Revoluzzer

That perpetual upgrading of things is essentially what has been holding this game back ever since, I'd say. By the time the code is mature enough to allow further development of the actual game it might not even be economically viable. Have you ever considered taking the lore, art and assets and rebuilding the game to a more modern standard instead of trying to upgrade the existing thing? I feel like in the years that have been spent taking very small steps, this one big leap could've been done instead. Gamersfirst at a time had a similar idea with APB: Vendetta, although I think their goal to transition into a different gameplay-genre was flawed. What I'm trying to say, really, is that all the mechanics which make APB what it is seem to be comparably easy to achieve in modern game engines. With the added benefit of better compatibility to modern hardware.

More people should do it like you. Waiting exacerbates the issue by taking a team out of the standard matchmaking routine. The longer they are in a mission, the more willing the system becomes to give them just about any opposition, no matter how close their threat levels are. When this happens two teams are removed from the matchmaking-pool who could've been assigned to more appropriate opponents, who in return might now wait for opposition.

Inventory space is a limited resource, because the servers will collapse under stress if inventories grow too large. I guess sorting items doesn't work because the interface reads directly of the dataset for each character. Each new item gets assigned a consecutive number and the inventory just displays this list. Remember, like most things in APB, the UI is a fairly complex, confusing and convoluted creation. Supposedly it is built with Kismet, which, if my understanding is correct, isn't meant for such a thing. "In general, Kismet does not execute on the client; it runs on the server and programmers can allow changes that are relevant to gameplay for a given client to be replicated to it." I've never really put my greater attention to this fact, but this sentence might explain why most of the interfaces are so extremely slow. Wouldn't surprise me if your client makes a call to the server every time you want to open the inventory in order to request the necessary information.

That image is actually from a blog post introducing a third hitbox state. Originally it was either standing or crouched, where crouched was fully covered by some objects (the stack of pellets in the picture, for example). That update introduced the "crouched moving" state, which is slightly taller, making you a target when moving behind low cover. It has to be noted, however, that character height does affect shooting behaviour. Tall characters can fire over certain objects, while short ones can not. Conversely short characters can hide behind some objects (even if their hitbox is "showing"), while tall characters can not. The difference is mostly negligible, but existent nonetheless. Never heard of this. Do you, by chance, confuse this with player-information not being sent to clients outside the 100m range? It was, iirc, added to lower the amount of information cheaters could collect and theoretically enabled players to "bait" suspected cheaters by hiding somewhere outside a 150-200m radius around the mission area, at which point the cheater would have to drive around in circles to "pick up their signal". Caused some major issues with several mission finales (e.g. TDM, VIP, object hold), because the target-indicators wouldn't update properly anymore and thus had to be reverted.

How future-proof would you consider the engine-upgrade? Is it at all reasonable to expect a stable and smooth experience or will APB's situation in UE3.5 be a similar hackjob as the original creation? Reloaded Productions talked a lot about the upgrade making things better all around, but considering how long it has been underway and how many issues seemingly will persist even then, it seems to me like another major headache.

To my knowledge Fight Club is entirely disconnected from the threat system.

This would only prove a good player can beat a bad player with any tool, though. It might give those players an edge who are really close to being among "the best", but can only quite cut it when min-maxing their equipment. Heck, it might even lead to players who consider themselves "the best" to realise they get carried somewhat by their guns. Might lead to more such threads! Should be 125 damage per shot, eight hits to kill.

The OCA was perfect in its original state. Should've been the benchmark for all other SMGs. It's beyond me why the buffed it. That said, it had the same TTK as the PMG, but less effective range. Comparing the N-Tec and Vegas works great, because both are too good at a few too many things at once. Sure, you can also use other things, but honestly every other combination puts you at some disadvantage. The N-Tec isn't bad in CQC either. But SMGs and Shotguns can't compete with it at mid range, Rifles aren't quite as versatile and LMGs aren't as mobile. With the N-Tec you can cover almost every ground and compete with almost every weapon in their respective niche. It is more balanced now than it was in the past, but it is still noticeably ahead of its peers.

The current system didn't introduce dethreating, it existed all the way back to alpha/beta. It was even easier in the original system, because you only needed a certain number of defeats to reach a certain threat level. The current system at least requires you to participate once in the mission to get enough score/participation to have it affect your threat. This only works if you deliberately keep your threat volatile. Under normal circumstances a player will play at the same skill level very consistently, which leads to the system slowly locking him in on a certain threat level. When a player performs at a consistent level he gains "certainty", which lowers the volatility of his threat level. New players and de-threaters will easily and rapidly go up and down in threat, because their "certainty"-level is very low or zero. Linking threat to rank doesn't make sense. Rank is a linear progression system - you can only go up, never down Threat is a non-linear representation system - you can go up and down Every player will eventually reach the highest rank. Not every player can reach the highest threat. As most things they did, however, they put very little thought and work into it. Could have been much better than what we got.

Looking on the bright side, it hides ugly low-LOD objects.

If you think Enforcers have it easier than Crims you're on your way to a world of hurt. Neither of those really matters at high rank and the corresponding contacts. At that point Criminals will spend a lot of time burning stuff and breaking windows, as well as delivering items. Enforcers will ram-raid a lot and deliver items, but instead of burning they usually investigate, bug or hack stuff. Primarily well exposed sat dishes, antennas and payphones.

