Dopefish

It's a bit sad that this has to be mentioned. People not realizing that the web designers aren't the same people who are working on the engine overhaul. But I like the look of the new site

Like you mentioned, the test were done poorly, and I believe it was deliberately see. Qwentle always preferred faster TTK, and were proud of his implementation for when G1 took over, so if a TTK change would've gone through, it would've invalidated his work and forced him to rebalance every weapon in the game. The districts died out quickly because they were pretty much unplayable due to the perc one-shotting cars, and even though the weapons were slowed down, their accuracy were never improved which only made the RNG more apparent. I believe it would've been better with a smaller TTK increase, such as 0.7s -> 0.9s, but instead we've only had lower TTK creep over the years, just reinforcing the issues with the rest of the game never being balanced around it. Animations such as entering vehicles, climbing ladders, opening door were created with a certain TTK in mind, and the same goes for the level design where you don't have time to reach any cover if you start getting shot at. The low TTK were implemented to make it possible for lesser skilled players to get kills aswell, but I think the change actually worked against them instead, as they only die faster now. Third person view with low TTK makes for a very frustrating experience as people can simply stand around a corner with perfect information, and pretty much get a free kill without much effort. It makes the game stale, repetitive and very uninteresting. The biggest difference was that it made coordinated gameplay much less important, as one guy can now cover an entrance by himself, while before he would've been overrun if more than one player attacked from that direction, making it a trade-off to spread out the defense to cover more areas, or having more people cover one entrance, leaving other areas open. This is what made defense having such a big advantage over attackers. I really wish they'd reconsider this, but I don't even know if this community would be open for a change anymore, as they have had the same game without changes such a long time now.

What's broken about it currently, beyond what it has been the last half decade?

Well society isn't really balanced either, and I don't think it's good to model a game after reality. I'm sure you're aware of the issues with P2W, and how it leads to people stop playing the game due to being at a disadvantage against paying players. Weapons shouldn't be balanced around how much they cost in Armas (and I don't think there should be Armas exclusive weapons other than legendary ones), so if it's too expensive in comparison to similar weapons, then it might be better to tweak its price instead.

So you don't think .45AP should be nerfed, since it is meant to be stronger due to its high price?

And I meant the emotes that triggers an animation, like /dance or /smoke does currently. Nobody would be interested in purchasing an emote that only creates a text prompt. I'm not sure what added value there is to do /me as opposed to simply typing it?

Most players skip the tutorial, and for those who doesn't, it's not very straight forward. I'm not sure how anyone is supposed to purchase ammo without having any money on their newly created character either. People just want to quickly get into the game and see if it's enjoyable, and if their first impression of it is one of frustration, they're not very likely to stick around. You say it's a minor thing, but so are alot of other things in APB that causes minor annoyances, which put together becomes a major impact on the enjoyment of the game. The biggest question is if having to purchase ammo makes the game better or not. Does this feature make the experience of the game better?

Ah, right. Your suggestions are good if this is the way we want it to be, but it's hard for me to discuss this as a feature, when I'd rather see it removed entirely (incl. the ammo menus)

So after every mission: - Visit a contact. - Pay off notoriety. - Delete mission reward mail spam. - Refill ammo for every ammo type. Well that's fine, shouldn't really take more than a minute at most... after every mission. Thousands of missions later (with small freezes every time you open up the UI), is it still fun to click on the purchase ammo button, just to make sure you don't spawn without ammo or grenades? New players won't have a clue about why they're spawning without any ammo, and will only get even more frustrated with how unintuitive the game is. That ammo cost money to resupply (and preferably stated clearly with how much ammo was resupplied, and how much it costed), is a good thing. Having to go out of your way to do something tedious is not.

Refilling ammo in APB is an old mechanic that has always been terrible. It's confusing for new players and tedious for everyone else. There's not much else that could be worse than respawning without ammo or grenades. We've played without it for years, and people weren't even aware of it being broken. It's good that refilling ammo would cost you, but having to make a routine to restock your ammo after every mission is a terrible idea when we know better.

Introducing new emotes to Armas could be a good way to monetize.

RFP should have its hipfire accuracy nerfed. 45AP should have its range nerfed. ACT44 and RSA should have their accuracy severely buffed. Oldschool variant of RFP with high hipfire and jump accuracy, but much less range, could be introduced as a new weapon.

Obeya min-TTK with perfectly timed shots: 0.84s (0.78s with CJ3) N-TEC min-TTK: 0.70s (0.65s with CJ3). Sure, 140ms isn't much of a difference when you have the drop on someone, but the gap becomes even bigger if you don't fire at perfect intervals, and for me it's hard to see how the Obeya could compete against the N-TEC in CQC, much less any other CQC weapon. These are just stats though, and doesn't reflect actual gameplay, so I'd still need to watch someone use it effectively in CQC. If you got any videos or past broadcasts that shows it being used in CQC, I could get an better understanding of it. It's hard to pick a group of players that would be able to provide good feedback for weapon changes. Just look at the two of us having different opinions already. It's a pity that there isn't more people posting suggestions and feedback on this forum. Though I don't believe there's a difference between balancing things around average or highly skilled players, as balance implies it would be balanced all-around. Opinions would of course differentiate based on experience, but lessening the skill ceiling to make the game more casual isn't a healthy longterm solution, which has already been proven with this low TTK and increased amount of RNG to weapon behaviors. I'm not under any illusion that weapon balance will bring in new players (at best, it might bring back old ones), but it could mean that newcomers would stick around longer. Mission balancing is another thing that the game needs, but it's in kind of the similar scenario as weapon balancing. Though with a better balanced game, it might make people less ashamed of playing it, and more prone to recommending it to their friends. I'd personally prioritize performance, and making the game more intuitive for new players. But I need to take a day and go through the negative reviews on steam, and check all the old youtube reviews for the game, to see what actively turns people off from playing it.