Rant Warning!!!
The game is a pile of crap. The FPS design has you shooting through your armpit and the driving experience is like playing a driving game on your IBM PC JR from 20 freakin years ago.
The low FPS and lag makes it stupid and impossible to have fun.
Last bitching comment is that the game keeps putting me up against 5 experienced bad guys that totally kick my ass within 2 seconds. WTF!?!
Oh and one last thing. The game puts a f'ing arrow above your head so all the camping bad guys see you from a mile out... wtf!?!
What a horrible design and direction they took with what could have been an amazing game!
I predict the game will go on 50% sale by the end of the month. It will be $19.99 after 3 months. At 6 months, it will be free.
ts
Watching gameplay videos, I don't see this arrow you're talking about. But I do see a lot of griefing, which isn't surprising.
I still kinda want to try it, though. A lot of your complaints seem to be centered around performance issues. With a better FPS and lower latency, I would imagine the driving and shooting is a lot better. But then again, I can't stand third-person shooters (Mass Effect being the only exception so far). So I guess I'll focus my attention on SCII >:) | |
The biggest problem with this game is the insanely unbalanced EVERYTHING. High "level" players can have double your health, take half as much damage, and deal twice as much to you. The beta was actually quite fun because this wasn't an issue.
Even missions (which are what make up the entirety of gameplay) have major balance issues. Some missions have you chasing people around with the goal of killing them, but all they have to do in order to win is completely avoid you. Others have you going and searching 2 items, which takes about 10 seconds, barely rewards anything, and are just a complete waste of time. There's also a somewhat large amount of functionality problems with the gameplay, like if you try to move while on a ladder it makes you fall off, and aiming is not only crooked, but since you shoot off the right side if people are around corners half the time you can't hit them while they can hit you. There are also no actual weapon sights, just over the shoulder and slightly closer over the shoulder views. Vehicles don't control worth a crap, and are difficult to tell when they're about to explode and kill you. Forming groups sucks, because if you join one already on a mission you have to wait around for 10 minutes before you can actually join them, etc. Oh, and don't forget to mention how if you have a 32bit OS or <2.5 gigs of ram then your video settings are basically locked to the lowest setting. And on top of that, there's no "advanced" video settings, just a simple slider that effects everything. And even with the game looking as horrible as it does, it doesn't run at any acceptable frame rate, and takes way too long to zone anywhere. My computer can run FarCry 2 on max settings better than it runs APB on the lowest. There has only been one update since release almost a month ago, it was only bug fixes, and it wasn't even on release day? Pretty fail all around. I guarantee if they don't make some major changes the game will be dead before the end of the year. And those red arrows he's talking about. Basically when you go up against other players, they are marked on your HUD with an arrow over their head. So you can see where they are 50 miles away through walls. Kind of makes it tactically impossible to do anything. Especially if they're on the defensive side. | |
Ah, so when the game gives you a mission to take someone out, it literally highlights them. That sucks. I know a similar system in BF:BC2 drives me crazy, and there they at least have to spot you first.
Definitely not paying for this game before I get to try it :o What are all of your opinions on vehicles in terms of fighting? They seem way overpowered. Can you even shoot someone through a window? | |
DarkCampainger wrote:
Ah, so when the game gives you a mission to take someone out, it literally highlights them. That sucks. I know a similar system in BF:BC2 drives me crazy, and there they at least have to spot you first. I rarely play BC2 anymore, that game is just way too buggy for me to deal with. I used to play on hardcore mode though, because it fixed a lot of the issues with the game. And no overhead arrows in HC mode. What are all of your opinions on vehicles in terms of fighting? They seem way overpowered. Can you even shoot someone through a window? You can shoot them if they're hanging out the window shooting at you, but not if they're in the car. You can of course just blow up the car and kill everyone in it, which takes a lot less damage than it should. Cars are pretty much required in the game, and they actually tend to work out pretty well in combat. Unless you get unexpectedly run over or explode, which sucks. Also, APB has full friendly fire, which does nothing but ruin the game even further. Accidentally shooting your buddy in the back of the head while both hanging out a car window is pretty much guaranteed. | |
DarkCampainger wrote:
Ah, so when the game gives you a mission to take someone out, it literally highlights them. That sucks. I know a similar system in BF:BC2 drives me crazy, and there they at least have to spot you first. I've exploded in many a car without knowing or seeing any damage to the car. Lame. If they had an arrow pointing to the an offensive/defensive objective, that would be perfect. You know your going into an area with hostiles but you don't know where they are. Done. When doing a seek/destroy mission, if they just hint at a helicopter giving you a constant location, then that can explain the arrow over the bad guy. The bad guy SHOULD not see the good guy coming. They can just drive around the same block for 2 minutes to avoid you because they know exactly where you are. In most occasions, when I go up against a guy, I head shot them in the face 3-5 times with a rifle and do not kill them. They spray me with a secondary sub-machine gun and I drop within seconds. When you kneel and move forward, your cross-hair is literally behind your head. You have to adjust your camera mid-fight and then re-adjust your cross hair. It's crazy bad. I've got 3 gigs of ram, two geforce 8500's, and a super fast cable connection and my FPS was consistently in the mid 20's. Every time another player came near me, it would lag horribly to the point my car would spin out of control. Imagine gun fights that lag right when you enter the fray. Fun. I'm going to go buy a new sound card today because I'm suspicious of my onboard sound card causing perf problems. My super bad ass sound blaster card caused my studiophile speakers to pop really bad so I can't use it. I should sell it. I'm also gonna increase the ram to 4gb or maybe install Win7 and get myself up to 8. | |
Tsfreaks wrote:
In most occasions, when I go up against a guy, I head shot them in the face 3-5 times with a rifle and do not kill them. They spray me with a secondary sub-machine gun and I drop within seconds. None of the weapons are balanced, not even by default. Throw in the upgrade system and you've got yourself a completely unplayable pile o'crap. | |
You can't headshot. Players have one hitbox.
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Horrible gameplay mechanics. The game is just.. generic.
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Giant Bomb did a quick look awhile back, basically they just played it for a half hour while providing commentary.
From what I gather it's a poor man's version of GTA, only with rudimentary network support. Every mechanic is broken in some way, combat is boring and unrewarding, the vehicles have terrible controls, the world map is a mess with some fences being jumpable while others which look exactly the same are not, the world feels cold and empty, it's not even really an MMO with the instanced action zones. I could go on a long time like this. The game's crap. | |
I tried and as expected, failed.
Response from Steam... ___________________ Hello, A staff member has replied to your question: Hello tsfreaks, Thank you for contacting Steam Support. As with most software products, we will not offer refunds or exchanges for purchases made online as outlined in the software license - please review Section 4 of the Steam Subscriber Agreement for more information. _______________ I can only hope they release updates which redesign the game instead of throwing in the towel. ts | |
So... I was wrong about my prediction...
("I predict the game will go on 50% sale by the end of the month. It will be $19.99 after 3 months. At 6 months, it will be free.") I hadn't considered server costs... APB IS OFFICIALLY DEAD! | |
Yup, its pretty pathetic; considering all they needed to do was wipe all the weapons in exchange for balanced ones. Every other problem with the game was minor, overlooked, and fixable in future patches.
My prediction of it being dead before the end of the year was right. | |
It's not even the frames per second, it's just a poor design to the shooting mechanic. Grand Theft Auto 3+ was often maligned over the difficulty of getting your crosshair over stuff, and importing that to a competitive online FPS put a whole order of precedence to it needing to work better than that.
When the actual core mechanic is like that, the rest of the game suffers.