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Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, so has the MMOG shooter, style="font-style: italic;">APB.
Now known as href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/998"> style="font-style: italic;">APB: Reloaded,
we at Ten Ton Hammer wanted to learn what lies in the future for this
much-discussed game. To that end, our team of highly skilled operatives
snatched Producer Jon-Enée Merriex to answer our questions.
He eagerly answered them, giving away even more information
than we had hoped for. Afterwards, we dropped him off in front of his
office at Reloaded Productions, a subsidiary of free-to-play publisher
GamersFirst.





Ten
Ton Hammer:
Can you introduce
yourself to our readers and tell us what it is that you do for Reloaded
Productions and style="font-style: italic;">APB: Reloaded?



Jon-Enée
Merriex:
My name is
Jon-Enée Merriex and I am the producer for style="font-style: italic;">APB: Reloaded.
That means I’m in charge of making sure all teams (marketing,
PR, community support, art, web, programming, design, IT, Hosting, QA
and more) are working together and on schedule. Basically, I try to
look busy all day and hope that no one catches me playing style="font-style: italic;">Angry Birds
on my Android during meetings.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
In the 8th week style="font-style: italic;">APB: Reloaded
blog, it was stated that you are working on a way to allow previous style="font-style: italic;">APB
players to reclaim the characters that they had from the time they
played under Realtime Worlds. The blog noted that this would include
the recovery of character names, customization and gear, but it was
unclear as to what if any progression data would be recovered. Could
you tell us if you plan to recover a player’s progression
data and if so to what extent?



Jon-Enée
Merriex:
No, player
progression will not be retained in the character restorations. One
area of focus for us in beta is the progression system. By the time
we’re done refining it into something we feel is more
balanced, a good portion of previous progression data will have
changed. Specific weapons, for instance, will no longer be relevant at
certain levels, so it wouldn’t make sense to start some
players off with old progression data. We’ve also fixed a
number of progression exploits (or have on our plate to fix before
live) that made the game unfair.



We also expect a large number of new players and feel that an even
footing would be best for style="font-style: italic;">Reloaded.
We want new players to have some chance to compete from the very
beginning.


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Ten
Ton Hammer:
Will players that
purchased the game from Realtime Worlds have access to any additional
content than the free-to-play players have or will they begin on equal
footing?



Jon-Enée
Merriex:
They will have
access to all the designs they originally created for free. Even if
those designs would have required being premium at the time of
creation. We’re also looking at letting them keep any
costumes they may have already purchased. Additionally, we are working
on some “special” things for those that return as
well as those that help us out in our Beta Phase.



I promise none of those special things are videos of me in a bikini. I
don’t think that gag works multiple times anyway.


" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> style="font-style: italic;">Seriously though, yes,
we’ll have a lot of free content! We are currently working on
the release schedule for 2011. We have a lot planned from new weapons,
costumes and vehicles, to new mini-game and game modes. We’re
not immediately looking at doing an expansion, though –
mostly just focusing on perfecting what we’ve got."

Ten
Ton Hammer:
What lessons did
you learn from the first launch of style="font-style: italic;">APB
under Realtime Worlds and what are you be doing to ensure that the
relaunch runs more smoothly?



Jon-Enée
Merriex:
In general, we try
not to focus on what RTW did or did not do. They did a massive amount
of great work and focusing on the negative only detracts from the major
accomplishments they did make and the tasks at hand for us to complete.
At the moment, I would say our big focuses are communication, player
input and turnaround time.



Most players are probably already experiencing our commitment to
communication. From our blog and forums to Twitter and Facebook, we
take a very active role not only interacting with our players but
communicating with them on what we are doing and where we are going.
Plus it’s a great way to break the monotony of the day!



We’re also trying to incorporate as much player feedback as
possible, which is the main reason why we’re so hands on with
our community. We want everyone to know just what we’re doing
early in the process so they can let us know if we need to change
course. It also helps the bug fixing process. Several of the issues
we’re working on fixing are things players reported directly
on the forums.



Turnaround time is critical to us. We’ve chosen a development
style that allows us to deliver more content to players quickly while
we build bigger things. It also means that players can give us feedback
on what we’re creating that we can incorporate down the line.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
When style="font-style: italic;">APB
initially shut down, the game had its share of troubles with cheating
and other in-game issues. What has Reloaded Productions done to help
curb some of the rampant cheating previously seen in style="font-style: italic;">APB?


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Jon-Enée
Merriex:
We have many plans
to deal with cheating. One of the things I learned from style="font-style: italic;">War Rock
is that you can’t have just one plan for cheating. You also
need to be able to apply changes to the plan quickly or you will always
be behind the trend. For style="font-style: italic;">APB: Reloaded
we’re teaming with PunkBuster again. It’s been a
number of years since GamersFirst and Even Balance (the developers of
PunkBuster) have worked together. It is kind of a homecoming for both
parties.



We know players felt that PunkBuster didn’t protect the game
well or caused performance issues. We discussed this in depth with Even
Balance and we’re making changes that both we and Even
Balance feel will improve past performance.



I realize this sounds vague and I wish we could say more, but the
reality is that the more we talk about what we are doing, the more
information we give to cheaters. Suffice it to say, cheating is our
primary concern and that will remain a fact as long as we run it. Which
my paycheck hopes is a long time!



Ten
Ton Hammer:
Have you made any
improvements to the game’s PvP Matchmaking system?



Jon-Enée
Merriex:
We are planning to
make changes to matchmaking in the near future. We haven’t
made any changes yet mostly because there has been so much we are
working on. However, matchmaking, spawning and balancing are major
issues we are planning to handle during the beta.






