Over the past few years, APB Reloaded developers have intermittently run different types of events: Some have equipped players with new weapons, or customization options, while others have also netted players with concrete rewards in the GamersFirst game shop currency, or “G1C.”

The latest such event, “Blood Money,” run in anticipation of their new content patch, simply asks players to kill other players in exchange for rewards:

Alright boys and girls, listen up and listen good, there’s a BOUNTY on! Someone out in San Paro needs a whole lot of corpses and needs ‘em fast, and well, they figure you’d make a mighty fine supplier. You can bag yourself up to 100 kills per day at 1 G1C a pop for 7 days. We know most of you cold-hearted killers’d already be doing this anyway so this is basically just like free money, but hey, whoever it is needs this killing done doesn’t seem to mind.¹

Sounds right about normal, right? Wrong. The current event, running from the 20th to 26th, is markedly different from those that came before it, and is deserving of some commentary.

In previous events, partaking players very much had to have a permanent group, or needed to belong to a clan, often with a minimum of four players. Winning, and winning often, was a common criterion for the receiving of rewards. This made the events very, very tough - to the point of unfairness -, as hard-to-reach tiers simply had to be met for any rewards to be received. This gave players no leeway whatsoever:

Either you had to grind for hours on end, or you had to bail out.

That’s not good. That’s the kind of thing that is partially the reason as to why the game is so very often misunderstood. Certainly, a portion of its negative reputation stems from the All Points Bulletin release fiasco. Many players will also be turned off by its F2P badge. To boot, the game has atrociously demanding hardware requirements, and a tedious learning curve. Truly learning the ropes could seriously take hundreds of hours.

What the game is not, however, is “pay to win,” or a “cash grab;” instead, for those that persist, the game can offer some of the best shooty bits on the PC - in addition to having, quite possibly, unparalleled character/vehicle customization options in a video game today.

In my mind, then, the “Blood Money” event proves to be a great step forward for the ageing game. These are the ways in which the current event is successful in the ways that the previous events weren’t:

• The event signals the arrival of new, much-needed content
• The event rewards ordinary play
• There are, however, discrete bonuses for paying customers
• The event does not discriminate between newcomers, casual players, or hardcore clanbangers
• Everyone can take part
• Players are free to invest however much time and work into the event as they desire, as there are no tiers, or reward limits, that need be reached
• There is a daily upper limit, preventing unhealthy grinding
• The rewards are delivered to players in daily fashion, unlike in the past, where players would have to wait for delivery for weeks on end
• The rewards are substial enough to feel like a worthy investment, yet still small enough to incentivize usage of the game’s expensive web shop

All bullet points above (pun intended) are, in my mind, highly crucial for an ageing game with an extremely loyal, rabid player base. APB Reloaded has a varied, colourful history, with its ups and downs, but if this recent event is of any indication, then players of the game should feel very good about the prospects of their favourite game.

The forthcoming new APB:R content patch, New Breed Pt. 4, releases on Monday the 25th.

1. http://forums.gamersfirst.com/topic/336915-blood-money-get-kills-get-paid/ [↩]