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

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.

Welcome to the first APB Evolved Wednesday!

I’d like to start by letting everyone know that if you want to know more about APB, remember to check out the podcast series. Many of the questions posed here have been answered already, so make sure you subscribe to stay up to date! You can do so by going to iTunes, Zune Store or YouTube.

To start you off, why not head over to YouTube and check out the Q&A podcasts that are out already:

• Episode 6: Q&A - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V45nU7YNYQg
• Episode 12: EJ Q&A 4 U - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PU89O2Xjg0
• Episode 15 Q&A Special - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6pbPM6lKsk

I also want to state that questions to do with beta access, application status, or requesting info from the current closed beta will not be answered.

With that out of the way, here are this week’s responses!

Angrybeans - Will APB come out on the XBOX 360 anytime soon?
I realise for those of you that have kept up to date with APB, this question has been answered many, many times.
APB is set for PC only at first release. Once we’re happy with the PC version, we will look at our console strategy.
DECOY - Any chance on getting the logo and music editors early and maybe available for download?
We’re not planning to release any of the editors before launch.

TheDriver - Will you NEED to join a faction for missions, or is that optional?
Technically, the answer to your question is yes. However, I think you misunderstand what we mean by ‘faction’. There are two factions in APB; Criminal or Enforcer. When creating your character for the first time, you must choose to join one of these factions.

As you play through APB, you unlock new contacts. These contacts work for Organisations who are on either the side of Enforcer or Criminal. While you need to unlock contacts to get new mission types, rewards and equipment, you do not ‘join’ them.

Your character and the clan that you’re a part of define how you act within San Paro, not the organisations you work for.

We had a lot of feedback on the lore podcasts, where people were complaining there were no normal ‘street gangs’ or ‘mafia types’. If you want to be part of a mafia style gang, then go ahead, it’s up to you how you look and act. Creativity is a massive part of APB so go crazy and be who you want to be.

Jason - About people hearing music you're playing, does it play off my hard drive or do I have to use Last.FM for them to hear the music?
There’s been some confusion around Last.FM in APB. We use Last.FM technology, not the service itself.
When you open up the music player in game (the new podcast will give you some more info on this when it’s out) you have the option to import the music into the in game playlist.

When you’ve done that, you can choose to play music from either ‘headphones’ (which can only be heard by you) or from your ‘car stereo’. If you select the latter option, when driving past someone, you will be playing music out of your car. This is where we use Last.FM tagging technology to calculate what the other person hears. Now, if they have the same track on their playlist, they will hear that track. If they don’t have the track, but the same artist, they may hear one of those tracks. If they don’t have the artist, the game looks for something similar in their playlist and that’s what they hear.

Hedger - will enforcers be able to collect a bounty placed on a "5 star" enforcer?
EDIT - No. Enforcers cannot collect bounties on other Enforcers. - Apologies on the confusion there.

Jinxxed0 - If I have a friend that decides to play a few months after I play, will we be able to do missions together or will I have to wait on him to "level up"
Because we don’t have a ‘levelling system’ in the game, you can team up with anyone. The game uses it’s matchmaking system to match you up with groups of a similar threat level. So you may have all the equipment in the game and your threat is high because you’ve had a great day of playing. You team up with your friend who’s fresh out of the tutorial and the game will match you up against, maybe two or three mid-threat players.

The beauty of it is, you never know who you’re going to be up against and every fight is different. Everyone uses different tactics, so it’s almost impossible to know how each mission will turn out.

MissnL1nK - Will there be servers to choose from or is there one huge server that simply instances everyone by 100 and social by 250? If the servers are instanced, will you not able to play with certain people from time to time?

There will be a number of different servers at launch. These servers hold 100,000 people. You then have a number of districts to choose from. The two action districts, Waterfront and Financial, hold 100 players. The social district holds 250.

If the person is in your friends list, or your group and you’re in different instances, you can simply pull up a menu and join the district they’re in.

Darkedge - Is your aim limited while you are hanging out of the window of a vehicle? Whist watching the videos, it looks like you can only aim left and right and not up and down. Does it work a lot like Modern Warfare 2? Will we have grenades? Different type of grenades? Will sniper weapons kill in 1-2 hits?

You can look in all sorts of directions when leaning out of windows. Not all weapons can be fired out of moving vehicles and you don’t get a full 360 degree firing arch (because the vehicle gets in the way), but you can aim up and down as well as left and right.

There are grenades, yes. There are different types, including stun, frag, etc.

Sniper rifles will never be able to kill in 1 shot, but (depending on the weapon mod attached) they really, really hurt. Two shots shouldn’t be necessary if you’re working in a team, but two would definitely finish someone off. There’s a range of sniper rifles and some can be modded, so really it’s about finding your play style and working as a group.

Niall - What colour shirt are you wearing today, Deum?
It’s brown and it has a panda on it.

That’s all for this week folks. Feel free to discuss the responses, but I’ll ask that if you have any questions, please pose them in the APB EVOLVED WEDNESDAY questions thread.

Massively is really on a roll lately with All Points Bulletin related content, and I can't complain!  Thanks for the tip on the forums by MissnL1nK!  The article discusses the possible success/failure of APB, and it's actually an interesting write up.

Check it out!