So when do we revive APB?

[VanilleKeks 753]

Dumb title aside; from existing plans I have seen I would really like to know when you'll actually make an attempt to gather new players.

I don't see any large "wow moments" happening without newer engine capabilities 

 

Many issues would be solved by a larger playerbase (fairer matches, less disproportionate amount of cheaters among others).
With the full engine upgrade being the original key to start marketing and that now being scrapped, what's the plan?

 

If I missed some info about this please show me (and no I won't join your discord, publish your news properly)

Edited April 1 by VanilleKeks

[Yapopal 195]

I once owned a Toyota Lite ace minibus with rear-wheel drive. He skidded on any surface. For example, he could slip on wet grass for no reason. This game reminds me of him. The developers are working hard, delving into the task. But it always turns out to be a minibus that is stalling.

[sweetLemonade 123]

5 hours ago, VanilleKeks said:

Dumb title aside; from existing plans I have seen I would really like to know when you'll actually make an attempt to gather new players.

I don't see any large "wow moments" happening without newer engine capabilities 

 

Many issues would be solved by a larger playerbase (fairer matches, less disproportionate amount of cheaters among others).
With the full engine upgrade being the original key to start marketing and that now being scrapped, what's the plan?

 

If I missed some info about this please show me (and no I won't join your discord, publish your news properly)

According to Matt's comments from the last AMA, advertising is planned after next content patch which is due in May–June this year.
The content patch will include 2 new contacts, a (very likely) new PvE district, Epic Game Store launch, Cross-World Matchmaking and the new "GamersFirst Technology Platform" (A in-house client & server anti-cheat) along with a supposed Monthly Leaderboard (from the description of it, it'll be akin to Battle Passes in other games)

Considering the state they plan to advertise the game in, the constant mention of a potential UE5 release (but explicitly mentioning that they won't repeat a "engine upgrade" scenario) in the AMA.... I don't have any hopes of this game gaining attraction again from new users, especially with the current gameplay mechanics.
They've seemingly transitioned all their news updates to Discord, which is quite bizarre considering they host these forums and that's what forums are for...

Edited April 1 by sweetLemonade

[VanilleKeks 753]

14 hours ago, sweetLemonade said:

According to Matt's comments from the last AMA, advertising is planned after next content patch which is due in May–June this year.
The content patch will include 2 new contacts, a (very likely) new PvE district, Epic Game Store launch, Cross-World Matchmaking and the new "GamersFirst Technology Platform" (A in-house client & server anti-cheat) along with a supposed Monthly Leaderboard (from the description of it, it'll be akin to Battle Passes in other games)

Considering the state they plan to advertise the game in, the constant mention of a potential UE5 release (but explicitly mentioning that they won't repeat a "engine upgrade" scenario) in the AMA.... I don't have any hopes of this game gaining attraction again from new users, especially with the current gameplay mechanics.
They've seemingly transitioned all their news updates to Discord, which is quite bizarre considering they host these forums and that's what forums are for...

Thanks for sharing. It's something at least. Lets see where it goes

[Gro 108]

You're gonna need necromancers for this, pal.

[Mitne 728]

Taking how G1 killed population in past with nonaction and false promises and then LO stepped in and both took too small fishing rod for too big of fish and also decided to limit their actions to the point they pretty much G1 v.2 in nonaction. I remember when I joined this game we had EU with populations of 20k on each two servers, two instances of NA for both East and West, equally filled to brim, Asian server called Han and Innova which was seperate one but russians at least had their place too. And over years population dropped, servers had to be merged one by one by one so we arrive here... with roughly 500 players at best hours. It's safe to say all the potential was there and was absolutely wasted. And popularity was absolutely ruined. You go to YouTube - type "APB: Reloaded" and the top results are about "Why it's 100 million $ disaster".

 

So safe to say, that ship already sailed. We just facing inevitable.  LO would need to do major... And I mean really major changes which would astound players. (Facepunch did that miracle with Rust but I doubt LO is capable to replicate what Facepunch did)

Either that or release new APB in background (of course hyping it up first). Problem is franchise was sold to company called "Unit Game" which appears to just sit on title and present it like some trophy.

 

So this game lost it future and really I blame developers (also game population didn't do any favours with cheating in rampant amounts for "people who love this game" and there's also people who treat newbies like "unnecessary evil" and decide to go full ham on them...)

[VanilleKeks 753]

20 hours ago, Mitne said:

Taking how G1 killed population in past with nonaction and false promises and then LO stepped in and both took too small fishing rod for too big of fish and also decided to limit their actions to the point they pretty much G1 v.2 in nonaction. I remember when I joined this game we had EU with populations of 20k on each two servers, two instances of NA for both East and West, equally filled to brim, Asian server called Han and Innova which was seperate one but russians at least had their place too. And over years population dropped, servers had to be merged one by one by one so we arrive here... with roughly 500 players at best hours. It's safe to say all the potential was there and was absolutely wasted. And popularity was absolutely ruined. You go to YouTube - type "APB: Reloaded" and the top results are about "Why it's 100 million $ disaster".

 

So safe to say, that ship already sailed. We just facing inevitable.  LO would need to do major... And I mean really major changes which would astound players. (Facepunch did that miracle with Rust but I doubt LO is capable to replicate what Facepunch did)

Either that or release new APB in background (of course hyping it up first). Problem is franchise was sold to company called "Unit Game" which appears to just sit on title and present it like some trophy.