Ten
Ton Hammer:
You’ve
stated in the past a desire to add alternative rules districts; have
you included any of these in the game for the relaunch and if so can
you give us some examples of what you’ve added?



Jon-Enée
Merriex:
It may be too early
to talk about this, but we are planning to release Chaos District. I
don’t have final dates but we think this is a major change in
game play that players really want and we think it is something we can
deliver, given proper attention to balance and fun factor.



As a brief rundown, in a regular Action District you can generally only
attack or be attacked by a team from the opposite faction which has
specifically been pitted against you based on the mission
you’re on.  The Chaos District rule set changes game
play so that the opposite faction is ALWAYS attackable.



If that alone sounds like fun to you, you’re probably a
griefer! That’s why we’re also planning on adding a
whole slew of new things to do that use the Chaos District’s
rules as a base for more interesting gameplay, from specific
“Victory Requirements” for one side to
“win”, to mini-games like racing, King of the Hill
and a player idea we’re currently calling
“Shoot-Out” which would be a last man standing type
of mini-game that randomly occurs in the district.



Additionally, it is highly likely this rule set will host the
“Turf War” stuff we’re working
on…


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Ten
Ton Hammer:
Have you set a
pricing plan for style="font-style: italic;">APB: Reloaded
Premium Memberships yet?



Jon-Enée
Merriex:
We’re not
that far along yet. As soon as we have finalized pricing
we’ll announce it.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
Can you tell us
some of the benefits to having a Premium Subscription as opposed to a
free one? What sort of additional content or perks might a premium
member enjoy?


" style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";"> style="font-style: italic;">We’re also
trying to incorporate as much player feedback as possible, which is the
main reason why we’re so hands on with our community. We want
everyone to know just what we’re doing early in the process
so they can let us know if we need to change course. Turnaround time is
critical to us. We’ve chosen a development style that allows
us to deliver more content to players quickly while we build bigger
things."

Jon-Enée
Merriex:
The big thing will
be customization. While all players (free2play and premium alike) will
be able to customize their avatars, vehicles and music, premium players
will have fewer limits on what they can create. Outside of that we are
still in the middle of discussing what will be the final package for
premium. It is likely it will include some type of bonus to reputation
and APB$ gains. We’re also looking at making some fun perks
like a free weapon every month that changes based on player feedback.



It’s important to us that players feel like buying Premium is
a way to support a game and a company they believe in rather than that
failing to pay makes them uncompetitive. When we are closer to a final
product you can bet we’ll announce everything rather
publically. It’s rare I do anything without announcing it to
the world, that’s why I’m on Twitter as @G1Neume
(#shamelesstwitterplug)!



Ten
Ton Hammer:
Will premium
accounts earn any sort of monthly cash shop credit?



Jon-Enée
Merriex:
Probably not; most
likely premium accounts will get a discount on cash shop items.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
What sort of
items will you have available in your item shop? Are there any items
that can provide a benefit to the player or will they be purely
cosmetic?



Jon-Enée
Merriex:
We are planning to
have leased weapons of some sort as well as costumes, vehicles, emotes
and more. The key will be ensuring whatever goes up on the shop is
balanced with what players can get in game. So a lot of focus will be
put on keeping the balance. We’re not interested in selling
the most UBAR awesome gun. However, selling a different type of gun -
one that gives the player a new type of game play - is fair game.



A good example of this is the M16A4 we released in our other title style="font-style: italic;">War Rock.
The gun is actually less powerful than the standard issue weapons, but
it does have the capability to fire in 3 round bursts. The different
approach to functionality is really what sells the weapon, and is one
reason why it’s popular in that game. That, ultimately, is
the philosophy we hope to include in style="font-style: italic;">APB: Reloaded.


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Ten
Ton Hammer:
The href="http://forums.gamersfirst.com/index.php?showtopic=101997"> style="font-style: italic;">APB: Reloaded
Transition FAQ mentioned that
premium players might not have access to certain item shop items. Could
you explain this a bit more and provide an example of what sort of
items might not be available to premium players and why?



Jon-Enée
Merriex:
What is really being
said is that there may be items on the cash shop that premium players
will just not be interested in. For example, we may sell an item that
increases a player’s APB$ gain. That item may not stack with
the premium bonus making it undesirable to a premium player.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
Do you plan to
further develop content for style="font-style: italic;">APB
by way of free content releases and/or full expansions?



Jon-Enée
Merriex:
I searched for a
lolcatz pictar about free content but everything I could find on it was
on 4chan…



Seriously though, yes, we’ll have a lot of free content! We
are currently working on the release schedule for 2011. We have a lot
planned from new weapons, costumes and vehicles, to new mini-game and
game modes. We’re not immediately looking at doing an
expansion, though – mostly just focusing on perfecting what
we’ve got.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
Have you set a
date for the start of the closed beta?



Jon-Enée
Merriex:
If I had a penny
every time I got asked this question, I’d have enough money
to pay off the US National Debt.



We’re still looking at late February.



Ten
Ton Hammer:
Do you have a
tentative launch date set yet?



Jon-Enée
Merriex:
My magic 8 ball is
saying: “The outlook is fuzzy”. Weird… I
guess I’ll have to stick with the “first half of
2011” answer.



Our thanks to Jon-Enée Merriex: for this interview.


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To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our APB: Reloaded Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

About The Author

Jeff joined the Ten Ton Hammer team in 2004 covering EverQuest II, and he's had his hands on just about every PC online and multiplayer game he could since.

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