Noob_Guardian

NTEC bloom has always been negated by firing within it's recovery time though and that wierd function thing G1 added with the HB nerf, otherwise it would bloom worse? LO didn't touch that to my knowledge. Like I could be wrong about that and I'll gladly admit it if I am. I thought they touched max bloom and jump shooting.

I said within its "effective range" and also noted that "overal range" isn't "effective range". The range of the OCA is 30m, its "effective" range is ~15m. The DMR is good up to 100m, but it's "effective" range is 88+. Just because a weapon functions within certain ranges, does not mean that it is, or should be "effective" all the way from 0 to "past" its damage drop. Which is what the NTEC was, which is why LO made it so that it isn't very effective sub 5-7m but still functions exactly the same at 25-60m which is still essentially its "effective range". (At least, to my knowledge they touched the max bloom and jump shooting, I don't believe they touched anything else, however i'd have to check the patch notes to double check)

"they're mad because a silver killed them from chip damage". Most of the time people still would have died anyways even with 750 because most guns do more than 750 damage in 2 shots. It's just people can't admit that they'd have died anyways that they want it nerfed, but I chock that up to ego. Did you know bringing about a discussion on game balance, and whether something is or is not balanced, is to first provide an opinion, provide statistics and ingame experience with it, and use that as an argument in favor or against a certain change? Regardless of "bias" for or against something, it has to be founded on something. My argument for nerfing bloom recovery had always followed those things. Just because you think it isn't a problem, doesn't mean others do not, or will no. Instead you chose to insult them, call them noobs, silvers, blah blah whatever. As shown in this thread. The ntec is still usable, it's not trash, and its litteral best features remain untouched. A large number of players still use it as well instead of other rifles, so it's also clearly not trash, however you are permitted to have that opinion that it is.

Yes, abused qsing, i'd go into 4v4 missions with 4 enemies hvrs and out qs each of them and win. I also wanting QSing removed. Do I agree with how LO and G1 did it? No, I think it's dumb that I can't hit someone with an hvr 3x in cqc and kill them, but that has nothing to do with QSing, and me actually liking to use the weapon out of marksman mode in cqc. Merged. How am I a hypocrite? It's not hard to look at a weapon regardless of location, and decide which range you want it to be effective in, and which range you don't, and adjust it accordingly. They clearly felt that from that data, as well as likely other in-game experiences they felt it was too strong. The facts show that they nerfed it for a reason, regardless of your OPINION of the matter. I suggested a ttk nerf in like 2014 if the star wasn't going to be buffed to .7. I didn't "harp" about the subject on forums either for years. I didn't call for its cqc accuracy and max bloom and jump shooting accuracy to be nerfed. I called for its bloom recovery to be reduced to be like .4 from .5 after that. That's not being hypocritical at all. Yes, i wanted the ntec nerfed slightly, no i didn't want it "ruined". I used HB and QS because that's what it took to play against players who did the EXACT SAME THING TO ME 24/7. I didn't have to like HB or QSing or jump shooting to use it if it meant having slightly more enjoyable "games" because literally EVERYONE was doing it. I qs'd because I had no choice to when RAOV and Bromatoasts group and all them would have one or more qsing snipers against my group. Don't pretend that you yourself never qsed, used hb 2 on an ntec, or jumpshot either at some point in the past 7 years. I did what i had to regardless of whether I liked it. I called for those very things I was "abusing" to be removed so that the game could be more enjoyable overall. If that makes me a hypocrite go ahead i'll call myself a hypocrite. I perpetuated the problem so that it would be fixed. Ntec has a niche, it's still heavily used as well. Crying because they nerfed its cqc abilities which plenty of other vets (not me) wanted done is okay, but don't blame me for THOSE changes because I DIDN'T CALL FOR THEM.

People complained about HVR because they hate getting hit once with a silver and dying from chip damage. It's a balanced gun and practically useless in cqc without a lot of effort being put into it. LO destroyed its cqc and quickswitching capabilities, and people still aren't happy because as always, they won't be happy until any weapon that lets a silver punish you for being stupid, gets removed. Here's a fact then Abduct. LO had been gathering weapon data for weapon reworks for a while now, with that data they decided to nerf the NTEC.

