Do you have questions for Realtime Worlds? Get them answered!

March 13, 2010 - David Jones of Grand Theft Auto, Lemmings, and Crackdown fame was at GDC this year, and we got the rare opportunity to talk to him about APB – the upcoming massively-multiplayer online (MMO) action game from Realtime Worlds. APB, if it has slipped under your radar, is a gigantic version of cops and robbers, where players take on the role of a thieving, murdering, terrorizing Criminal, or an Enforcer in charge of keeping the law breakers in line. Rather than a World of Warcraft-styled MMO, APB is more akin to a run-and-gun action game, and has drawn parallels to the most recent GTA games for reasons that become apparent when you watch the game in motion.

A couple years ago, Jones gave a talk in which he blasted WoW, saying that grinding was a mechanic and needed to be done away with. This year, during a presentation, he mention that should players want to do something "grindy" in APB, they would have the opportunity to, in the form of missions. I asked him how he planned to avoid the pitfalls of normal grinding.

"The analogy I used was, take players as content, and any opportunity where you're doing the same things again and again and again, make sure you involve players in it, because they're human, they're emotional, you don't know how they're going to react…" Jones believes that, even if you're doing the same mission, the fact that you're facing human opponents will keep it fresh and appealing far, far longer than your typical repetitive MMO quest. "You may be on a mission that lasts ten minutes, and the mission might have five or six sub-missions, and at each stage of the mission, you're opposing players." In fact, he wants to completely avoid any non-player interaction, stating "We're still in the stone age when it comes to AI in my opinion. We don't have many plans for PvE. It would kind of move against the philosophy of what we've set."

Continue reading at IGN.com

From Gamespot – March 11, 2010

GDC 2010: APB Updated Impressions

Whether you’re a hardened criminal or a crime-fighting enforcer, the world of APB will have plenty of options for adventure. The upcoming massively multiplayer action game from Realtime Worlds is looking to make some significant changes to the MMO landscape, thanks to obsessive levels of character customization and a mission structure that is dependent not just on NPCs, but on fellow real life players. Realtime Worlds’ Dave Jones gave a brief demo of the game during today’s media briefing at the Epic booth on the floor of the 2010 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. Read the full article here.

From Eurogamer – March 12, 2010

Interview with Realtime Worlds’ David Jones

It’s now approaching the finish line on APB, an almost-massively multiplayer crime game that pitches 100 players, controlling criminals and Enforcers, into the seedy city of San Paro. Featuring a mission system that dynamically matches players against each other, deep customisation of your characters’ look, vehicles and even theme tune, and more twitchy, thunderous driving and shooting than any MMO can boast, APB is an easy sell but still raises many questions. Not least, how Realtime is going to pay to run it, since it’s not going to charge a subscription despite sky-high server costs. Read the full article here.

GDC 2010 Discussion

This week, we take a look at the in game Music Player with Audio Lead Roland Peddie. Also, Roland talks to us a little bit more about the Music Editor due to the overwhelming response to Episode 16.

APB Podcast Episode 17

Welcome to this week's edition of APB Evolved Wednesdays!

Make sure you keep them coming and remember, we won't be answering any questions to do with the status of the beta, or individual account/application enquiries.

Decoy - what will the range of character customization be AFTER creation. Will players be able to change things like hair and tattoos later in game?

There are two permanent decisions that players will make in APB. The first is their faction (Criminal or Enforcer) and the other is whether they’re male or female. Anything else, such as height, weight, tattoos, clothing, hair, etc, can be changed. There’s a cost to making such changes, which vary, depending on the severity of the change (changing your height, for example, miiiiiight cost a little more than a new hair cut).

Toez - After we obtain our own player car, how do we get to use it? Does it have a set location that it spawns or where you can collect it, or do we have to press a button anywhere and it spawns in front of us? And if the latter does this have a cooldown, and can we just do it any time we want, eg. in the middle of a firefight?