You should really simplify this. All primaries should cost the same. Value is based on the number of slots and whether the weapon is preset or customisable. Secondaries should follow the same idea, minus slots, obviously. Then new releases can be added at a premium and go down eventually. Ideally you'd also streamline the system so a weapon is put into a category (e.g. primary/3-slots or primary/preset) and the price is based on that. This way you avoid the chaos that ensures when using individual entries for each item. By the way, this extends to all other content, too. Clothing items, vehicle kits, bundles. People get confused with different prices and, imo, will buy less when things get confusing.

They really only work if there are no less than two players on each side and the difference doesn't exceed two players. In other words 2v3 and 3v4 are fine. Once a 2v4 scenario is mathematically balanced, it is rarely fun for the 4 players, because their skill-level needs to be substantially lower than that of the opposing duo. Placing more than 8 people total in a mission is problematic, because the game isn't built around it and will usually allow each team to keep the pressure on the objective at all times. This is puts a major advantage on the defending team. Throw uneven numbers into the mix and the larger team will carry a massive advantage into the stages preceding the finale. As far as I'm concerned the game works best in 2v2, 2v3 and 3v3, but can accommodate 3v4 and 4v4 as well, if necessary. One on one is all around boring, because getting killed directly correlates with losing an objective and most finales just don't work well in this scenario.

It's a spitting image of the P90, which has a magazine on top. But the PDW-57 does have it's mag on the bottom, behind the thumb-hole. Presumably because they only have the appropriate animation for this scenario. Or perhaps to avoid licensing issues. You can even see the mag protruding from the body in the ARMAS pic.

It's the bane of all APB reviews, really. If you haven't spent the time to get to know the game or have followed it from the very beginning, you won't understand why some things work the way they do. He talks about the bad (pedestrian) AI some two minutes into the video and how they run into him when he wants to run them over. What he doesn't and can not really know is that the pedestrian AI is absolutely barebones. They will always follow the same paths and can not diverge from those. For gameplay related reasons this makes sense. Predictable pedestrian movement helps Criminals to raise their Notoriety and Enforcers to avoid lowering their Prestige. The same applies to all kinds of mechanics in APB. They make sense in gameplay, but aren't immediately (or even eventually) obvious to "modern gamers".

The game was never built with randomised missions in mind, I believe. Each one tells a little story, after all. That's why the objectives are always the same, but the locations can change. I guess it would be more fun if you didn't know exactly what's coming next, but this would require a thorough balance pass for all objectives and especially mission finales.

This depends on whether the matchmaking-system is based on the Glicko-values or threat. In case of the latter it would affect matchmaking, even when the underlying calculation doesn't change.

I don't think anyone really wants to throw out the skill-system, only the visual representation.

Well the threat-distribution should be a bell curve, but currently is more of a pear curve is what he's saying. There is, as far as I'm concerned, a fairly simple and great way to solve this issue: Stop having threat be a static/fixed value and start having it be dynamic. Have the active playerbase (e.g. all accounts active within the past 10 days are considered) be dynamically distributed across the existing threat levels (e.g. 20% Gold, 40% Silver, 25% Bronze, 15% Green). The underlying Glicko-values do no change, mind you, only their placement on the threat-scale.

There shouldn't be any images. I was just trying to embed the "ackchually"-meme image, but the WYSIWYG-text-editor didn't let me do it. On my end I don't even see any embedded images. I do have a video showing the original quickswitch, though ("Captured on 15.9.2010/16.9.2010 on EU Server Patriot (Release-Version 1.4.1)."). Gotta add it's fairly cringy (for me, at least) and on a terrible skill level by today's standards. But in my defense, at the time I just wanted to show gameplay without using what was at the time known as the HVR-quickswitch (from the description: "No N-HVR-Quickswitch (proper noobshit!) included." *cringe*). It does, ironically, feature a couple HVR-quickswitches of the "modern" variant.

Do you have a source for this? I can not recall any such thing. Keeping a "threat progression" will keep two kinds of players who will do anything to win: Those who de-threat to get easier opposition and those who use every dirty trick to win. A skill-rating system isn't meant to be progressive and promoting it as such just leads to a bunch of problems. This was one of the fundamental issues with the original TL1-15 system, making players believe TL15 was the end-goal. This did only exist early in APB. You would either be sent on an unopposed mission or receive a "Dispatch" against other players. In this case you'd see the threat level icon for each opponent. Naturally most players would dismiss dispatches against high threat teams, which lead to those players having to wait for opposition most of their play-session.

Swapping factions is actually very similar. Not only since they technically have different progression-trees (even if it's "only" factions on a surface level), but they also have unique mechanics (e.g. Less than Lethal and Ram-raiding), which come with different roles. Of course at first glance these seem like trivial changes, but I wouldn't be surprised if these are integrated as complex as an avatar's gender.

As a player you are investing time in the game, however. And without these investors the game is dead. So as a developer you need to listen to these investors to an extend. Otherwise they might stop investing in your product.

But it wouldn't. Threat is just a visual representation of Glicko-values. Adding another colour on top might make people feel like the system momentarily improves, or it might make them feel like they get matched against way too good players because all of a sudden they face "Platinum" players instead of "Gold" ones.