I honestly never once mentioned that it should be nerfed in cqc specifically. My issue with the ntec was its capabilities at 40-65m range, while I admitted it was strong in cqc, i didn't feel that it's cqc abilities "needed" nerfed. I felt that it was definitely strong in cqc, as such I felt a ttk increase would have sufficed to .75s to balance it out with the star, if the star wasn't going to be reduced to .7. Not once did I call for its full auto accuracy to be nerfed (i wanted a reduced bloom recovery), and i certainly didn't call for its jump shooting to be nerfed. I had mentioned to others in the forum i felt the jump shooting and cqc nerf wasn't the right way to go about it, however i was still glad "something" got done to reduce its power level, even if it wasn't what I wanted. As the weapon was at least in "some" way easier to handle. I never "bullied" the devs, not once did I insult the devs and bully them into nerfing the ntec. I don't know where you get this from but you're clearly delusional about it. How so? All the weapons that can "compete" against the ntec in its range even after they were either returned to their original power (obeya) or got buffed (star), STILL couldn't stop people from using NTEC 95% of the time instead of any other usable rifle ingame. You think buffing literally every other gun is going to fix that? Buffing litterally every AR and Rifle to compete against the ntec would break the both rifleman and AR class as a whole. Buffing every other rifle/ar to be as powerful as the ntec literally would mean making them ntec clones, or zerg lasers, and further break game balance. I don't get why you can't understand that. Weapon balance means that something should have a "niche". That it shouldn't be just as effective in cqc as it is mid range, that there be some form of weakness to it. It doesn't matter if it's an AR and should be "versatile". NTEC is STILL versatile, even after its nerf, it's just not as good at CQC, which is FINE. Star/far can now easily be said to be better than it in cqc, and not as "good" at mid range. So what if the ntec had to be nerfed "somehow" to better balance the AR role? The gun still functions THE EXACT SAME in the WITHIN ITS EFFECTIVE RANGE. Usable range =/= effective range. LO has clearly shown they want to keep the NTEC's niche mid-range and not nearly as good in "cqc". Name and shame removed. - Azukii

Most times the defending team actually cannot destroy the vehicle if it hasn't been "unlocked" yet. If it blows up such as in the car garage, it's because of a glitch. Honestly, I think it would be better if they could only see the tracker when the vehicle is moving, not while it's sitting there doing nothing. As a defender it's generally far too easy to get a vegas and explosive, kill the vehicle, go to where it spawned, and smoke it. Unless you're going against vet 195+ players who can fix the vehicle, the offense can't just grab it and go, add into the fact that it only spawns in 2-3 generally "known" locations if destroyed and generally in a cycle, you can cycle location lock the vehicle spawn without much issue and know where it may be next. These kind of vehicle missions are an issue. However another issue for example is the crim mission with the frenso, which litterally has no hud marker on it for like 4 stages, and it really should. Missions need an overhaul in general. that or while moving is something I can agree on, it's been pretty bad being able to predamage vehicles at all times, with no issue.

That's the problem though, APB has NONE of those competitive rewards nor competitive background. It doesn't even reward playing "competitively" very satisfactory, cool you won with like .75X-2X the cash as the losing team, oh wait, that guy did way better than half your team and got just as your team much from losing. It's fine to want to win and play, however you have to realize, that mindset has pretty much killed APB as well. ingame Cash barely means anything unless you're free to play and havn't bought a single weapon. Even that is now being negated because of joker tickets. I have never, not once heard someone say "i quit APB because it's not competitive enough". I have heard them say "I quit APB because the community is toxic, the players glitch cheat and exploit to win, the matchmaking sucks. I got tired of people trying too hard all the time and got bored". You seem to forget that APB has always gotten all the backwash toxic community members that care only about wins. The majority of the casual playerbase who actually played for fun and cared about the game left. Why? Because the overt-competitive mindset of certain players and cheaters, and the lack of gm's and order given from the GMs. Want to know why the game population in joker/jericho dropped to below 200? Think real hard, its not hard to know why. What happens when you have an unregulated community that hates on any casual player, exploits every glitch and location, cares only about themselves and how easily they can pull that win for their dying twitch view count? What happens when toxic trash who only cares about competitiveness and winning chase away the literal lifeblood of the game? Look no further than APB. The competitive players shot themselves in a foot and sit there on a high horse saying the game isn't competitive enough. No, the game is fine, they are the ones taking it too seriously and destroying what little there is left. We no longer have a population for "competitive" players to constantly stomp for their ego and feel good winning. They removed leaderboards which was the ONLY competitive element in APB. Vehicles got buffed by G1 after the ALIG got buffed. Ironically counteracting the exact thing they tried to fix. What APB needs is a literal overhaul on the entire mission, matchmaking, spawn, and objective system, that I can agree on. But it's not because of "competition", it's because it's the only way to save the game at this point. G1 did a lot of things to help the game, rebalanced locations and fixed weapon issues, but it also left glaring issues which should have been fixed, regardless of "veteran" and "competitive player" outcry.