 

So this game lost it future and really I blame developers (also game population didn't do any favours with cheating in rampant amounts for "people who love this game" and there's also people who treat newbies like "unnecessary evil" and decide to go full ham on them...)

"I remember when I joined this game we had EU with populations of 20k on each two servers, two instances of NA for both East and West, equally filled to brim"

 

The game has never been beyond a 6k population peak in total on Steam and we did not get 20k per server from launcher users lol.

 

By all means G1 and LO have let the player-base decline but let's not act like APB Reloaded was ever a major title that was killed or anything.

The population was always abysmal for a free online title.

[sweetLemonade 123]

On 4/9/2025 at 8:58 AM, VanilleKeks said:

The game has never been beyond a 6k population peak in total on Steam and we did not get 20k per server from launcher users lol.

 

By all means G1 and LO have let the player-base decline but let's not act like APB Reloaded was ever a major title that was killed or anything.

The population was always abysmal for a free online title.

I was always perplexed as to why that occured.
Was it complete lack of care from the management team or developers team in terms of new content & balancing? Was it the abysmal game performance at the time? Was it the supposed "ghost-shot" issues? (which were mostly RNG complaints) Was it the, supposed, rampant cheating & lack of a illusion that a anti-cheat solution exists? (lack of separate casual & comp queue exacerbated this even further, PB wasn't helping it, however)
As a concept, APB did many things right... it just lacked support after it's release due to lack of, as we can now easily claim, good management.

Edited yesterday at 02:33 PM by sweetLemonade

[VanilleKeks 753]

4 hours ago, sweetLemonade said:

I was always perplexed as to why that occured.
Was it complete lack of care from the management team or developers team in terms of new content & balancing? Was it the abysmal game performance at the time? Was it the supposed "ghost-shot" issues? (which were mostly RNG complaints) Was it the, supposed, rampant cheating & lack of a illusion that a anti-cheat solution exists? (lack of separate casual & comp queue exacerbated this even further, PB wasn't helping it, however)
As a concept, APB did many things right... it just lacked support after it's release due to lack of, as we can now easily claim, good management.

RTW APB was already a failure so I would assume that the amount of returning players for a "sequel/re-release" wasn't that high to begin with.

The rest is up to speculation. I would say 6k is actually a decent number as a seed for growth, but they never managed to pour water on it.

 

Cheating has always been an issue for the community and that's largely because APB's district design is really bad for a PvP environment.

Early on I would say we had "normal" cheater numbers but they are disproportionally encountered compared to other shooters.

 

With most people in a district being a mission you have maybe 10 possible enemies to encounter at any given time, which means if you queued into a cheater there is a high chance that that's all you're gonna get for the rest of the session.

 

Had we have gotten phasing earlier (and not in such an annoying state) I doubt that this game would have ever gotten such a large reputation for cheating.

Edited yesterday at 06:49 PM by VanilleKeks

[Uhtdred 245]

this game is dead without a proper anti cheat system.

 

Fair fight needs to come back asap.

[vsb 6186]

16 hours ago, sweetLemonade said:

I was always perplexed as to why that occured.
Was it complete lack of care from the management team or developers team in terms of new content & balancing? Was it the abysmal game performance at the time? Was it the supposed "ghost-shot" issues? (which were mostly RNG complaints) Was it the, supposed, rampant cheating & lack of a illusion that a anti-cheat solution exists? (lack of separate casual & comp queue exacerbated this even further, PB wasn't helping it, however)
As a concept, APB did many things right... it just lacked support after it's release due to lack of, as we can now easily claim, good management.

rtw was a very large, very public failures and gamersfirst really miscalculated the brand recognition (and so did little orbit)

 

combined with poor advertising and slow, monetization focused development the game has been relegated to “shitty gta clone with cheaters” by just about every gamer i’ve ever met

 

[DedGaem 149]

On 4/9/2025 at 1:58 AM, VanilleKeks said:

"I remember when I joined this game we had EU with populations of 20k on each two servers, two instances of NA for both East and West, equally filled to brim"

 

The game has never been beyond a 6k population peak in total on Steam and we did not get 20k per server from launcher users lol.

 

By all means G1 and LO have let the player-base decline but let's not act like APB Reloaded was ever a major title that was killed or anything.

The population was always abysmal for a free online title.

You're so wrong... 

GamersFirst has confirmed that APB: Reloaded has over 3 million user accounts. The game sees between 25,000 and 30,000 active players every day.
APB: Reloaded Surpasses 3 Million Players Following Steam Launch

[VanilleKeks 753]

1 hour ago, DedGaem said:

You're so wrong... 

GamersFirst has confirmed that APB: Reloaded has over 3 million user accounts. The game sees between 25,000 and 30,000 active players every day.
APB: Reloaded Surpasses 3 Million Players Following Steam Launch

There is no way to verify this source. Anyone can write an article and G1 marketing said all kinds of stuff.

 

Steam has statistics dating all the way back and if the all-time peak is 6k on the most popular gaming platform there is no way G1 managed to pull in 5 times those numbers with whatever crappy launcher they had at the time.

 

Also I was playing during this time and we had no where near enough the amount of active districts to accompany what would average around like 10k players at any given time of day

Edited 12 hours ago by VanilleKeks