10/15 HALLOWEEN PATCH ANNOUNCEMENT

[ColorBauss 77]

14 hours ago, cowhorseman said:

how does this information solve the issue of cheaters firing all 21 rounds of it into my face at .01 seconds. if we take your time that would mean they are shooting a whooping 7 rounds a second. which SHOCKING kills  you in a  heart beat.

Shooting a gun faster than it's fire rate is impossible, even with cheats, as the server only allows the gun to be fired at its intended fire rate, no matter how much you send inputs to the server. 

And yes, the gun can in fact fire 7 rounds a second without any cheats.

[Ardita 224]

Lets focus on dealing with the cheaters and make the anticheat and matchmaking work --and less weapon balancing atm. shall we?  

[raging 8]

Now im not one to pick at things done by the devs by all means but if i may, WHY IN GODS NAME WOULD YOU ONLY MAKE THE HOLIDAY CONTACT FOR ONE DISTRICT AND NOT BOTH... You do know by now that only one district per week to every two weeks is played, so as long as people only choose to play financial then those of us trying to complete Trick\Treat are F*$%'D.. 

[Nagletz 229]

3 hours ago, Ardita said:

Lets focus on dealing with the cheaters and make the anticheat and matchmaking work --and less weapon balancing atm. shall we?  

They already kinda focusing on these things, but this is long term (read: infinite term) issue, so in my eyes gun balancing is like a breath of fresh air. We all are being strangled here anyways.

[Frosi 727]

8 hours ago, Ardita said:

Lets focus on dealing with the cheaters and make the anticheat and matchmaking work --and less weapon balancing atm. shall we?  

Those are both engineering tasks - Not design tasks which means I have very little involvement in either of them beside helping finetune and fix based on feedback. In other words the balance efforts do not take resources away from the Matchmaking/Anti-Cheat work thats going on.

[Yapopal 209]

On 10/19/2025 at 10:47 AM, ColorBauss said:

Shooting a gun faster than it's fire rate is impossible, even with cheats, as the server only allows the gun to be fired at its intended fire rate, no matter how much you send inputs to the server.

And yes, the gun can in fact fire 7 rounds a second without any cheats.

Yes, you're right, it's impossible to shoot weapons faster than the game provides. BUT why do sometimes the first three shots from the damn AP 45 merge together, I get a freeze frame and then I just see the death of the character? Perhaps fine-tuning or configuring Flavs will help me. But I always speak on behalf of a random player and a potential client who decided to download this miracle from Steam. A random player will simply delete this miracle and will not look into it. I don't understand why this bad shooter was given an upgraded customization system for the once great APB game.

[Ardita 224]

9 hours ago, Frosi said:

Those are both engineering tasks - Not design tasks which means I have very little involvement in either of them beside helping finetune and fix based on feedback. In other words the balance efforts do not take resources away from the Matchmaking/Anti-Cheat work thats going on.

That's fair.

What about getting new players to the game? Is that your task? Because if you guys continue focusing on weapon balancing for less and less players, what we got now 200 max, the end will be it's only those who play the game 24/7, 30-50 people left you're dealing with.

[Darkzero3802 633]

On 10/14/2025 at 1:12 PM, MageLO said:

Hello everyone,

 

Our standard weekly maintenance will be held this Wednesday (10/15) starting at 9 AM UTC. The game should be back up and running in 8 to 10 hours.

 

Halloween 2025 - The Epidemic Returns

 

The spookiest season of the year is just around the corner and with it we decided to give Epidemic yet another run this year. However, we've heard your feedback from last years run about how tying the new rewards to a role requiring you to complete daily activities felt like a chore and really didn't let you grind the role even if you wanted to so this year we've changed the main role to require you to finish matches instead. We have also increasing the amount of Joker Tickets earned per level of the role from 150 to 250 and have added a new weapon skin called "Glow in the Dark (White)" as part of finishing the role!

 

Additionally, along with Epidemic you can expect Trick & Treat as well as the hunts for Pumpkins around Financial and Waterfront! You can learn all things about Halloween in our dedicated blog post here.

 

Joker M9S 'Pulse Check'

 

We initially planned to release the Joker M9S 'Pulse Check' along with the Joker C9S 'Prototype' as part of the Legends patch - However, as the Halloween patch grew in scope especially in terms of Balance changes we have decided that we're going to release the Joker M9S 'Pulse Check' as part of the Halloween patch! 

 

The Joker M9S 'Pulse Check' is a fast firing, high damage Legendary pistol with an integrated XTD-7s Silencer helping you stay undetected while roaming the streets of San Paro - As with all new Legendary Weapons this weapon will be sold by Anne on the Joker Ticket store.
 

Balance

 

Additionally this patch we're going to make large balance adjustments to almost all SMG's as well as trying to find a better balance between where we want the OBIR and Oblivion to sit in terms of overall power. 

