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Thread: APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

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    Butter king GheeTsar's Avatar
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    APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

    I guess the shocking reviews of APB can't have helped:

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotlan...ntral-11003456

    Sad news.

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    Welcome to stampytown! Salazaar's Avatar
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    Re: APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

    Sad indeed.

    I guess it has to be asked, if they've folded so soon after APB's release would they have survived even if APB had been a success?
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    Re: APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

    Might be an idea to merge the 2+ threads about this.

    Quote Originally Posted by Salazaar View Post
    I guess it has to be asked, if they've folded so soon after APB's release would they have survived even if APB had been a success?
    My guess is that they'll have had a heavy credit axe looming due to the recession and they'd need early results to appease creditors that they should play the long-term gain. As it is everyone wants their money back ASAP at the moment.

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    Seething Cauldron of Hatred TheAnimus's Avatar
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    Re: APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

    Also wasn't the game generally considered a huge disappointment?

    I always try to remember with software how its seen by the outsider. If we were architecting a building they could quite easily see, even a layperson that its not going quite the way it should.

    Software on the other hand is very hard for someone to make a glance judgement on.
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    Welcome to stampytown! Salazaar's Avatar
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    Re: APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

    Quote Originally Posted by TheAnimus View Post
    Also wasn't the game generally considered a huge disappointment?
    It really was. But most of the problems that have cropped up in the reviews were quite apparent in the beta; it's a shame no one got around to fixing them at that stage because there's not going to be anyone to fix it now.

    RIP APB
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    jim
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    Re: APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

    Quote Originally Posted by GheeTsar View Post
    I guess the shocking reviews of APB can't have helped


    It was bad though

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    Butter king GheeTsar's Avatar
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    Re: APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

    Quote Originally Posted by snootyjim View Post


    It was bad though
    It's hardly the reviewer's fault for RTW producing a duff game though.

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    Re: APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

    don't worry snootyjim, i got it
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    Re: APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

    Quote Originally Posted by Salazaar View Post
    Sad indeed.

    I guess it has to be asked, if they've folded so soon after APB's release would they have survived even if APB had been a success?
    Doubt it TBH

    Given the nature of the game it instantly goes up against WoW, the only game I can think of that competes with WoW and does well is Eve, possibly Second Life also

    Even the good games like Conan:AOB didn't survive, and even ones aiming at a different genre such as Hellgate (a VERY good game in it's own right if you ignore the generation flaws) didn't do well
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    Re: APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

    Quote Originally Posted by GheeTsar View Post
    It's hardly the reviewer's fault for RTW producing a duff game though.
    IMO, and a lot of others', it's not a duff game, it just has lots of problems. The idea of the game itself is pretty good, the customisation is second to none and the gamepley is OK too, when it's not buggy.

    The first problem was how hard it is for new players to get in to the game, unless you already have superb FPS skills to make up for lack of upgrades. The vast majority of people who play the game, and enjoy it a lot, have played in beta, for a long time, know the game well, know how it works, know the maps and the best camping spots and knew about all the bugs and took advantage of them. For example, the "feature" which gave you thousands of apb dollars for afk'ing the fashion and vehicle windows in the social district. Do that whilst at work or sleeping with a few alts and you have millions, able to buy all the best weapons and upgrades etc.

    The second biggest problem in my opinion was the cheaters. I would class the above as cheating as well, but they were more abused features. The biggest cheat in game is the aimbot. Now lots of people claim that there aren't many, it's an over-exaggeration... however, I'm not crap at FPS games, yet it's quite obvious when you have people shooting you at silly ranges with 100% accuracy no matter what the conditions. As I said, I'm not rubbish at FPS games (online, not single player) yet I lost about 90% of 1 vs 1 fights, even when I had the upper hand. I'm not saying that that alone means there's lots of cheats, just that I saw a LOT of suspicious activity. Like someone who wouldn't have known exactly where I was, running around a corner, instantly coming into sight and before I could fire on them (it showed me in game where they were) they were already shooting at me and I was half dead. This happened so much it wasn't funny and really put me off. Also there was the botting/enforcer witnessing abuse thing, same class of cheat if you ask me. BTW, virtually nothing was done about cheaters, in fact I would say it got worse as time went on.

    The third biggest problem for me people treating APB as a single player game, and getting rewarded for it. For example, every time I played my crim and ran missions, joined missions, called for backup etc, I would get at least 50% of the team stealing cars over the other side of the map. This was more obvious in financial due to the well placed car handins in the south east corner of the map. It was incredibly frustrating as enforcers couldn't do this, so when you were in a 4 v 4 situation, all enforcers were after you yet only 1-2 on your team of 4 were helping, meaning the enforcers mopped the floor with you. You're team mates on the other hand, get rewarded VERY nicely for not helping, htey get the money from stealing cars, the increase in wheelman rating therefore opening up better upgrades AND they got a nice standing boost, giving even more upgrades.