You shouldn't have to buff every gun to compete if only a single weapon is the problem. Any other weapon that was at NTEC's powerlevel in any niche got hardnerfed. While I agree there are still a number of minor buffs and minor nerfs that can happen to a large number of weapons in this game, the fact remains that if they had been buffed to be competitive against the NTEC, they would have been nerfed to the ground shortly after. I strongly disagree that simply because a weapon is what you start with, that it should be inferior to other weapons as well most games nowadays do not follow that, nor should APB, especially since you can 3 slot the STAR as any other weapon. In fact there was at one point a push to MAKE the NTEC the starter weapon. To be fair the Ursus was always considered a better ntec lol. G1 wasn't great at balancing new weapons, half of them are complete trash, the other half got nerfed, and a most of them still need reworks to some degree. The obeya got the hammer because G1 thought it was too powerful because of the "range dropoff" changes. While I see the issues that the dropoff addition to weapons has created with balance, i cannot say that the weapons were any more balanced just because they couldn't shoot past their range. I wouldn't go back to pre-drop stats on weapons, however I wouldn't mind losing the damage drop per say if the weapons remained the same as is, and got minor tweaks from there. Merged. Any weapon that got even remotely close to how powerful or versatile the NTEC was got nerfed. The problem is you can buff all the weapons you want, and it'll lead to worse gameplay. APB was never made to have this fast of TTK with weapons. Buffing them to do just that would be worse than making a handful of nerfs, buffing weaker weapons, and tweaking out the problems from there. Only buffing weapons "feels good" but ignores some of the core issues with doing so in APB and with game balance. You can't power-creep yourself to a balanced state.

" Owner Briefing These Criminals aren't happy about you raiding their drug operation. Protect your leader while trying to kill or arrest them, so they can't re-open for business. Dispatch Briefing The Praetorians are going to keep disrupting our operations unless we can stop them, permanently. Take out their leader." VIP is litterally TDM except that VIP lives being the only one that matters for the attackers. I'm not saying dont take out enemies nor am i saying that you can't shoot objective cars when you see em, just don't camp items 200+m from the actual obj. You can think what you want, I just want people to stop camping items 200+m away from the actual objective against a team full of new players and silvers. (No really, they actually do this then have the audacity to say that they're "good" players against newbs.) I feel its against the spirit of the game, and extremely cheap as well. You can say what you want about the blurb, but it's a remnant of times where TTK's were far higher and it was generally easier to get away and get to point. You couldn't shoot things past the bullet range back then. Times have changed, and so should what's viewed as acceptable. I cannot honestly say, that that tactic, has not encouraged hundreds of new players to leave the game. It's one thing for the feeling after a mission to be like well, "we were close but couldn't get it" vs yeah that feels terrible we couldn't even get close to the objective because they were playing dirty.

