adds that you can pay not to have.
They should give game away for free or max 20$, and think in time(6 months) they will, after the first wave dies down, and they need more blood to keep money flowing.
If they do ill check it out.
The game has a lot of neet bells and whistles but the actual game play lacks a lot of depth and is very redundent. Its kind of a watered down GTA, like they were trying to keep it raided R instead of NC17.
I could be wrong, but i think there are only 3 zones/ instances/ districts that are realively small.
It really suffers from the 2 small to be an MMO to small to be a shooter.
The actually combat ( i was playing with an insanely large ping mind you) was clunky for a shooter but decent for a real time MMO.
Alot of it is not ironed out enough and there are some annoying gameplay mechanics (like enforcers basically having pin point radar on how to find criminals)
I’m really enjoying APB as a second mmo to play casual. I downloaded the client in a few hours and used up my kttc time that first day. Luckily you can just use another email to get more.
I want to clear some misconceptions up though. First, it’s $9.99 per month for unlimited time. Second there is no cash shop in the traditional sense, the only thing you can buy with RTW points is more game time. Personally I really like their pricing model because I can spend very little to play this game casually or just throw down 10 bucks a month and go hardcore. All that said you won’t see me complaining if it goes FTP.
I do agree that the game is lacking some depth but I’m hoping that will be added as time goes on. The core gameplay is fun which is enough for me to support them and see how this turns out.
I tried out KTTC with a friend, had a lot of fun. I can see why people may think the gameplay is lacking depth but I find that even if the mission is the same it always plays out differently as it’s PVP. I think the combat could use a little work but it gets the job done.
I haven’t found the instancing or map size to be an issue, I’ve never felt that the game world feels empty, in fact there always seems to be random shit happening.
The pricing model seems fine, especially from the POV of a casual gamer. Overall I’m quite looking forward to seeing how it pans out, it depends what kind of game you’re looking for but I’ve found playing with a small group of friends to be incredibly good fun.
As for the VOIP advertising, it might be unnecessary, certainly not something I’ve heard of before, but the only people I would tend to want to speak to in game are friends, in which case I prefer to use Skype or something anyway.
I’m sure the game has issues (which new release these days doesn’t?) but providing they listen to feedback and keep improving it I’m willing to stick with it for a while.
I’ve played a total of 10 hours, I’ve never heard a voice ad. You can turn VOIP off, which most people do anyway, and use teamspeak or vent and never hear the ads. Or if you are a 9.99 a month subscriber, you don’t hear the ads either.