Bjorn Book-Larsson has a lot to say about APB Reloaded, the forthcoming reanimation of APB's corpse, courtesy of free-to-play publisher GamersFirst. Book-Larsson, the company's COO/CTO, has been blogging about the resurgent title for a few weeks now, and veteran players and prospective newbs alike will want to take a gander at his latest entry.
The blog focuses on APB's anti-cheat protections and, while it doesn't go into great detail for obvious reasons, Book-Larsson does make a decent case for APB Reloaded's level playing field. First off, he points out that the server-driven game is "more resilient to cheaters than most other F2P MMOs" due to the fact that F2P titles generally don't spend the same kind of money on infrastructure in comparison to your average P2P title. "In APB we are going to run a giant experiment to basically determine if hardware costs/specs have progressed far enough to make F2P server-driven games financially viable," he says.
Book-Larsson goes on to discuss the aim-bot problem, as well as various denial-of-service attacks that GamersFirst has dealt with over the past few years. It's an interesting read for anyone curious about APB Reloaded or MMO security, and also offers a humorous bit of insight relating to the over-reporting of cheaters.
Reader Comments (9)
Posted: Dec 14th 2010 11:11AM ultimateq said
This is my first post since the redesign. I hardly come here anymore T.T
Anyway..... Sure there were cheaters. But it wasn't nearly as rampant as people seemed to think it was. I can count on one hand the amount of people I've encountered that I knew for sure were cheating.
Is cheating a problem? Certainly, but I've found that a lot of people tend to cry "CHEATER!!!!" to anyone who beats them in a fire fight.
Anyway, I love APB, and I can't wait to see what this will become, hopefully they can take it to places that RTW failed to. What I want from APB:Reloaded is, more stability, better options, and faster load times. My list can go on forever, but those are the things that I want addressed the most.
Anyway..... Sure there were cheaters. But it wasn't nearly as rampant as people seemed to think it was. I can count on one hand the amount of people I've encountered that I knew for sure were cheating.
Is cheating a problem? Certainly, but I've found that a lot of people tend to cry "CHEATER!!!!" to anyone who beats them in a fire fight.
Anyway, I love APB, and I can't wait to see what this will become, hopefully they can take it to places that RTW failed to. What I want from APB:Reloaded is, more stability, better options, and faster load times. My list can go on forever, but those are the things that I want addressed the most.
Posted: Dec 14th 2010 11:28AM Phone Guy said
@ultimateq I tend to agree.
My clan vent was filled with people claiming to have spotted a cheater, with the simple justification of "Well he killed me before I killed him". Cheating happened, but it was hardly the worse issue during the games brief life. What does worry me though more than cheaters at the moment is the Cash Store options that have been talked about. Level 3 Upgrades and Guns, made APB boring. If you had them and your opponent did not, you won. If you didn't have them and fought against somebody who did, you lost. My rank 300 Level 3 Upgraded criminal was matched against R20 fresh out of Tutorial folks all the time. I really felt bad for them. What my concern is that instead of changing the system since fixing it won't help they decide to just make the items purchasable with real cash.
Reply
My clan vent was filled with people claiming to have spotted a cheater, with the simple justification of "Well he killed me before I killed him". Cheating happened, but it was hardly the worse issue during the games brief life. What does worry me though more than cheaters at the moment is the Cash Store options that have been talked about. Level 3 Upgrades and Guns, made APB boring. If you had them and your opponent did not, you won. If you didn't have them and fought against somebody who did, you lost. My rank 300 Level 3 Upgraded criminal was matched against R20 fresh out of Tutorial folks all the time. I really felt bad for them. What my concern is that instead of changing the system since fixing it won't help they decide to just make the items purchasable with real cash.
Posted: Dec 14th 2010 3:15PM DiscordSK said
@ultimateq
I'd like to point out once obvious flaw in your arguement.
There weren't that many cheaters at first, the same way there weren't that AFKers initially.
That quickly changed, as the majority of players realised that where was something rotten in the state of denmark they either adapted or left. Towards the end of its run, you couldn't go more then a mission without running into a team of AFKers, ram raiders or aimbotters.
Its simple, if you don't discourage the behaviour from the beginning, it becomes the norm either through statistics, players leaving increase the percieved % of aimbotters and company, or through adaptation, people choosing to use similar tactics cause everyone is doing it. The end result is the same and you end up with a game that almost nobody is playing.
So was everyone a cheater? Nope.. but enough were.
Reply
I'd like to point out once obvious flaw in your arguement.
There weren't that many cheaters at first, the same way there weren't that AFKers initially.
That quickly changed, as the majority of players realised that where was something rotten in the state of denmark they either adapted or left. Towards the end of its run, you couldn't go more then a mission without running into a team of AFKers, ram raiders or aimbotters.
Its simple, if you don't discourage the behaviour from the beginning, it becomes the norm either through statistics, players leaving increase the percieved % of aimbotters and company, or through adaptation, people choosing to use similar tactics cause everyone is doing it. The end result is the same and you end up with a game that almost nobody is playing.
So was everyone a cheater? Nope.. but enough were.
Posted: Dec 14th 2010 11:25AM Nottom said
He apparently isn't aware that Turbine has already blazed the F2P server-driven MMO trail. If you do it right, it can be very successful.
Posted: Dec 14th 2010 12:16PM The Protagonist said
Fingers crossed they make a success of this.
Posted: Dec 14th 2010 3:14PM Zhaosen said
Best solution to these "cheaters" are VAC + Active GM.
But that might be too expensive for these folks =/
But that might be too expensive for these folks =/
Posted: Dec 14th 2010 4:14PM kasapina said
I don't know how well this would work for a f2p game, but I still wonder why they didn't implement volunteer moderators back when the thing was p2p. You don't even have to give them any ban rights, just choose a few experienced players with a good eye for hacks and let them report possible cheaters, and have one GM constantly on standby reading the reports immediately when they're sent and checking whether the reported ones are really cheaters or not. Hacking is mostly a psychological thing, e.g. when the existence of cheaters is proven everyone starts accusing everyone, and when a cheater is banned potential rule-breakers are intimidated.







