Revoluzzer

Lowering the min TTK of assault rifles below 0.75s is putting the cart before the horse. The N-Tec was so strong at close range because it competed with dedicated CQC weapons on a purely mechanical level, i.e. min TTK. The STAR did not, because it was by design slower. The same should have been applied to the N-Tec before doing the whole monkey dance with the curve mechanics and whatnot. In general it was a wrong move to introduce more assault rifles with a TTK below 0.75s after they added the ATAC. This one was specifically designed to act as a close range AR with a heavy emphasis on aiming down sights at all times, while still not being a noteworthy threat beyond 40m. And it was one of the most balanced weapons at its time of introduction. I still can not comprehend why they felt like it needed changing. APB as a whole would probably benefit from nerfs across the board. The district maps were designed with a slower TTK in mind and gameplay suffers as a result of the current state. When a mid range weapon can kill at short range as fast as a dedicated short range weapon can. Which the N-Tec could, as explained above.

That's the exact opposite of what it originally was, though.

The security van used the ambulance model before release. Characters used to react to hits. Very early version of the character select screen: Old inventory screen: Old capture area marker (also leaning left without switching the camera to the other side): This was the official vehicle customisation contest, I believe (physics got real weird with ~80 cars in one area):

It was still the most used car before the 4x4 got released. Highest top speed and top end toughness are way too good to pass on, unless you want to use the Pioneer. The downside to this is that running would still be an option and probably even more powerful & frustrating. Limiting the TDM area to a single area (potentially using RIOT mechanics for this) would be a much bigger improvement, I believe.

LO has been at the helm of APB for almost two years now? Wow, time flies.

They really need to dial down the contrast, if that engine update screenshot is accurate. It looks like every first attempt of using the curves tool in Photoshop. Sure, in comparison the current engine looks kinda bland. But that is also easier on the eyes. Slightly crispier lighting should totally do the job.

The game originally had a character mod for this, called Energizer. When all character mods got a rework it was removed, but the stat-bonus moved directly into player-stamina.

Since the crosshair on shotguns only encapsules the area in which a spread-pattern originates (i.e. pellets can go way outside the crosshairs) it makes perfect sense that being even a tiny bit off target can have drastic effects. With fixed patterns it arguably helped to aim next to a target beyond a certain distance, but right now your best bet is to target center mass every time it is visible. Not the feet, not the head, not (literally) 1px off. The Shredder's spread is so tight you might consider it a single projectile in CQC. If you're off target at all, you most likely miss. Conversely the JGs spread is so wide you can hit an enemy even if your aim was flawed.

Your second shot seems to mainly hit the door and only partially your opponent. What I find more odd here is that his first shot doesn't seem to hit at all, yet he still kills you with the second. Second shot doesn't appear to have registered at all, there is no hitmarker. Third shot was aimed far above the player, must have at most graced them. Second shot only graces his feet. All hits look like partial ones. To me your settings seem to wildly exaggerate how well you hit an opponent. The blood spatter appears way more prominent than under "normal" settings. Watching the footage frame-by-frame (or at least in the smallest steps that gyazo by dragging the mouse around) shows fairly reasonable explanations why each situation happened the way it did. Admittedly the first one is pretty odd, but the others seem clear-cut to me.

If the bullet impacts are anything to go by, you could have missed almost the entire first and second blast. I know, I know, the consensus is that bullet impacts do not actually represent where the shot was registered server-side. But I still believe they represent where the shot can go, even server side. Also, if I'm not mistaken, hitreg around ammo vending machines has always been wonky, even worse than shooting someone close to normal obstacles. So it's not entirely unlikely that these were well aimed shots (the first one moreso than the second), which didn't register correctly. On top it could also be a client-server-communication issue, where what you see is not what you get. Your crosshair-/camera-movement might not have registered server-side the same way it was displayed client-side. The four-shot example shows that some hits also get registered when they really shouldn't, because your opponent is already out of the way. But again, what you see is not what you get there. My experience in the playtest was that hitreg still isn't very good across the board, be it "normal" weapons or shotguns. But the latter work fairly reliable in their current state.

Slightly off-topic, but I'd like to see an alternative, modern model for it. The Mk14 EBR would be a good fit and it even has a pistol grip, so there are no major obstacles with animations.

7 in the morning, huh? I might stop by.

If you turn a classic car into an electric vehicle you still have to deal with lots and lots of ancient tech (i.e. everything that is not the drivetrain). Likewise upgrading APB to a newer engine and adding some new features won't change the fact that it is an ancient game. Especially in the looks department APB is already severely lacking and the customisation-feature is, imo, not the grand attraction it once was. Its decent controls and handling are coupled with dated gameplay-design. I believe creating more exciting gameplay is easier when you start from scratch, using the existing game as a guideline. Otherwise you'd be trying to build on top of the current design, which is probably the most difficult way to do it. Or exchange practically everything, which also requires to create something new, but also implement it into the existing, ancient and ported framework.

