It’s been a long, winding, and very likely frustrating road for APB Reloaded and its attempt to upgrade the game’s engine, to the point that even the devs at Little Orbit appear to be sick of it. It’s in that spirit of biting the bullet and launching update 2.1 sooner than later (their words) that a third open beta test has been confirmed, kicking off today, October 24th, through Monday, October 26th.
This beta test comes with a number of important caveats. First, players are being asked to “put away [their] FPS counter for now and focus on the feel of the client over raw numbers” as the devs understand that FPS in 2.1 will be “significantly” less than the live version — the game’s engineers are working on it. Second, this build of 2.1 will feature all districts and the removal of the AVX requirement.
Finally, the devs are reminding players that there will be bugs. “This is a beta and things will break. As we transition 2.1 over to live, it is possible that some of those bugs will transition over as well,” cautions the post. “We remain committed to squashing these issues, but we believe that the benefit we gain from being able to move forward on critical improvements to the APB experience outweighs chasing a perfectly bug-free release.”
If none of those asterisks deter you from checking out the new build (and, ideally, helping the devs release the new version), then you can read the post for instructions on how to join.