NFA and Fr0g are useful at 5m+, Showstopper isn't. (NFA was even buffed)

I think of it more as the levels of competitive/competition. APB to me is more of a "casual" game, and all the balance, new janky weapons, mod creations, consumables, have pretty much shown that. Casual games still have a level of "competitiveness" however it's "casual. It's not like CSGO, OVERWATCH, or MW with "competitive scenes". There IS no competitive scene in APB. People keep harping that the game needs to cater to more "competitive" players, but that detracts from the base game which is inherently casual. It's wierd to wrap ones head around but "it's not competitive but has competition" fits. Like, you have competition for tic tac toe, and rock paper scissors, but it's generally not "CSGO competitive" level for 99.9% of people, so i wouldn't call it competitive, i'd call it "fun" or "casual". I don't call APB competitive, because it doesn't have a competitive scene, no competitive leaderboards, and it's clearly catered to the casual audience and nowhere on its site, steam, or webpages does it mention "competitive shooter". As such i do not define it as "competitive".

PMG has needed a minor one since it got buffed in like 2012/2013. It did need a minor buff from the original stats, though the current iteration is a bit too oppressive imo. I'm fine with it reaching out further and more accurately than the OCA, (20-35m) but if so its ttk is going to need increased slightly.

Oh no, God forbid I be active on the forums like I have been the last 8 YEARS. *Glares at 9,442k posts* Merged. Imagine thinking that the NTEC should be far better than any other assault rifle in the game and stay that way at all times kek. All weapons are subject to rebalance and reworks at any point, even as new guns are added to the game. Almost every game changes weapon balance and functionality at some point, even for the base weapons. If a weapon's functionality is too powerful, and the only way to make it more balanced is to rework how the gun functions, its going to happen. Honestly though, having bullets straight up "disappear" after x distance to balance them, is a rather poor way to balance weapons (though making the bullet curve system did make it so many of the weapons NEEDED rebalanced even more than they would have). I remember many of them were extremely easy to use and get kills with, and a lot of times, a number of them were not fun to play against at all. A lot of the weapons were bound to be reworked sooner or later even without the range changes. While I can somewhat agree about FC, it's also the easiest thing to gather data from quickly. I do feel Fin, would be better to gather data from. I used to call for buffing the star's TTK to .7 to match the NTEC, and even suggested increasing the accuracy and bloom recovery. The ONLY thing G1 wanted to do was buff the bloom recovery, and that was only AFTER there was enough support for the star's bloom recovery to be buffed to that of the FAR's by a number of players. I don't want the star to be "exactly" the same as the FAR, but i don't mind increasing it's accuracy and reducing ttk more at all.

Most "try-hard" strats are strats that are hard to counter, that make it easier to win. I don't understand the linguistics of the word as to why it's tryhard or w/e but it is what it is. Does the item have a HUD marker on it? Pretty sure anything that's meant to be "guarded" literally has a hud marker on it saying "guard" or "protect". Objective w/ hudmarker vs small/med items w/o that are 500m from obj "with" a hud marker on it. We're talking two different things bud.