    These pretty big problems are not acceptable in my opinion and put me right off the game. Sadly, I have enough RTW points to buy another whole month still, so whoever buys APB needs to sort the game out, then and only then may I play it again.

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    HEXUS.social member Allen's Avatar
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    Re: APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

    Just thought of 2 other things, but will be brief, don't want another wall of text.

    Flawed match-making. The system constantly puts me against people with 250-300 rating, threat level above 10 and with full t2 or t3 char and weapon upgrades. Me? My max char was about 60 rating, threat level never above 7 and not one single upgrade. Fair? Of course... Either that or it put me up against 2-4 players and I never got backup.

    Lastly, lack of content. You press "f" to do everything, and the missions are all the same. It's an incredibly long farm to get standings up, especially if you lose all the time, and without standing you can't get the upgrades to be able to compete, or at least level the playing field a little.

    That's it for now. I had really hoped APB had been better than what it is, maybe then they would've had more subscribers and wouldn't have gone into administration.

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    Seething Cauldron of Hatred TheAnimus's Avatar
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    Re: APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

    In short.

    Development house that made crap, expensive buggy game went bust.

    Boo hoo.
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    Re: APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

    from what i've heard they knew it was a risk before the game came out. they were hoping it would do really well and they would be coining it in, thus they wouldn't have went bust if the game did well

    i might have got the next bit wrong, but i think they had another project they were working on and dropped that to concentrate on APB, thus meaning all the eggs were in one basket. they were asked to do crackpoint 2 but turned it down to work on APB, and some of the staff who worked on C2 left to form another company to make the game

    and again i may be mistaken but i heard the problem with the game was that you needed a pretty decent pc to be able to play it properly, and not enough people have that type of hardware. apparently the other online games that do extremely well do so cuz you can play them fine on old crappy computers. you either have the console market for online gaming where everyone has the same specs, or the pc market where the game tech is dumbed down so it's playable for all. APB tried something different by having high spec pc gaming but without a big enough potential userbase of people with the right kit. being a bit akward to get used to playing didn't help either

    they were on the news earlier this year moaning about not getting the tax breaks, but personally i don't think the industry needs them or should have them, if they made a decent game they would coin it in, as they didn't, they went bust, and who wants to take on a company as a growing concern if the last release is a turkey? it's more likely a new company will start up with some of the old staff and start afresh without the debts. i can't imagine another company wanting to keep APB going unless they can pick it up for a song from the administrators and they can keep it running profitably, all pretty unlikely if you ask me

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    Re: APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

    Quote Originally Posted by TheAnimus View Post
    In short.

    Development house that made crap, expensive buggy game went bust.

    Boo hoo.
    There's few enough UK developers, losing one isn't a good thing...

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    Re: APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

    Quote Originally Posted by uni View Post
    from what i've heard they knew it was a risk before the game came out. they were hoping it would do really well and they would be coining it in, thus they wouldn't have went bust if the game did well

    i might have got the next bit wrong, but i think they had another project they were working on and dropped that to concentrate on APB, thus meaning all the eggs were in one basket. they were asked to do crackpoint 2 but turned it down to work on APB, and some of the staff who worked on C2 left to form another company to make the game
    Development for Crackdown 2 was halted by RTW and the members of staff were either made redundant or moved into the APB team, I'm not sure about the rest though... Surely they wouldn't take a risk in this current climate? Dunno.

    Quote Originally Posted by uni View Post
    and again i may be mistaken but i heard the problem with the game was that you needed a pretty decent pc to be able to play it properly, and not enough people have that type of hardware. apparently the other online games that do extremely well do so cuz you can play them fine on old crappy computers. you either have the console market for online gaming where everyone has the same specs, or the pc market where the game tech is dumbed down so it's playable for all. APB tried something different by having high spec pc gaming but without a big enough potential userbase of people with the right kit. being a bit akward to get used to playing didn't help either
    Yes, the hardware required to play the game well was set way too high, even the recommended specs struggled. The biggest issue was inability to change most graphic settings on 32-bit OS's. Like it or not, a lot of PC game players do not have high end spec PC's, one of the biggest reasons why WoW is so popular is that it will run on damn near everything.

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    Re: APB developer Realtime Worlds goes into administration

    Quote Originally Posted by Allen View Post
    There's few enough UK developers, losing one isn't a good thing...
    You mean aside from Mere Mortals, Midway Newcastle, Free Radical Design and the others that have also gone in the past year or so?
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