 

SMG Balance

 

SMG's have always been rather situational in APB: Reloaded's overall gunplay with most players chosing more versatile medium to long range weapons over SMG's. We're generally fine with this approach but think that SMG's should be slightly stronger and more consistent overall than they currently are, thus we have tweaked most SMG's to varying degrees usually focusing on improving their base accuracy slightly as well as lowering how much accuracy they lose during sustained fire. This should improve how SMG's feel to play across the board and lower the amount of "feels bad" moments when using them past 15~ meters. 

 

We also want to acknowledge the problematic state that Shotguns are currently in with most shotguns feeling like they're not consistent or unfun to play/play against. We are currently also in the initial phases of a shotgun rework to address their overall annoyance of shotguns when playing or playing against them. This new design approach is still some time out but should hopefully place shotguns in a better spot for players but also for us to balance.

 

PMG

• Accuracy At Ten Metres decreased from 34 to 33.
• Effective Range increased from 20m to 25m.
• Recovery per second increased from 6.9 to 7.

 

PMG-SD

• Accuracy At Ten Metres decreased from 34 to 31.
• Effective Range increased from 20m to 25m.
• Recovery per second increased from 6.9 to 7.

 

OCA-EW

• Radius At Ten Metres decreased from 36 to 35.
• Crouch modifier decreased from 1 to 0.9.
• Recovery per second increased from 5.15 to 5.18.

 

OCA Whisper

• Radius At Ten Metres decreased from 34 to 32.
• Recovery Per Second increased from 5.15 to 5.18.

 

ACES SMG

• Overall Shot Modifier Cap decreased from 2 to 1.5.

 

CAP40

• Radius At Ten Metres decreased from 36 to 35.
• Crouch modifier decreased from 1 to 0.9.

 

H-9 Curse

• Health Damage increased from 105 to 111.
• Effective range increased from 30m to 35m.
• Marksmanship modifier decreased from 0.98 to 0.85.
• Overall Shot Modifier Cap decreased from 1.5 to 1.
• Jump modifier decreased from 4.4 to 2.2.

 

Manic

• Overall Shot Modifier Cap decreased from 0.68 to 0.6.

 

Norsemen

• Crouch modifier decreased from 1 to 0.9.
• Recovery per second increased from 7.1 to 7.2.

 

Pistol Balance

 

• Reduced the delay of all traditional secondary weapons from 1s to 0.5s.

 

Dev note: To encourage swapping secondaries more frequently we're lowering the resupply delay for secondaries from 1 second to 0.5 seconds allowing players to fully resupply their secondaries much faster. This change does not affect the Flare Gun or Firework Launcher.

 

Act 44

• Effective Range increased from 60m to 70m.

 

Misc Balance

 

OBIR

• Minimum Damage range increased from 80m to 85m.
• Equip time increased from 0.8s to 1.0s.

 

Dev note: The OBIR has been underperforming since it had its damage reduced so we're trying to improve the guns effectiveness at range without reintroducing the same frustration the weapon caused prior to its nerfs. 

 

S-247 'Oblivion'

• Equip time increased from 0.95s to 1.2s
• Walk modifier increased from 0.25 to 1.10.
• Jump modifier increased from 8 to 16.

 

Dev note: The Oblivion has been a hot topic and has largely replaced the OBIR in the meta - We've heard the feedback about the gun being a little too good at almost all ranges so we're pulling back on its Close Range power a little bit as well as fixing an unintended behavior the gun had which made it gain accuracy on the move. 

 

Joker SR15 Carbine

• Accuracy AT Ten Metres reduced from 22 to 21.
• Overall Shot Modifier Cap reduced from 1.6 to 1.4
• Equip time reduced from 1s to 0.8s.

 

Dev note: With the large changes to SMG's above we feared that the Carbine would struggle to be effective within its intended distances, because of this we're giving it slightly better base accuracy and tigher max bloom which should also make running Cooling Jacket a compelling option again.

 

Miscellaneous changes

 

• Changed the priority layer for the following interactions to be on the same layer as that of interacting with your Vehicles cargo: Opening Doors, Climbing Ladders, Climbing Fences, Spawning Vehicles - Players will now need to look towards the object they want to interact with if multiple are present. This change aims to remove clunky interacts where parking a car next to other interactable objects would often prioritize the wrong interaction.
• Picking up task items is now prioritized over Breaking into vehicles to prevent a clunky interaction if an item was dropped next to a vehicle that could be broken into.

 

Thank you for your patience and don't get spooked!

 

Ive said this before and ill say it again. You cant balance weapons properly based off of hitreg that doesnt work. This is especially big for shotties, you have already rebalanced shotties twice since taking over from G1 and it hasnt fixed the problem. Making each pellet have its own hit made things worse cause you can be point blank and not get the kill cause afew pellets didnt register. Shotties have always been outplayed by SMGs and some ars at close range cause balancing has never been there. Within 12 or 10m shotties should be king, capable of one shotting enemies should all pellets hit (Minus auto shotties like NFAS). This is not the case as hitreg again doesnt exist and you have SMGs like the PMG that can 3 tap someone and you cant get a 2nd shot off with a shottie with that kind of TTK on an SMG rendering them pointless.