I've been around since Open beta there and can compete pretty well against full premades of the so called "good competitive players". I don't care if you think i'm a casual player, there's literally ZERO reward for playing this game like it's some sort of competitive world cup game. I understand APB plenty beneath the surface level, as well as weapon interactions, I own the majority of the weapons in-game and armas and use them ALL while leveling their respective roles, have over 100k kills and 2 maxed roles and everything else 15. I enjoy using the "trashy low power weapons" like the ODIN series and the SBSR/Oblivion over the "meta" and still do almost just as well. Just because a weapon is somewhat EASY to use, doesn't make it broken. That's why ATAC isn't overpowered. It's balanced within its optimal range. Most people complaining about it use the ntec or pop a pistol out against it because they're using a sub optimal lr weapon in cqc against one (imagine that losing to a weapon in its intended niche). The "competitive" players have litterally NO bearing about APB's weapon balancing or the intent behind it. Almost EVERY competitive player I've seen has been against almost EVERY weapon rework that was needed. Some of them even spoke out AGAINST the star buff after it happened. Don't get me started about how "competitive players" know what's best for APB, when the majority of them don't know jack aside from the best way to abuse exploitable mechanics to win. There's almost nothing unbalanced about loadouts in APB, unless you're referring to car-det and spotter, at which point, don't be stupid and sit on a road all day for it to blow up on you, and honestly, expect to be ambushed and not run in the objective like a dummy (imagine that). Every single "unfun" "unfair" loadout, is easily countered by not playing stupid, because almost EVERY single one of those loadouts, can be countered easily. You know, like NOT charging that remote det guy's car for an "ez" kill. ( I can admit car spawner could have a 1s longer blow up time in cqc but aside from that no issue with it). The only "real" broken mod is car spawners. There's very little RNG aside from recoil (and server issues), and that is extremely manageable in most cases except for most LMGs. You can argue about this all you want but if you're suffering from RNG either learn recoil control, or learn to fire the weapon within it's intended "effective" range. (Hint, weapon's effective range doesn't mean the entire range it damage drops at) Just because something uses "tapfiring" doesn't mean it takes a ton of skill, nor does it mean that it shouldn't be nerfed for being too good. Just because a weapon is versatile, doesn't mean it's the most balanced in it's respective niche. The reason ATAC gets so much hate is that its full auto like an SMG (oooh nooo) but pull out the ursus which is way more powerful in most cases, and it's suddenly high skill and shouldn't be touched? Don't make me laugh. It's not even the games matchmaker that makes the weapons considered broke. They'd be complaining regardless of the players skill level because the "high skill" weapons like you claim the ntec is, are actually low-mid skill with too much return in too many situations. This game doesn't "want" to be competitive. The overall game is literally about customization and fooling around (ramps literally everywhere). Look anywhere for "competitive shooter" for APB. Steam, WIKI, APB Site, NOWHERE does it say "competitive shooter" N-O-W-H-E-R-E. The only ones trying to make it some competitive shooter are players who don't understand the core concepts of APB, who argue that APB should be like "other games" with how it handles weapon stats and aiming, because APB shouldn't be unique, it should be like a CSGO clone instead. Because CSGO has some of the best weapon functionality :eyeroll:. APB isn't competitive at its core, it never was. Leaderboards were avoided (and we are only going to get them in a year or so from LO) because of toxicity and because the G1 felt that it would bring out the worst in the community, especially the "competitive" types that they never catered to. Litterally, every "competitive" weapon, location, and mod in game has been nerfed, I can't imagine that yall can't get it through your heads by now, it's not catered towards your desire to pubstomp people using ntec and carbines all day. I think it's time for you and all the other "competitive" types to admit that APB was never "competitive", and never meant to be competitive to the level you desire. Game balance is NOT what you want to be, and hopefully NEVER will be, because almost every person I know agrees that game balance today, is far better than it was 2-3-4-5 years ago despite what y'all cry at. Merged. If you can find where it says "competitive" here, then I'll believe you. https://store.steampowered.com/app/113400/APB_Reloaded/

scoped ntec has worse strafing accuracy in marksman mode. It's got better in marksman mode accuracy though. I also believe that it's functionality wasn't nerfed with the normal NTEC's in the last 1-2 ntec changes (I could be wrong). Most would consider it worse because of the strafing thing. You know... because "mobility is one of the most important aspects of this game" I'm sure there's other reasons, but that's the one that sticks out the most i think.

I don't think exploiting game mechanics and camping things with no HUD icon is "following the spirit of the game". We can disagree, but i'm pretty sure exploiting is bannable, and camping things with no HUD icon makes you a d-bag.

I'll have to disagree, a lot of the people who play PMG and shotguns now, always have. It's just those OCA players left or moved to other weapons. The PMG has always needed a minor nerf. HVR needed qsing removed which was it's biggest and pretty much only issue, but they decided to nerf it in the most backwards way one can imagine. NTEC needed a nerf, i don't really care what the so called "good" players believed, considering most of them would gladly leave PMG and NTEC as is and leave most other guns in the trash. I'm pretty sure everyone argues that the STAR and FAR are meant to be more "CQC", while NTEC is "mid range". Which directly means NTEC shouldn't be as capable in "cqc" as the STAR and FAR. AKA those "game features" make sense for NTEC to not have. You can thank everyone who didn't want ntec nerfed for shooting themselves in the foot by arguing that the NTEC should be and remain a mid range dominator, which leaves its cqc capabilities to be nerfed as it was too overbearing against the other AR's whom they argued are "cqc ars". Manic is only broken because they rebalanced half the weapons that permitted it to be broken and seen as "balanced". Hopefully they nerf it slightly (jump shooting and mag size anyone?) and call it a day. ATAC isn't broken but okay... Yeah, lets go to HVR quickswitch times when the only weapons used the most were csg's, hvrs, oca's, and joker carbines. "eyeroll" Recently it went to "ntec only" because people got lazy and grouping became near nonexistant. The current balance is far better than it was back then. Are there some minor tweaks they can do? Absolutely, but arguing that the broken cesspool APB used to be doesn't make the fact that it was far worse back then.

