Meet Lucas and Lynette

Introducing Lucas Van Rooyen and Lynette Casey, two fearsome higher-ups in their factions that are looking for new recruits to do their bidding in return for rewards that will help you stay on top of the ever-changing street wars of San Paro.

Unlike previous contacts, Lucas and Lynette are not of the specialist tier, instead, these contacts are positioned a little more in APB Reloaded’s mid-game progression and have 15 levels each which means that these contacts can be unlocked as early as Rank 88 if you focus your efforts on maxing just Blood Rose or Prentiss Tiger contacts!

Unlocking Lucas Van Rooyen requires you to reach level 10 with the following Blood Rose contacts:

• Tyron Sennet
  
• Jeung Bloodrose

Unlocking Lynette Casey requires you to reach level 10 with the following Prentiss Tigers contacts:

• Chiza
  
• Byeong Lee

If you have already maxed out the contacts named above you will be referred to Lucas or Lynette when logging in with your character on Version 1.31 “New Horizon”.

When reaching the maximum level with Lucas Van Rooyen, he will refer you to Michael Simeone. Similarly, reaching the maximum level with Lynette Casey will result in her referring you to Orlenz' Moretti.

New contacts bring new rewards, so here’s a quick overview of what Lucas and Lynette have in store for you!

The following weapons are available as part of the standard contact progression with Lucas and Lynette:

• Showstopper Pistol
  
• OCA ‘Nano’ Pistol
  
• Obeya CAP40-C NFCP 2
  
• N-SSW 74 Adeen
  
• VBR ‘Temptress’
  
• VAS C2 NFCP 1
  
• N-TEC 7 Adeen
  
• N-HVR 243 ‘Scout’ Nol

If you have maxed out Lucas or Lynette you may also be eligible for a rare daily activity awarding you with the following weapon:

• N-ISSR-B ‘Recon’

Additionally the following Weapon skins are awarded for reaching the maximum level of Lucas or Lynette:

• Short Circuit - Blue
  
• Short Circuit - Red
  
• Short Circuit - Green

New contacts are a perfect opportunity to add new modifications and spice up the gameplay, here are three new modifications as well as one returning modification available in v1.31 New Horizon:

• Display Banner

Orange character mod allows you to place down a large Display Banner with your personal symbol on it! This feature was originally a refer-a-friend reward, and we are bringing it back for those who missed the chance to unlock it previously.

• Long-Range Rifling

The red weapon modification increases your weapon's effective range by 25% at the cost of reducing the weapon's rate of fire by 10%. Additionally, burst weapons suffer a 20% burst rate penalty for using this mod.

• Muzzle Brake (Vertical)

Muzzle Brake (Vertical) is a red weapon modification that will reduce the vertical recoil of your weapon by 30% at a minor drawback of increasing horizontal recoil by 7%.

• Suspension Tuning

Lastly Suspension Tuning, our very first “Tuning” vehicle modification uses a red vehicle modification slot. This modification will decrease the Suspension Stiffness and Damping of your vehicle by 50% with no additional downside. We’re excited to see which cars can use this modification to greatly empower their maneuverability.

These modifications are going to be available for purchase after unlocking them and players will not receive a free version as part of unlocking them as we felt like this behavior should be kept exclusively for Specialist contacts.

Vehicles
The following vehicles are unlocked as part of leveling Lucas and Lynette:

• Growl S3
  
• Sungnyemun Mirage S-22

Maxing our Lucas or Lynette will award you with their respective outfit as well as Blood Rose/Prentiss Tiger inspired presets using some of our new clothing items such as the Trench Coat. Here’s a sneak peek:

Inventory Expansions
More items require you to have more inventory capacity, fortunately, Lucas and Lynette have you covered! Players will be able to earn the following inventory expansions as part of Lucas and Lynette’s contact progression:

• +5 Vehicle Inventory Space
  
• +10 Clothing Inventory Space
  
• +5 Symbol Inventory Space
  
• +5 Weapon Inventory Space

Hi everyone.

It's been quite a while since we have had a new version of APB this large.

So I thought I would take some time to break everything down that is coming over a series of blog posts. But before I do, I want to acknowledge a couple of things about version 1.31.

