MattScott

Dear Backers, Today we celebrate our 2 year anniversary on the project. It's already been quite a journey for myself and the team, and I want to take another moment to thank everyone for continuing to support us as we finish Unsung Story. Change in Update Content After last month's update, I got a lot of feedback not to spoil any more of the missions or story elements publicly. Some backers also said that monthly updates were not necessary any more given where the project is at. Moving forward, I am going to start trimming down the updates to not give as many details away, but I'm still going to post on a monthly basis so we can keep the community up to date. General Update In July we made many revisions to the Storyboard. Most of this was merging cutscenes and dialog to streamline things. All of the whiteboxes remained the same, so we were able to keep sending those out to keep the concept art pipeline moving along. We finished and imported all of the 3D geometry for the 7 missions in Chapter 1, and several cut scenes are now working. In August, we will be focusing on implementing more UIs for the start of the game, character management, inventory management, vendors, etc. We will also be working on building out vfx art, animations, and engineering for more of the abilities on the job tree. And we need to finalize the 3D character art. I'll share some of this work as we finish. But the most important topic for this month is our next major milestone: Finishing Chapter 1. Releasing Chapter 1 to the Backers Based on our progress, I feel like the project as a whole could benefit from a chapter by chapter release on PC. In order to do this, we have broken up the job tree so that we can release seven jobs with Chapter 1, seven more jobs with Chapter 2, etc. You can see the job tree from my June update here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/littleorbit/unsung-story-tale-of-the-guardians/posts/2524318 The jobs for the Chapter 1 release will be: Mercenary, Physician, Archer, Guardian, Elementalist, Sage, and Sharpshooter. This covers all the first and second tier jobs in the tree. The races for the Chapter 1 release will be: Horned and Humans. We will hold back the male and female Singed race for the Chapter 3 release. I don't yet have a release date for Chapter 1, but I want to do this for a number of reasons: The first and most obvious reason is that I believe there is a large portion of the community that would love to get their hands on something sooner than later. This project has a long controversial history. I want to get the backers something to play so they can finally see the results of their Kickstarter funding. The second reason is that in a project this larger, the sooner we start beta testing and getting feedback the better. And lastly, this approach will allow us to eventually release the final more polished Chapter 1 through Early Access to start building up steam (excuse the pun) with reviewers and new fans for the full release next year. More details to come. As always, we appreciate your continued patience and support. Sincerely, Matthew Scott

Hi there, Yes. In May 2018, we took over GamersFirst.com, and it didn't make sense to keep running the Unsung Story forums on a small separate WordPress site. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, Totally agreed. I am hoping to show more of this in October's update. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, We are still in early talks with the guys from Epic about their store, so I can't really share how a deal would work. However Unsung Story simply cannot be exclusive to them. It needs to be made available in all the channels PlayDek originally advertised. I'm sure once Epic opens up to more non-exclusive content, we will support it. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, I think this is a pretty broad question. There are 20+ jobs (classes) that your character units can be, but those aren't specific characters. There are also lots of Story Characters. Some are playable and some are not. But we haven't revealed a lot of them yet, so backers may not know yet which one they like the most. Can you be a bit more specific on your question? Thanks, Matt

Hi there, The numbers are mostly theorycrafting at this point, and very much subject to change based on play testing. This month's blog walks through the Player Hub which has a lot of the functionality you're asking about in terms of leveling up characters and class changes. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, I recommend opening a support ticket at http://support.gamersfirst.com. If you can supply the email that you registered your PayPal purchase with, then we can look it up in BackerKit (which was transitioned to us when we took over), and they can get you all setup. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, Big jump in tickets due to several factors: - We had a large ban wave for a non-approved launcher. - We did the Nekrova merge which had issues for some players. - We continue to gain old players back who have issues with authentication or passwords. In the month of August we have gained more than 55 average concurrent users per day which adds up to more than 1000 returning players. There are now 1199 total tickets and 1015 tickets that have not yet had a response. Today we are answering tickets from August 8th, which means that we are at 23 day response time. I recognize these stats aren't good. We have added some temporary resources to Customer Support to try and get the response time back down. If your ticket is older than August 8th, and we have not reached out, then I recommend updating your ticket and asking for status. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, I have been on vacation, but the Newsletter and blog should be up by tomorrow. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, If someone wants to contact apb-r.ru and let them know to take down the link, they are usually very helpful. I just don't speak Russian. Thanks, Matt

We sold the APB Brand and IP to Unit Game, but retained all rights related to APB Reloaded.