to be fair, the STAR has the exact same bloom recovery as the far, though i wouldn't mind it getting a little more accurate. I wouldn't want the star to become a FAR reskin, but im all for improving its functionality. imagine thinking that nerfing the ntec in cqc made all the other guns overpowered. kek

Because hybrid weapons mean they are meant to fill an inbetween niche, OR act as a similar weapon, but level up the "other" role. Look at Aces Rifle, can't compete against ntec, but does well if used right otherwise similar to a pointman weapon, it levels up rifleman role, but is a complete pointman weapon. Like the ISSR-A sucks terribly in the AR role, as the ISSR-B is the much better "sniper" variant. But is played almost exactly the same but more mid range than -b. S1NA acting like a rifleman in MM but leveling pointman. ATAC leveling rifleman, but being a psuedo pointman weapon. Hybrid weapons don't mean they are meant to "compete" with everything easily in both niches that they are made in, nor is it mean to compete against the "best" weapon in that role that it is given. Hybrids are there to fill a niche gap and provide a functioning weapon that may act as "1" role, but level another. As such the Cobr-A is meant to be similar to a full auto joker carbine, and fill a similar niche as the joker (aka not compete against the ntec at 50m). It also used to have an atrocious 1.2ttk. (I actually hated the buff originally because it felt like a direct nerf until i got used to it) Also, weapon functionality effects which role a weapon is in. You won't ever see a full auto in the "rifleman" category (least i hope not) because it's all burst/semi auto weapons. Having a range of 50m kicks it out of the pointman category which is ~30m, and it can't be an lmg or sniper. That leaves rifleman being the ideal category for it as it is full auto.

It probably would be a little more interesting. I thought the star was fine starting, but I learned how to use it quickly and adjusted my sensitivities because the starting ones were trash. Dunno about the Raptor though, i havnt used it in ages and last i did i felt it as meh.

I mean, I know my skill level, and I can toe to toe vs certain players who play this game like it's some sort of Overwatch World Cup Tournament when I care to. But that doesn't mean i don't call them tryhards for trying way too hard against a team of full silvers with 1 gold. xD

It's not designed to combat the NTEC at all though especially at range, even if it has 50m range (swear i thought it was 40m). It's designed around sub 40m fights, and it's really rough around the edges even then and often does best at the ~20m range. It's magsize is because it was originally designed almost exactly as a joker carbine with full auto, but with better starting accuracy and worse end bloom. Its mag is fine as is imo because of the original intent of the gun. The weapon itself has "other" issues I feel that could be buffed instead (such as max bloom or bloom gain). A lot of hybrid weapons do not exactly "fit" within the niche they are given, this one is one of them. Think of it as a full auto carbine. Another would be the ISSR-A (sniper designed for AR), S1NA (being forced into MM like an AR), and even ATAC (Rifle designed as a pointman weapon). Aside from ATAC they all have their own issues with balance because they dont really "fit" where they are, or their general stats with accuracy, rof, bloom, or ttk, were borked on creation.

to be fair, star is actually fine for the starter weapon, the issue is/was for the longest time that the NTEC just downright did better at everything (still probably does). While ATAC is definitely seemingly easier for newer players to use because they all want to spray the starter gun at all times, and doing so could be a good idea, i'm not sure how much it would help newer players. PLUS you'd then have half the vets whining because "OMG NEWBIES GOT FREE ATAC UGHH SO OP 1213$DSFWE@!!!" lel