Over the last number of months, through closed beta and then KttC, we've collected a huge number of issues, complaints, suggestions and requests covering all aspects of the game. Because of the focus on getting the game stable and going through the process of launch, many of these (especially the ones requiring significant changes) may appear to have fallen through the cracks. But they didn't - they''ve been sitting in our rather copious 'to do' list, waiting for us to have the time to begin to address them properly. We also wanted to get a chance to contrast the feedback from new live players with the feedback from the beta community to help us draw up our hit list for the first few months.
So, here's an idea of some of the areas of gameplay that we'll be tackling over the coming weeks (by no means an exhaustive list). It's our goal to involve the community as much as is practical when tackling most of these areas - as we''ve said all along, and hopefully demonstrated throughout beta, RTW's goal is to grow APB into the game that its players want it to be, so we''ll be asking for comments, posting polls and throwing ideas up for you to mull over at various points throughout the process.
In the meantime, let us know what's at the top of your own hit list and what you think should be at the top of ours. This is your chance to help us prioritise our development efforts to tackle the issues that most concern you, or add the features that you most want.
Some examples of the issues we're already looking at are:
Cheaters
Catching and removing cheaters from the game remains our top priority. Expect further news on this soon.
Vehicle Handling
We're already underway on a major overhaul to vehicle handling to make cars more responsive and less slippy overall. You'll still be able to power slide around corners in stylish fashion, but steering is more responsive overall and easier to get the hang of early on.
Combat
We're looking at almost every aspect of combat - how it looks, feels and sounds, as well as weapon characteristics and tactics. Weapon changes will be put up on the Public Test World to get some feedback in due course.
Matchmaking
We're taking a look at both the way in which player threat is calculated and how mission offers are distributed to players to try and improve the matchmaking experience overall.
Camping
We'll be addressing a number of the worst camping spots in the game in an upcoming patch. We'll be tackling the rest on an ongoing basis.
Missions
Investigations are already under way into ways to make mission objectives more interactive and to try and add a bit more strategy to the actual missions themselves, not just the combat surrounding them.
Rulesets
We're currently looking at adding a 'newbie' ruleset to give players a safe place to learn the game against other new players, and of course we're still progressing work on the 'pure skill' ruleset that was mentioned towards the end of closed beta. The Chaos ruleset hasn't been forgotten about either.
That's just a sample of the things that are currently going on here, and we're already very excited even with some of the early prototypes. The APB Public Test World will host each of these changes in turn to allow players to give us their feedback before we make a move to push any changes live, so watch the website and forums for announcements about how and when you can get involved in upcoming PTW events.
A number of adjustments to mission offers and matchmaking are already being prepped for PTW and we'll giving you details about when these will be available for you to try very soon.
I'll be starting up more detailed threads on lots of our top development priorities over the next few days, starting with Matchmaking tomorrow. These threads will be a chance for us to explain the issues as we see them and share some of the ideas that we have for addressing them - and a chance for you to let us know what you think about those ideas, or even throw in some of your own.
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