Revoluzzer

Leaning pushes the camera away from your character, creating a larger field of vision. I believe that's why a lot of people do it. This is my state of knowledge as well. Leaning does widen the hitbox to accommodate the shifted upper body position, but also the unchanged lower body. Of course this might have changed at some point (especially during the crouching hitbox time). Fun fact: Even if you can not visibly target their hitbox anymore (i.e. red crosshairs) you can oftentimes still hit them. I don't know what the technical implications are, but my theory is that the bullet-spread-system has to do with it. Or maybe hitboxes extend slightly beyond the point at which the crosshairs detect them. Or it's bad netcode. But I've found it too reliable to blame that one.

I wonder at which point you might have experienced this. At no point in APB history, which I can remember, were the N-HVR, N-Tec and JG/CSG not the most used/popular weapons, going all the way back to RTW beta times. Unless you count short-lived outliers, when certain weapons became notably overpowered for a while (e.g. Obeya, Nano, Trouble Maker ...). Arguably there was a little more car variety when the Pioneer was Enforcer exclusive, because Crims had to use the Espacio as their heavy duty vehicle. But besides that vehicle popularity hasn't really changed. There were a few light-roleplaying clans who would almost exclusively use Broadwings, Moirais and Fresnos in "authentic" police cruiser fashion, but those were a fringe group. In the grand scheme of things it was always all about the Vegas, Bishada, Mikro, Jericho and Pioneer. Try-hards were never a small minority. Intentionally losing to keep a low threat level or trying to reach TL15 using any given dirty trick were common in earliest days. With dwindling play numbers it merely became more likely to meet the same try-hards over and over, without a way to evade them. Unless you were willing to play tough, but fair opponents when the population was healthy, you were bound to face try-hards in other districts. These two issues really boil down to low population, which reduced the factual, but also the perceived variety in the game. I miss large clans and their rivalries the most. Clans in particular could've been so much more, had the necessary tools existed in the game. I think they uesd some of them (e.g. WASP, Resistance) for game promotion before one of the larger shows (probably Gamescom)? Also, because I just went on a minor tour through old APB stuff, it seems like players made sounds when getting hit, way back in the day. They should bring this back.

Doesn't really matter how many slots are taken, the weapons were only (supposed to be) labeled for how many upgrades they could carry in total. If the new system labels slots individually, as @Hexerin says, names would get more confusing. Is a STAR R&D III better than a STAR SD R&D II? And where does a STAR JT2 PR1 stand, in comparison? Is a STAR R&D II PR1 the same as a STAR JT2 PR1?

Did old mail get wiped at some point? I just checked on my main and everything that doesn't carry attachments (or did, at some point) has been deleted, it seems. Would surprise me if I did it myself, I had some vintage-bugged-contact-mail™ in my inbox. Would this count, tho?

Technically that would be a R&D II then, because it has two mod-slots. They really should. Turning it into an OCA was a nonsense move.

I'm amazed a mechanic which is entirely not fun to, at least, half of the participating players is still so fiercely defended. Doesn't really matter whether it's an exploit or not, it probably costs the game several players each month. Also any half-competent running team will routinely shut down your interception and anti-vehicle-attack attempts.

Since a silencer is distinguished by the 'SD' label, it shouldn't also include the 'PR' label.

One the one hand I commend you for using a naming system that makes sense. On the other hand I would've preferred if you had kept it in line with the original naming system (i.e. manufacturer specific labels for upgraded versions). But then again, Gamersfirst already wrecked havock within this system, so you'd have to rename lots of weapons to get them back in line.

I think @SquirrelFace has the right idea that most of your suggested changes only fight symptoms, but not the root cause of an issue. EMP grenades in particular either need to be strong enough to replace all other grenades, or simply not good enough to replace Low-Yields (and Conqs for a few people). Assuming their effects are not permanent, destroying an opponents vehicle would also still be the preferable tactic to use. The proposed shotgun changes sound good to me, given I suggested three shots to kill for the CSG & JG years ago as well, to weaken corner-popping a little, while also improving consistency. Does it really matter what the original plan for progression was? I'm fairly certain G1 diverted so far from the original idea already that progression is messed up one way or another. And I assume they held back Lynette and Lucas, because they're the least "specialist" of the bunch. They're too bland to serve as anything but low/mid tier contacts.

The game is dying anyway, as far as I'm concerned. If it still yields them a net profit they should keep it alive by all means, though. Given you aren't the only person who is "in the know" on this remake/reboot I have no reason to distrust you (anymore than anyone else, at least ). Shame that it is still years away.