First, and most importantly, we focused a lot on new free content. It's something I have wanted to do in the past, but for various reasons we haven't been able to. It's a bit of an experiment, as we're now giving away more free items than ever in the regular progression of the game. We took time to identify and fill in gaps for weapons and vehicles that otherwise weren't available.

Second, this patch brings together content and features that have been in the development for a while. Honestly, it sort of snowballed. As the weeks and months have passed, more and more items have been pushed into this new version. As the name implies, we're hoping New Horizon sets a new bar for APB and offers a "jumping on point" for many players who have felt there was nothing new in the game.

Third, there was a lot of R&D required for this patch. Little Orbit has never added contacts to the game or modified any of the district geometry. In some cases, we had to write entirely new plugins to build compatibility between APB and newer modeling systems. We've also had layoffs, so there was some retraining required to even do some of the things we've already done in the past. Regardless, I feel like our progress will enable updates like to happen a bit more quickly going forward.

Lastly, we are in final testing on many of the components in this patch, but it is our goal to launch Version 1.31 New Horizon in the next couple of weeks.

With that out of the way, let's jump into what is coming.

Major Additions

• (2) New Contacts - Lucas 'Van' Rooyen and Lynette Casey

These two fearsome higher-ups in their factions are looking for new recruits to do their bidding in return for rewards that will help you stay on top of the ever-changing street wars of San Paro. Both of these characters have been in the APB lore for quite a while, and it was important to me that their rewards and storylines feel on par with other contacts that were already in the game. I will be posting a separate News blog with a full run-down of Lucas and Lynette's rewards soon.

• SARD Anti-Cheat

APB has had many different integrations in the past, but I felt it was important to take the proper time to evaluate both old and new solutions. This time around, I had two major criteria: (1) client and server side support and (2) custom integration where Little Orbit collects the penalty information, but we apply our own rules on how to handle cheaters. The team at SARD has been fantastic to work with, and after months of development, we are finally ready to launch.

• Re-distribution of contact rewards and lowered all mod Rank requirements

We feel this is a significant quality of life improvement. We decided to lower the Rank requirements for R195l mods to level the playing field between older and newer characters. With that same goal in mind, we also identified gaps in the vehicle progression and redistributed vehicles to unlock more cars sooner. And finally, we added missing weapons like the Showstopper, the NTEC 7c, and the N-HVR '243' 'Scout' to the player progression.

• Changes to the Waterfront

We knew we couldn't launch two new Waterfront contacts without addressing some of the player complaints about that district. We've added more cover around common spawn areas and objective locations as well as more access routes to spots that were previously very hard to attack. These edits are still be completed, so I will be posting a separate News blog with the new changes to Waterfront soon.

• The ISSR-C 'Kingdom' Legendary

We decided to have a little fun and also add a new legendary. The ISSR-C 'Kingdom' is RedHill Homeland Defense's new cutting-edge, fast, short-ranged burst rifle made up from parts of Nekrova's infamous ISSR weapon series with an integrated RedHill burst module. Its quick four-round bursts make it suitable for close to medium-range fights whilst retaining Nekrova's trademark of deadly accuracy.

Full Patch Notes:

• Added two new Tier 4 Contacts to the Waterfront district.
  
• Added three new modifications.
  
• Added many new clothing items for both body types.
  
• Added SARD Anti-Cheat.
  
• Reworked many areas of the Waterfront district to improve gameplay.
  
• Added the ISSR-C 'Kingdom' burst rifle as a new Legendary gun available for purchase at Anne inside the Joker Store through Joker Tickets.
  
• Changed the Rank requirement of all mods that previously required a Character Rating of 195 or above. These mods will now have a Rank Requirement of R40, 60, or 80 and cost 20.000, 40.000, and 60.000 APB$ respectively.
  
• Increased the range in which Mobile Spawn Points become invalid from 35m to 55m.
  
• Decreased the Health and Stamina damage to the DMR-AV Sniper Rifle to decrease the range in which it can Kill in two shots from 88-100m to 95-100m. The ability to stun in two shots has been removed entirely. The DMR-SD is unaffected by these changes.
  
• Decreased the range of the OBIR by 5 meters. We are going to revisit this change once we are closer to making larger balance adjustments but we feel like the gun is currently too dominant and would like to address that for the time being.
  
• Added 3-Point Sling 3 to the ARMAS and Joker Store versions of the non-legendary Showstopper Pistol and renamed it to Showstopper 'Quickdraw'.
  
