Solacium

I admire what you're trying to do with gun game. New ways to bring the playerbase together and give them something to do is admirable. I'm not about suggest how to fix things, I don't know and won't pretend to know. Gun Game however is a grade a fustercluck at the moment. The incentive of Joker Tickets are nice, but it has some serious flaws that lead to more frustration than fun in my own opinion. Does everyone agree with that? No. Some people during the game today expressed enjoyment and genuine fun, but gun game needs be ironed out in someway. Maybe it's solely the lower number of players, but with the Christmas event there is some form of verticality with Beacon's different heights as opposed to flat ground in Financial.

I agree with Acornie the term "tryhard" is probably overused at this point. There are things in APB that are annoying and can be abused, fortunately or unfortunately depending on which side you're on. Two things I notice a lot are car "rushing" and crouch "spamming" to avoid shots; however, with the way the game is designed it's inevitable people will find and use things that give them an advantage. There are weapons and mechanics that need tweaks, absolutely, but there always is and always will be things people use that are considered part of the "meta" of a game no matter how frustrating it may or may not be for others. Granted you die enough to remote detonation or the firebomb in the spawn on Baylan and you can only laugh, or cry depending, at the absurdity at some point.

Hit registration seems inconsistent sometimes. There are days where it seems to function "correctly" and there are days where it seemingly ignores everything. Whether that be a difference in latency and other things or purely a misconception because of frustration who knows.

At one point it was the Whisper instead of the ATAC. There have been a bunch of overly annoying weapons over the years unfortunately. I definitely see less ATACs being used these days than a few years ago though.

While far from the best player or the most experienced, I see the majority of deployable shields use similarly to what I call "panic percs". As you mentioned, people tend to drop them when they're panicking after making a mistake. I can't say what sort of rework would make them more appropriate to use in certain situations, but I do think a rework to eliminate said panic behavior would be nice.

The creator of the Advanced Launcher, USPStyle has an installation video that links the original download in the description, whatever it's worth. (The direct link from the description, if you choose to use it.) https://www.dropbox.com/s/oaufd85zfvnlmi5/Advanced APB Launcher.zip

Feelings about the engine upgrade to UE 3.5/4 aside, it should give better options along with it. The advanced launcher is nice to have. Frankly the main thing I like it for is the transparent menu, not for an advantage, I just don't like the solid gray on the marketplace or inventory. Hopefully they also make the splash screens skippable or removeable altogether.