Hi all, Several of you stumbled across an update to http://apb.com. This showed a group named UNIT GAME. This press release will be going out later today, so I can finally share some exciting news. I'll cut to the chase. We sold APB.. sort of. Before anyone overreacts, this is all good news. No change in management. No changes for you guys. We basically realized that developing both APB Reloaded and APB2 was too much for us. The Australia team was struggling to get their head around the massive amounts of tech, and we lack mobile experience to expand the brand. APB Reloaded is staying with Little Orbit so we can continue on developing and expanding the game in perpetuity. UNIT GAME will spearhead a new game starting on mobile in Asia. This move puts Little Orbit in a very sound financial position, which will make it easier for us to continue with our plans for APB Reloaded. EDIT: We sold the APB Brand and IP to Unit Game, but retained all rights related to APB Reloaded. Thanks, Matt FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: APB BRAND AND IP EXPANDS TO ASIA Irvine, CA, August 27th 2019 - Little Orbit has reached an agreement with Unit Game to sell the APB brand and IP for an undisclosed amount. In a ‘Best of both worlds’ deal, Unit Games will develop and launch an all-new APB mobile game starting with the Asian market, and then expanding world-wide, while Little Orbit will keep the rights to the current APB Reloaded title on PC, XBoxOne, and Playstation 4 so they can continue to develop and expand that title. The CEO of Unit Game said, “For years, I have been an avid player and fan inside the immersive world of APB. The gameplay, stories, and customization system still remains unique today. We are looking forward to developing a new experience for mobile and PC.” Matthew Scott, CEO of Little Orbit, said “We are very excited for Unit Game to give APB fans a new avenue of modern content. At the same time, we are preserving our ability to keep expanding and improving APB Reloaded. It has been over a year since we took over the game, and we are just now learning all the ins and outs. I would not put players through another change in management again.” APB Reloaded is the world’s first and premier Action MMO Third Person Shooter game, allowing you to choose between two sides of the law. Play as an Enforcer or a Criminal, customize your gear for the task at hand and hit the streets and play how you want in a city filled with more action this side of a Hollywood blockbuster. http://www.gamersfirst.com/apb Little Orbit is a worldwide video game publisher formed in January 2010 with a focus on AAA licensed-based entertainment products. The company acquired the GamersFirst.com portal with more than 22MM registered players in May 2018 and has been focusing on extending the work of popular creators through online video games. http://www.littleorbit.com Unit Game is a Hong Kong based company that develop games with strong IP. The company starts its market from Taiwan to China, and later on expands its influence in some Asia Markets. http://apb.com --- Edit by Flight: Due to a lot of misunderstanding and misinterpretation it felt necessary for me to do a quick writeup of what is currently happening. I will dump information in the format of a Q&A. (a chunk of this is admittedly just paraphrasing - will add more later if it becomes relevant) Does this mean Little Orbit will no longer develop APB? No. The sale concerns the APB franchise, but Little Orbit is still able to develop APB: Reloaded as they please. Does UNIT GAME decide what goes into APB: Reloaded? No. UNIT GAME has no creative control over APB: Reloaded. Does this sale come with new faces or people controlling the direction of the game? No. There will be no change in management or anything that the players would be impacted by. Does this give APB less of a life time? Little Orbit can run APB Reloaded indefinitely and still control all their own social media and web presence through GamersFirst.com. They dont have to do any content approvals with the new owners either. In short: What was sold was the rights to all future APB titles (the brand itself). Nothing current was sold. --- Edit by @mayii (1st of September 2019) A post was made with further answers, those are included below. What is "Unit Game" exatcly, and what are their plans for APB Mobile? Unit Game are a well funded startup in Hong Kong led by a long time fan of APB. I believe the company was created just to pursue this new opportunity for them. Can we get examples of UNIT GAME's games? Unit Game added the description of their company at the bottom of the press release, so I can't speak to that line or examples. Does LO still have rights to use San Paro and the other lore elements in APB Reloaded to change/expand the plot? I recognize this is one of the more oddball parts of the deal. It was critical to me that Little Orbit be able to deliver on what we promised and that the players not have to go through another change in management. So we negotiated to keep control and continue developing APB Reloaded. We have all rights to expand the plot, characters, locations, etc, and everything we do is considered "canon".