• The following vehicles unlock their 0 to 4-slot versions one entire Contact Tier sooner.
  
  • Balkan Varzuga
    
  • Balkan Ravan
    
  • Macchina Calabria
    
  • Macchina Cosenza
    
  • Packer Ceresco
• Retroactively added the following vehicles to late-game contact progression:
  
  • Growl S4
    
  • [Dolton Fresno D400
    
  • Charge Sentinel CS904
    
  • Dolton Montane D230
    
  • Dolton Montane D430
    
  • Balkan Varzuga Rally 353 XS
• The Sungnyemun Mirage now supports primary and secondary police lights.
  
• Fixed various LOD issues of the Sungnyemun Mirage.
  
• Fixed multiple minor issues of the Sungnyemun Mirage.
  
• Added the Mirage 'Sundown' and 'Horizon' presets to the Joker Ticket Store. These were designed by an awesome community member that goes by the name of ElinSylwiaVT.

More to come.

Thanks, Matt

Hello everyone!

Get ready to join us on OTW this Monday, 05/27/2024, at 6 PM UTC for an hour-long matchmaking test. We need your help to put our new matchmaking code through its paces and iron out any kinks. The more of you who join, the better we can fine-tune our system. Your input is invaluable, so please log in and lend us a hand during this crucial phase.

Remember to create a character on the "NA Test" World of OTW for this test! Your involvement truly counts! Let's work together to make this test a resounding success!

Check out the notes for Matchmaking Improvement below:

• With this build, we have deployed new code based on the existing matchmaking functionality on Live.
  
• Matchmaking has been moved from the World server to operate on its own dedicated Matchmaking server.
  
• Matchmaking will only function in the same district - at least for now.
  
• Backup is once again offered in cases in which the Matchmaker has to create an uneven Match and will add one player to each team trying to increase the overall Match quality to make it more even.
  
• In evenly matched missions both Team Leaders are now offered the option to “Escalate” the mission. If both Team leaders put in a request to escalate players will be added to both teams up to a maximum of 20 players per side. Team leaders will need to agree to Escalate the mission further each time new players are added to the mission.
  
• Fixed an issue related to Backup/Escalation calls that caused the matchmaker to be bottlenecked during the playtest on Sun. May 19.
  
• Fixed the crash issue related to playtest that happened on Thur. May 23.

If you haven't yet! Make sure to grab the OTW client[apb.patch.ot.gamersfirst.com] and download it ahead of time so that you can participate.

Attention APB:Reloaded players!

Join us on OTW tomorrow, 05/23/2024, at 6 PM UTC for a crucial matchmaking test that will last for one hour. We need your participation to test our new matchmaking code and help identify any instability issues. The more players we have, the more effective our testing will be. Your involvement is essential, and we greatly appreciate your support in logging in and assisting us during this critical phase.

For this test please create a Character on OTW’s “NA Test” World!

Your participation makes a difference! Let's make this test a success together! Here are the notes for Matchmaking Improvement:

• With this build, we have deployed new code based on the existing matchmaking functionality on Live.
  
• Matchmaking has been moved from the World server to operate on its own dedicated Matchmaking server.
  
• Matchmaking will only function in the same district - at least for now.
  
• Backup is once again offered in cases in which the Matchmaker has to create an uneven Match and will add one player to each team trying to increase the overall Match quality to make it more even.
  
• In evenly matched missions both Team Leaders are now offered the option to “Escalate” the mission. If both Team leaders put in a request to escalate players will be added to both teams up to a maximum of 20 players per side. Team leaders will need to agree to Escalate the mission further each time new players are added to the mission.
  
• Fixed an issue related to Backup/Escalation calls that caused the matchmaker to be bottlenecked during the playtest on Sun. May 19.

If you haven't yet! Make sure to grab the OTW client[apb.patch.ot.gamersfirst.com] and download it ahead of time so that you can participate.

Hello everyone!

Join us on OTW tomorrow, 05/19/2024, at 6 PM UTC for a crucial matchmaking test that will last for one hour. We need your participation to test our new matchmaking code and help identify any instability issues. The more players we have, the more effective our testing will be. Your involvement is essential, and we greatly appreciate your support in logging in and assisting us during this critical phase.