APB didn't have proper AA because it didn't exist in the original engine version, I believe. The current experimental implementation was built by Realtime Worlds, iirc. Replacing the engine, however, should allow AA, since it's a staple feature of modern engines, no? Got a source for those UE4 claims? A complete rebuilt (or re-imagining) is exactly what APB needs. Most resources should be spent on that project, as far as I'm concerned. APB will still be an old game after the engine upgrade, no doubt about it. And "fixing" everything else that is wrong with it will easily take another couple years, if it is possible at all.

APB doesn't need a lot of mediocre gamemodes. A single good one would suffice. I think turf wars and missions should go hand in hand.

Fight Club is, as far as I am concerned, nothing but a place to farm kills and try out new weapons, loadouts or mechanics. Getting access to weapons you don't own by scavenging them off other players seems to fit this concept well. Just have them disappear after a few seconds, so picking them up becomes sort of a definitive choice.

The crosshairs in APB show your accuracy at a 10m distance. Beyond that point you can hit something outside of them. That's what can be seen on the left hand example for APB:R. Also I believe they define a circle that intersects them at the center or even outside, not on the inside as one would naturally assume? Not entirely certain about this one. That's what would be shown on the right hand example for APB:R.

Given there is no stamina-system attached to sprinting there was never any reason not to have it as the default mode of movement. Pressing shift or toggling to jog would make more sense in APB.

Historically the N-Tec's TTK was always the issue. It's a medium range gun with a close range TTK. If you go all the way back to the concepts for the STAR and N-Tec, it becomes evident that the former was meant to be an accurate, slightly slower medium range assault rifle, while the latter was supposed to lean closer to short ranges. Unfortunately the highly precise, fast firing, fast blooming design of the N-Tec also lent itself perfectly for ranged combat - even better than the accurate, slow firing STAR did. So what did they do? They didn't try to fix the N-Tec and instead changed the STAR to what we have today (which is still accurate and slightly slower, as well as much weaker overall) and kept the N-Tec the same. While they did eventually touch the N-Tec, the core design issue was never adressed. Generally speaking guns in APB work on two major traits: TTK and precision. Everything that's supposed to work at close range has a low TTK (historically that's around 0.7s). Everything that's supposed to work at long range has high precision (that's the size of the reticule in a resting position). Everything else (bloom/accuracy, damage/firing speed/shots to kill, ammo/mag size etc.) are secondary attributes to give a weapon character. The N-Tec was the only gun that combined both core traits at a high level (great TTK, high precision) in a single tool. Nowadays the situation is ever so slightly different, because more guns with a lower TTK than 0.7 were introduced - originally the SHAW was the only one. But why limit yourself to one range if you can carry a single weapon that excels at almost all of them?

Phasing will be their solution to this issue. Even if you join an empty district you will get matched with players from all districts (of the same type/location, I guess). I'm curious if they will (finally) remove manual district selection at the same time. Otherwise people might just keep trying to enter the full district, thus never entering the matchmaking pool. Just because they don't know any better.

Pretty sure car doors don't have hitboxes, just like the wheels don't. A player character becomes part of the vehicle hitbox the moment he starts entering it. So if there is no civilian to be pulled out you can't hit the player once they start entering the vehicle.

The way mission districts work needs to be fundamentally reconsidered, I think. A considerable amount of time in them is spent waiting for action, which - as far as I'm concerned - is the primary reason the game never found great success. The time you need to invest does not justify the amount of entertainment you get out of it. Adding new missions doesn't really do much. New objectives? Investigations were a new objective many years ago. That certainly didn't bring anything interesting to the table. Rearranging objectives isn't very interesting either. Furthermore introducing new missions doesn't make the existing ones any more fun. Mission districts are an entire chunk of the game that needs to be retooled. Whether that's a more sandbox-y experience or "simply" a more entertaining way to build missions doesn't matter so much, either would be a lot of work.

The Overkill hardware stress test suggests otherwise. Those servers ran perfectly fine with 100 newly created characters in a single location, but fell apart with even 80 custom avatars spread across the entire district. If things haven't drastically changed the servers still have to handle all character data for each player in the district at pretty much all times. This includes items which are not equipped and only rest in inventory.

Which means it will still break when pushed to the live servers, because this is APB.

Why not just link to the Wikipedia entry and call it by its actual name, which is Glicko rating system? The wording suggests that APB actually uses Glicko-2, which features rating volatility. The formulas you posted "only apply to the original Glicko system, and not its successor, Glicko-2." (as per Wikipedia)

At least this way we don't end up with two low grade punks pretending to be end-level contacts.

Eh, this is still free2play-space, where time moves different. And since the general concept of the game already exists, it "only" has to be rebuilt in a modern engine. That's a lot of work carved out already. If asset-flippers can create functional "games" I have no doubt Little Orbit could recreate APB in UE4 within a reasonable amount of time.

I think you did a great job with this. Tried something new and succeeded.