Early opinions on the APB Reloaded beta?

[XxDuSaNxX]

Title pretty much says it all. Share your opinion and/or experience with the beta so far.

In my experience, when the game works, it really WORKS. Fun team-based shooting in an open world where, as far as the game is concerned, the entire city could be your battlefield (though that's usually not the case). And from a gameplay standpoint, it works great. The graphics are a bit bland, save for the characters. But from a technical standpoint, the game is a disaster! Painfully laggy servers (which is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to a shooter), takes 5-10 minutes from starting up the game to actually getting in, textures take time to load, the games graphics are meh, and yet its a resource hog (it uses roughly 2.5GB or RAM if you play for more than 2 hours), the vehicles have a 2-5 second input delay and so on and so forth.

How about you guys?

 

[Benth08x]

I found it really fun for the first 30 minutes or so, and then it turned into an imbalanced nightmare. I haven't played a game in recent years that makes me rage quite like APB does. I stopped playing it a few weeks ago and from what I read on their forums it seems like things have gotten worse recently.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Looks like not much has changed from the original release of the game from what I understand (did not play the original). Cars still handle like crap, as does the shooting, and it's still massively laggy.

 

[Katana314]

I didn't play it so much, but it seemed all right; not much more than that. It has an interesting idea combining an open world with a team-objective mission style. Still, it gets a little repetitive and samey pretty quickly.

I also notice any MMO with the "5-day-item" policy tends to lose interest because none of your progression feels permanent. That's not the case with WoW - you constantly feel like you have to get to the next level, or find the last Orb of Reckoning for the quest, or free the last captive slave.
Well don't ask me what they do in WoW, I've never played it. But it seems to work for several million people.

 

[CrawlingPastaHellion]

Clocked more than 200 hours on my enforcer. I loved it at first and at first it works well as a novelty: a GTA online with an insane amount of customization. Yet after a month of playing all the little cracks start to become more apparent and the whole thing crumbles to pieces like a house made of cards.

The shooting mechanics is terrible, as is halo-style (yep, a lower case) health regeneration. There is too much recoil and spread, which is there for the sake of "realism", yet real weapons aren't even close to being that inaccurate and have not nearly as much recoil.

Missions are repetetive and the matching system is crap, constantly putting n00bs against pro's, every time, all the time. We played the same team of goldens once, four times in a row, it goes without saying that our silver team had our asses handed to use badly all four times. It's especially funny when you go out against a golden ten with a rating of 190+ as a bronze one with a rating of 10.

There are no specialized classes and there really ought to be. The character progression feels weak and tagged on. Mods don't do much for what they cost, even the more powerful 3rd versions. They give only minuscule advantages, whilst adding as much disadvantages. RS3 is pretty good on OCA (because of its high degree of mobility), but then again OCA is just good, period. HS3 didn't do much for me on sniper: a waste of 90 grand.

Weapons are poorly balanced: the only viable CQC weapon is OCA, no matter how you look at it: it beats everything, even shotguns, which are next to useless (NFAS is good for blowing up cars though, especially in chases as it can be used in a car). The only one to use mid-range is N-TEC and for the long range it's H-NVR or a max modded Obeya if you're rich. Side-arms are crap, all they can do is maybe help you out if you're out of ammo or to finish off an enemy that's near death.

Premium weapons are OP sometimes. Armas OCA Whisper is overpowered in that it's completely silent and has no tracers, meaning you can't spot an enemy from a radar. Most of the time you're already dead before you know what's happened and your team mates won't even get a retribution for you, since they won't spot the killer.

I really enjoyed APB though, but only because of how fresh it is. The action is fast an brutal because of the cars. Aside from that it's a piece of crap and I don't even like TPS games that much.

The only thing it has going for it is customization and cars, which don't handle half as terribly as most people say (some cars do though, but only a few). All in all it's a very shallow experience, one not worthy of your time, especially not your money, but money is time, so stay away from it.

Yeah, did I tell you about the hacker infested Patriot server I used to play on, where only officially there were 171 banned cheaters just last week (52 on Joker that I tried for a bit)? Once I even overheard a guy talking in the district channel about putting up a team of golden hackers... The reason numero uno why I left that damn game. Maybe I ought to try it out again on Joker, as I really feel dubious about this game. Hacking was just the last drop that made a bucket overflow.

EDIT: Forget it - this game is just bad, plain and simple. The sea of hackers don't help it one bit. Better wait for "Firefall" - looks pretty cool.