For this test, please create a Character on OTW’s “NA Test” World!

Your participation makes a difference! Let's make this test a success together! Here are the notes for Matchmaking Improvement:

• With this build, we have deployed new code based on the existing matchmaking functionality on Live.
  
• Matchmaking has been moved from the World server to operate on its own dedicated Matchmaking server.
  
• Matchmaking will only function in the same district - at least for now.
  
• Backup is once again offered in cases in which the Matchmaker has to create an uneven Match and will add one player to each team trying to increase the overall Match quality to make it more even.
  
• In evenly matched missions both Team Leaders are now offered the option to “Escalate” the mission. If both Team leaders put in a request to escalate players will be added to both teams up to a maximum of 20 players per side. Team leaders will need to agree to Escalate the mission further each time new players are added to the mission.

If you haven't yet! Make sure to grab the OTW client[apb.patch.ot.gamersfirst.com] and download it ahead of time so that you can participate.

See you there!

We are thrilled to announce that our CEO, Matt Scott, will be hosting an AMA session on April 16th at 6 PM UTC on https://www.twitch.tv/littleorbit! This is a fantastic opportunity to ask Matt anything about anything you are you're curious about.

Make sure to mark your calendars and join us for this exciting event. We can't wait to see you there!

If you have any questions you'd like to submit in advance, please feel free to post them in this thread. We'll also be taking live questions during the AMA.

See you on the 16th!

Hello everyone,

A new patch is going up onto the Live servers. This patch will be happening on Wednesday 2/28/2024. The patch is scheduled to start at 9 AM UTC[dateful.com] and will last up to 10 hours.

PC CHANGES/FIXES

• The Valentines day event has come to an end.
  
• Fixed a bug with backup permutation creation creating far less amounts of combinations than it should.
  
• Slightly optimized standard permutation creation by removing the shuffle of available players, since this may be causing erratic wait times for players during same-district matching.
  
• Added an experimental "Low population mode" that activates once the world server of a region is below a certain amount of players and should allow players to get opposition after waiting for a certain period of time regardless of match quality.
  
• Fixed a potential district server crash.
  
• Fixed an issue that caused the OBIR JT3 to disappear from the JT store and reward mails.

Dear APB Reloaded Console Community,

After careful consideration and evaluation of various factors, Little Orbit and PLAION have decided to sunset APB Reloaded on console platforms. This decision was not made lightly, and we understand that it may come as disappointing news to our dedicated console players who have waited patiently for upgrades and fixes to the game.

The decision to discontinue APB Reloaded on consoles was driven by a combination of technical challenges, resource constraints, and the evolving landscape of gaming. We want to ensure that our players have the best possible gaming experience, and unfortunately, sustaining the game on console platforms has proven increasingly challenging.

• For Xbox players, we previously experienced issues preventing players from making any purchases, but we were able to keep the servers online. Unfortunately, you will have noticed that APB Xbox is currently experiencing technical issues, and the game is currently offline. Unfortunately, we are now unable to bring the game back online.
  
• For PlayStation 4 players, we will begin the sunset phase starting February 1st through August 2nd. As of February 1st, we will be disabling all monetization for these players. This wasn't an easy decision, and we understand the impact it has on our gaming community, but it was unavoidable.

As a small consolation, we have created the ability for console players to migrate their characters to PC. APB Reloaded will continue to be available and supported on the PC platform. We encourage console players who wish to continue their APB Reloaded experience to consider joining the PC community.

• For Xbox players, you can start migrating your characters to APB Reloaded on PC immediately at https://gamersfirst.com/apb/news/2024/1/2/xbox-console-2024
  
• For PlayStation 4 players, the migration page is not ready yet, but on February 1 you will also be able to start migrating your characters to APB Reloaded on PC. Instructions will be at https://gamersfirst.com/apb/news/2024/1/2/ps4-console-2024

We want to express our sincere gratitude to the APB Reloaded console community for the creativity, dedication, and support you have shown over the years. We are here to support you through this transition, and our customer service team is available for any questions or concerns you might have.

You can reach support at: https://support.gamersfirst.com or can email support@gamersfirst.com


Thank you for being a part of the APB Reloaded community. We appreciate your understanding and continued support as we navigate these changes.

Sincerely,

Matthew Scott CEO