Hi all, We recently banned a large number of players for using external tools to modify their game directory files. I want to remind everyone that only the Advanced Launcher has been approved by Little Orbit. This program only makes changes to the config that any normal player can make by hand editing the config themselves. Use of the Advanced Launcher has been temporarily approved until we can integrate these features directly into APB Reloaded, and then we will not allow it any more. Players should only download the Advanced Launcher directly from us here: https://media.gamersfirst.com/gamersmedia/apb/Advanced_APB_Launcher.zip Here is an example of a launcher that is NOT allowed that actually got a number of players banned. This is NOT the Advanced Launcher we approved, because it goes far beyond editing the config. This replaces shaders and massively hacks the game. Since the advertisement for this and other launchers makes them seem like the Advanced Launcher that we approved, I’m going to assume some of our players didn’t know the difference, and I am going to unban these players since they were not given any warnings. They have already been banned for more than a week. That’s punishment enough. However, I am not disabling the EAC auto ban for these types of programs, and there wont be a second chance again. Please pass the word to your friends to uninstall these other launchers and to reinstall APB. We will continue to ban for this level of changes to your game files. Do not put your account at risk. Thanks, Matt

We are looking mostly at locations where multiple regions can play. Sydney is great for locals, but terrible for everyone else.

Lots of edits to my original post for clarity.

Yes. World servers will be mirrored in multiple regions. We haven’t nailed down specific locations for new Action Districts, but options are Los Angeles, New York, Moscow, Singapore, Rio. These Action District servers will be marked in the Advanced list by region, but will be available to all players to join.

Hi there, Plenty coming - both to ARMAS but also in the 2 new contacts. I’ll be previewing some soon. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, During the coming weeks, we will be disabling special characters (Cyrillic, Latin, etc) in names and flagging all names that contain special characters for a forced change. We explored a number of ways to fix this without changing names, but in the end we are somewhat limited to the characters enabled across all our players’ keyboards. We need to do this to fix the /report & mail issues and to prep the upcoming Jericho and Citadel consolidation. The goal is to finally open all characters across all regions. EDIT: This isn’t like a traditional server merge. World servers will be merged, but we are spreading out the Action Districts so that North American players can play with other regions and so that our Asia-Pacific, South America, and Russian players can have better latency.  We haven’t nailed down specific locations for new Action Districts, but options are Los Angeles, New York, Moscow, Singapore, Rio. These Action District servers will be marked in the Advanced list by region, but will be available to all players to join. This is how the Action Districts are hosted alongside the World Servers now, which limits where we can host them. This is how we can expand the locations of Action Districts after the merge (although we will have multiple district types and threat levels in each location). (@SKay thanks for the images, and Happy Birthday!) EDIT: The locations shown on the map were picked randomly for demonstration purposes, beyond that they don't have any particular meaning. More details will be coming later on. EDIT: This move is a prerequisite for Phasing, which eliminate the need to spam click in an effort to join a district with 79 players. Instead we will match across all online players in the same district type and move those players to the best server for them. EDIT: We are also going to do something special with character names to avoid collisions this time. Anyone who hasn’t logged in their character within the last year will have their name released so that new and existing characters can use it both during and after the merge. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We had no notice or control over this PS4 sale. This is the first I’m hearing about it. My guess is that it was initiated by Sony or by Deep Silver, our console publisher. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, Looks like this has been resolved. I’ll let a couple more players confirm the can get in, and then I’ll lock the thread. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We’re looking at it now. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, Since we are updating Test Districts, I am going to lock this discussion. Thanks, Matt

Honestly, it’s a bit of everything, including a couple meetings with Deep Silver / Koch to manage the APB upgrade coming on console.

Hi all, I’ve been stuck in meetings at Gamescom, so I haven’t been able to weigh in much on the first round of RPF/OCA changes. We did take the time to rethink our strategy, and this new round hopefully addresses some of your feedback. Test A Is the simplest and most direct set of changes that moves the RFP back to shorter range secondary. Test B still significantly reduces the range but has a bit more risk vs reward gameplay. I recognize that based on the stats we shared, the last round was easy for players to spot our misfire. The lack of specific stats was not intended to upset anyone or force testing. This is just something we want to try this time because we all know that stats on paper can appear vastly different than actual in-game feel. Perhaps these notes were too vague, and we can work on finding a middle ground, but I want to reduce the amount of discussion from players who weighed in simply based on the stats but without getting into a district. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We’ve got a hardware issue with one of the FE servers. The team is working on it. Update as of 5am PST: estimating another 6 hours. Update as of 7am PST: we are back up Thanks, Matt