Also honestly, once work on APB ramps up again, please create a Trello page and keep things updated, it's such a great way to keep players informed about what projects are in the works and which are actively being worked on and where progress has been made. Here’s an example of a Trello page by PixelTail Games who work on Tower Unite.

Another thing you could do in order to strengthen the trust between the systems in place and the community would be to do monthly update posts talking about how many cheaters the Anti-cheat has banned this month, how many player mutes have happened, how many account restrictions happened for toxicity, griefing etc. No one is asking for name and shame – APB has already seen its fair share of it and it’s not something we should be going back to – but it would be encouraging for the playerbase to know and see that action is being taken to keep the game clean.

“We need more communication between the devs and the everyday players regarding what's happening with the game and with Little Orbit as a whole.”

“I think the players that still game this on a daily basis deserve to know what's the real state of APB and where it is heading.”  -Community Members

APB desperately needs a server side anti cheat seeing as BattlEye is far too slow at detecting a cheat if they’re able to detect it at all. If cheat providers brag about having 150+ active users when your game peaks at around 300-400 players you have a serious issue and it has gone neglected for way too long. APB is the only game I have ever played in which players brag about cheating, play with cheaters like it's normal or even have clans advertising to sell cheats or painting themselves as cheaters.

Furthermore, support needs to be trained to detect forms of cheating such as signs of macros and blatant trigger botting or even aimlocks and silent aim, it is beyond sad that there has been multiple known zero second delay trigger botters playing on the daily for the past 4+ years without being banned when any decent player would be able to tell you without a doubt that they are cheating but ideally it shouldn’t be up to the players or support to ban cheaters.

Please look into other solutions even if it is only till 64Bit releases. Sticking with BE is a quick way to make sure that you continue to haemorrhage players and as faithful and loyal many of us APB players are, there’s a certain line in which even we lose hope in the way the game is managed – and the current Anti-cheat solution is one of the biggest reasons for many players as to why that line was crossed for them.

“This is a big one, I would even argue it's THE BIGGEST ONE. Out of all the problems APB has ever had in its life cycle (of which there are countless) the biggest one remains the cheater problem. The only time we were actually doing well in that regard was during EAC, that's when the game was most playable. BE has been in the game twice now, we know it doesn't cut it, especially not on its own without a server side anti-cheat monitoring every player. The moment a cheater breaches BE pretty much everything is fair game until someone reports them and even when you report them with undeniable evidence it seems like LO's support team are being paid to be lenient about cheating instead of being paid to do their job. It seems like none of them have ever played a shooter game in their life and they can just not tell a blatant aimlock caught on video apart from normal footage to save their lives. No one wants to play a game where not only is there no new content to login for but you're also getting rolled by max rank rage hackers on veteran accounts on a daily basis who also love trash talking. Overall, makes the entire APB experience a billion times more miserable than it needs to be.”  -Community Member

“This is a puzzling one. Certain things are supposedly not allowed, but you only have to turn on a stream to see things like no smoke, no muzzle flash, no ambient sounds, etc. It's led to the common advice "no that's not allowed, but honestly, no one is getting banned for it". I think clarification is needed and seeing as though it would take little time to write up a post explaining the situation, I don't understand why it hasn't been done yet.”  -Community Member

“Would be really really good, but also takes a lot of engineering effort. Understandable that it would not come before 64bit. But I hope the topic has been explored internally for how this could be implemented as it would be huge for the game.” -Community Member

Another issue lies with map balance. There are countless spots that make for unfun missions – for example, areas such as the buildings in Financial that the community calls “German fortress” as well as many other spots that only have one or two ways to get to, often linked to climbing ladders which in most cases means certain death. Waterfront also needs a lot more cover around common spawn areas such as the big boat and has some nasty areas where spots can only be reached through to props that can be destroyed, this is something the community could be very helpful with when it comes to looking for places to start and getting feedback.

“I would like to see a much more aggressive approach when it comes to weapon balance. Progress has most certainly been made, and imo the meta is in a better place when compared to before LO's balance passes, but more needs to be done. If it is possible, I would love to see more rapid-fire changes, or at least faster than the months-long periods between balance passes we have had. The same goes for vehicles though I think vehicles are in a pretty good spot.”  -Community Member

This commitment has done wonders for Little Orbit, especially during the first year or so, however, as the focus shifted more and more away from the live game in hopes that the engine upgrade is “just around the corner” the communication and transparency has died down and at this point is basically dead apart from Matt’s Bi-weekly post about the progress their Team is making on the 64Bit upgrade.

