Today, logging in to All Points Bulletin, the game seems different from when I first played it a week into launch. The population has dwindled quite a bit from then, and more and more do I find myself coming across the same people. Currently: Weapons are imbalanced, the engine isn’t optimized, vehicle handling is mediocre and the match-making system is lacklustre. The game is not dead, but the population seems to be waiting for a game changing or breaking patch 1.3.0/1.3.1.

Realtime Worlds seems to be addressing quite a few issues in the 1.3.0 patch which will be deployed August 3rd followed shortly with the 1.3.1 patch. It is important that Realtime Worlds understands the gravity of these two patches, the community has been very hostile towards the developer and this will make or break their trust in the company since many of these issues are not only obvious, but have been requested by the community since beta.

All Points Bulletin is a game with booming potential, the core game is fun, but the implementation was shoddy. Judging by what I’ve read if this patch is implemented correctly it could save the game, but time will tell and errors can be made. So without further ado the patch notes for 1.3.0. and 1.3.1 posted by Toxico, the community manager.

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We’re happy to inform you that on Tuesday 03 August we’ll be updating APB to version 1.3.0! Downtime for this update will be held from 05:00 EDT / 02:00 PDT until 08:00 EDT / 05:00 PDT. This update includes a number of the fixes that didn’t quite make it into our first release. You can find out all the about the changes in our First Look at 1.3.0 post! We’ll be posting the complete patch notes on Tuesday, so keep an eye on apb.com and the forums!
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As you now know, the 1.3.0 bugfix patch is imminent, and shortly thereafter we”ll be releasing 1.3.1 which contains a number of changes which we couldn”t quite get ready in time for release next week. 1.3.1 contains a number of small but significant changes which I thought were worth highlighting.
Changes to mission offers

As of 1.3.1, the following changes will take place:

Criminal v Criminal matchmaking has been turned off

System-generated bounties have been turned off - bounties can now only be entered into by witnessing unopposed criminals. This means that the chances of Calls For Backup being bounty missions will be greatly reduced, so those of you who have said that you generally avoid answering CFB because of the number of bounty missions should be able to relax a little and help out the poor souls who need your muscle.

Changes to weapons in 1.3.1

As ever, when we make changes to weapons, it”s not simply as a concession to people raising concerns on the forums. When weapon balance issues come up, we correlate these with feedback from our QA department and from team members who play regularly on the live service. After some discussion, we”ve decided to make the following changes:

N-Tec:

• Base accuracy has been reduced slightly.
• Movement penalty has been reduced slightly to compensate for base accuracy change.
• Number of shots before accuracy degradation is applied has been lowered (becomes less accurate faster).
• Maximum level of inaccuracy the weapon can reach has been slightly increased.
• Benefit gained via Marksmanship mode has been slightly reduced.

OCA-EW:

• Minimum damage percentage at max range has been increased slightly.
• Base accuracy has been reduced slightly.
• Max Range has been reduced by 5m & Effective range reduced by a further 2m.
• Number of shots before accuracy degradation is applied has been lowered (becomes less accurate faster).
• Magazine capacity of the weapon has been reduced from 34 to 28 rounds.
• Both of these changes are an effort to reduce the effectiveness of continuous full-auto fire.

NL-9:

So I guess this is the hot topic. After some considerable discussion, we have decided to remodel the NL-9 to behave the way it looks – as a Less Than Lethal shotgun. The NL-9 has been reworked to behave almost identically to the JG-840 shotgun – short range, two-shot stun, with a pellet spread.

Related posts:

1. All Points Bulletin | APB Game
2. All Points Bulletin Review | Cybernetic Punks