Player vehicles can be spawned from a number of different, yet specific, locations. There are terminals at places such as police stations, contact areas, parking garages and petrol (or for you Americans out there, ‘gas’) stations. For a small fee, you can use these terminals to spawn your custom vehicle. You’ll often stumble across one when you’re trying to escape pursuers, or chase someone down and it makes sense to ditch the family sedan or taxi for something with a little more pace to it

JamesSeverino – You’ve already confirmed a guild feature, what I’d like to know is if there will be guild battles or leaderboards? If there are, how would they be organized with a matchmaking system with server selection?

Guild ‘battles’ are not something that will be in the game for launch. It’s something that has been mentioned before, so who knows, you may see it appear in an update after launch
We will, however, have a series of guild based leagues in the game, allowing guilds to compete on any level they want to.

MissnL1nK - Q1: Will there be group oriented missions? ( 2 - 5 people ) Q2: Will there be raid oriented missions? ( 5+ people )

So I think both of these questions can be answered by giving you a bit more insight into how APB’s mission structure works.

When you enter one of the action districts, you can pledge to one of the many contacts you have unlocked. These contacts will give you missions. You can either pledge on your own, or you can pledge as a group. Group’s can consist of two to four players.

Once pledged, the contact will send you mission offers. You can either choose to accept or decline them.
You begin these missions unopposed. Missions consist of a number of stages that you must complete to finish the overall mission. When you start, you may see three or so stages.

During the mission, the game may decide that you need some opposition, so it will use the dynamic matchmaking system to find some equally skilled opponents. If you were, say, a group of two, it may decide to send four lower threat opponents.

Now you may see the number of stages to that mission change as a result of this matchup (or “APB”, as it’s known). During these stages, you may feel that these four opponents are too much of a match for you. As you’re the side with the smaller number, you can go ahead and call for backup. Both criminals and enforcers can call for backup.

As a result, the mission itself can escalate from a small firefight, to a full on twenty versus twenty street battle, with each side consisting of different groups, combined into what we refer to as a meta-group.

Rewards will then be shared out depending on how long individuals have been involved, as well as their involvement in the overall mission (did they help complete objectives, kill-count, etc).

Necrotik - We've seen a lot of what the criminals will able to do in the game, like; stealing cars, snatch and grabs, robberies, etc. and how it will be the Enforcers job to try and stop them. But will the Enforcer faction have access to their own day to day mission other than waiting for the criminals to commit a crime?

The best way to look at it is that Criminals prey off the city of San Paro. They steal cars, mug pedestrians, break into stores, etc. The Enforcers prey on the criminals. As a result, the Enforcers ‘open world activities’ consist of catching criminals in the act and bringing them to justice either by arresting, or using more ‘lethal’ means.

But don’t forget, this is only the open world activities. Missions can take Enforcers on any number of activities, such as bomb defusal, CSI, escorting VIP’s, tapping phone lines, evidence gathering, etc.

Necrotik - One part of the game I love is the range of cars that will be available to players to pimp out, Will the game have a "Fast & Furious" aspect to it, where players can compete in street races or trick out their cars to become kings of the quarter mile?

The game itself will not generate scenarios like this. There are missions that involve escaping or getting to check points in a strict time, but not directly street racing.

However, that doesn’t mean players can’t arrange races themselves...

Street racing area’s have definitely been discussed at RTW, so that may be something that we create once the game is launched.

DELTA440 - will there be any type of melee combat such as a simple hand to hand fighting system simular to gta4 online mode

At launch, APB won’t have any sort of melee combat. It’s something we really want to get into the game, however the designers felt it tipped the balance too far in many situations. But, again, it’s something that has been discussed regularly and it is something we’d like to introduce. So who knows that you’ll see after launch.

Caini - We know the potential of the character creator, logo designs and stuff, but, is there some things we are not allowed to create? Meaning, impersonations, trademarks, soccer teams logos, or reproductions of fictional characters? Is there a copyright law in action whenever we show a design or character?

Good question! As you’ve said, APB is a highly customizable game. As a result, copyright infringement is something we’re extremely aware of.

We will allow copyright holders to contact us directly, if they feel that something created in game infringes on their property. Once we receive this, we will investigate each case and contact the property holder or the agents acting on their behalf and remove anything that is deemed as an infringement.

It’s also worth noting that we’ll allow the creator of the article to have a say in this process, giving everyone a fair chance, instead of just removing something without the player knowing.