Well that's a shame.

Modifying the Bounty system to keep you from getting "Heat 5" in missions Meh. I know some people dislike this mechanic, but it's there for challenging players who perform excessively well in a mission. It's one of the remaining mechanics that remind you of the open world, open conflict nature that the game tried to create.

The real treasure they acquired is the lore and general idea that APB is based around. These assets can be used to create a modern, fun game. Which - supposedly - is being done by a small team at the moment (Australian, I think? If they haven't burned down yet, literally). Keeping the old game alive and "progressing" is probably a minor financial aid and a major learning experience.

Reset threat levels globally on a schedule? That's just admitting you failed at building a proper threat system. All past resets did nothing but allow a bunch of people to play easy missions for a while, until everything was back to square one and they had to de-threat "for fun" again. If you want a working threat system you introduce rolling boundaries and ignore inactive accounts (e.g. everyone who was offline for 5 consecutive days) for the calculation. Then you can define 15 - 20% of all (active) players to be Gold at any given time. If you are so keen on keeping a visible threat indicator at all. It also happened to cause some "I'm definitely Gold material"-players to drop to Silver and some "No way I'm good enough for Gold"-players to prove themselves, but ultimately having both accuse the system to be broken. I disagree with this insofar as players who team up regularly will naturally end up in the highest threat regions, where they would - again naturally - fight others like them. A necessity for limited districts (i.e. another form of segregation) wouldn't exist, because good lone wolves / duos would end up in a lower skill bracket and only face full pre-mades occasionally. Of course it all boils down to population size and the way matchmaking work. Or, more importantly as far as I'm concerned, player distribution into districts in a way that supports matchmaking.

You remember correctly. However this might have been patched in the meantime. And some missions feature somewhat unique objectives (radio towers, for example), which simply only exist in a few spots. Also "dummy"-objectives which, I guess, were supposed to be randomly assigned, but just so happen to always be assigned the same letter. I think a more interesting twist on the system would be tug-of-war mechanics for missions, which could dissolve into a classic finale if certain conditions are not met within a certain timeframe. The current system is just too predictable after a while.

Boils down to how short a round is. If the hunt only lasts for a few minutes you can probably fortify to the top floor against the nutcrackers.

In matchmaking 3 mediocre Golds are very close to 4 high Silvers, but 4 high Golds are very far away from 4 low Golds.

The difference between a Bronze bordering Green and a Bronze bordering Silver is just as massive as between an average Silver and average Gold. That's why threat segregation as a concept doesn't work to begin with. You will always have to deal with edge cases that don't fit into the system; but with threat segregation you introduce yet another hurdle for the matchmaking system which wouldn't exist otherwise.

If they want the N-Tec to be a mid-range weapon it may very well be a tap fire laser. As long as it doesn't routinely kill faster than other mid-range weapons and also doesn't kill as fast as CQC weapons at full-auto. Technically the STAR was supposed to be for longer range, while the N-Tec was supposed to be for shorter range. That's why the N-Tec has a lower TTK. But sometime during development someone decided that apparently the N-Tec should be both, while the STAR should somewhat be neither (that's when the STAR was still working similar to what the LCR is now, but with much less range and accuracy). When Gamersfirst took over they had the chance to fix this issue, but for some reason they only turned the STAR into a slightly weaker version of what we have today and kept the N-Tec as it was.

Are you now working on a world consolidation based on the "loan"-model, or is that an interim solution?

Dethreating is the issue as it causes ripple effects. The player who dethreats will also inflate another players threat artificially. And those players carry these incorrect values into their next match, where it affects their next opponent. Of course its not the exclusive cause for all threat-related matchmaking issues APB has, but it certainly adds to it. Especially with a small population, where those ripples can easily affect the majority of all players. Also segregation by thread and visible threat colours are the root causes for dethreating, as far as I'm concerned. Segregation can not work, because for players right at the edge there is no good spot. If you are close to the expectations set by the threat-system for your current match, the amount by which your threat moves might be minuscule, though.

There is a mathematical, mechanical benefit. It doesn't really matter if you don't notice it, it still exists on a technical level. It's not as palpable as aiming down sights and confirming that the FOV has, in fact, decreased drastically, of course. For someone comfortable with hipfiring, that extra bit of consistency goes a long way. We've already established we're talking high level gameplay here. People have long broken those habits. Not quite Shroud levels of routine, but similar.