“Promises made as well as overall game direction has all been forgotten and are now “in the distant future””  -Community Member

A lot of topics I will go into below are topics on the list because of the fact that communication has died down almost entirely, the most exciting news APB players have gotten in the recent year or two were plans to add a fourth, cosmetic mod slot to let players customise things such as their muzzle flash to be different colours and even that was more of a passing by comment made by a Little Orbit employee made on their discord rather than something talked about more openly such as in a blogpost. It feels as if we have to beg for info about just about anything going on with the live game, will there be more balance changes? Will there be any more updates? Will there be a Halloween event?

“I think we can all agree that at least when it comes to returning players, adding content would be a surefire way to boost pop. When the engine upgrade was being worked on it made sense to wait until it was finished before adding new stuff. That has changed. Unless there is simply no one left to work on anything outside of 1.3, adding content should be a top priority.” -Community Member

Yet another thing that could have been a huge factor when it comes to keeping players from leaving which was also hyped up with multiple blog posts and eventually dropped / postponed till some sort of Engine upgrade happened.

Here’s the simple question, is this still planned in the future? NA players long to play on their mains which are sadly stuck on a server that is basically unplayable for most of the day, some of them only want to design and sell their works too but can’t really do that due to the lack of players on NA and the market being basically dead. We understand that LO postponed this to try and develop a solution that makes the naming fair so people don’t lose their names as part of the merge, however, NA will likely die off completely in the coming months as the games overall population on both servers continues to dwindle and some players simply don’t feel like levelling a new character on EU or flat out don’t have the character slots to do so.

This isn’t the only form of toxicity either, a lot of members of the community that have a name for themselves whether it's through streaming or being parts of programs like SPCT get targeted by harassment or griefing every time they open the game. Things have gotten so bad that many of us who want to enjoy the game can’t stream and have to play on hidden characters, meaning we’re locked out of any meaningful endgame progression such as maxing roles. This form of harassment comes in the form of stream sniping, griefing or things such as toxic whispers etc. Not even GM’s are spared from this, making their life and volunteer duty miserable.

Toxicity is something that LO can fix now and it has been left to fester for way too long. Stricter rules and punishment handed out by both GM’s and Support are one of possible methods of handling this problem. Even if they don’t show it, people care about their accounts and I could almost guarantee you that a lot of the racist things that are being spewed would go away if it came with severe penalties to their accounts such as a 30 day ban for first offenders and a permanent ban for repeated offenders. Wipe everyone's ignore list and make it so ignoring players ignores ALL characters on their account rather than just the one, combine this with a GTA 5 inspired passive mode of sorts that lets you ignore collisions tied to that players player-owned car or car he’s currently in for a few hours of recently ignored players and you have a solution against targeted griefing that doesn’t require GM’s to step in.

“People are too used to it to a point where it has become part of the game. There are ways to be toxic that aren't even considered as violations. Huge changes and stricter rules, maybe stronger punishments that mean something are required in my opinion.”  -Community Member

This is an absolutely massive question in everyone's mind when they think of the 64Bit update and it is one that has to be answered.

“64-bit is a good direction. We need this for quality of life for sure. However if it is taking longer to get it out then please give more updates. (PLease do not make promises and dates but please consider keeping players better informed.) Otherwise they feel abandoned.” -Community Member

“The tutorial might be a good start, but that's not enough. Furthermore there should be a detailed guide for new players where they can understand most of the mechanics in the game.” -Community Member

“I feel bad for consoles. As bad as things have been for PC, at least we haven't been completely abandoned. I wonder, what does the death of the PC engine upgrade mean for consoles? Will they get any updates at all? Are there any employees who can even work on consoles?” -Community Member

While on the topic of console APB it could really do with its own set of balance, especially in the recoil department, it's just not a good experience right now which is why the console meta is primarily made off of guns that have little recoil like the ATAC.

“Once LO had to choose between working on the live game or working on the engine upgrade I was initially supportive of their decision to put all their eggs in the engine upgrade basket. It sounded like the new engine was just around the corner, and it seemed silly to change things once for the live client and then have to do it again for the new engine. As the delays began to pile up and the population continued to dwindle, the community continually asked for QoL changes; more weapon balance, new contacts, phasing, etc. At first, I did my best to defend LO, but it became harder and harder over time until I couldn't defend them at all. Once the engine upgrade was abandoned, QoL changes should have become a top priority. In the spirit of fairness, upgrading to 64bit does, I think, count as a QoL change. We can only hope this is the start of things getting back on track.”  -Community Member

Here is a document that lists many of these QoL changes that LO can do now that I myself together with the community have put together.