Extended Server Maintenance

[Extended Server Maintenance]

1 minute ago, nacitar said:

How they feel doesn't really matter... just like when I tell a company we contracted with that "well, the server was down for three days, but I feel really bad about it!" they should rightly act like I'm insane.

The major difference in this area is that you're talking about people you work with and companies you contract with.

The closest we are to LO is customer receiving a free product.

If you feel like you want to complain as a customer then go right ahead, but drawing comparisons to your employment (while it seems generally accurate to you) isn't the same at all. As has been stated; the community was warned that there was likely to be a tough situation to get through but the members of the community that were paying attention were, on the whole, urging LO to go forward.

It seems like you are part of the player base that doesn't check forums unless there is an issue and then gets upset that decisions were made without you.

That's similar to not voting and then getting angry that the people who end up in power don't do the things you want.

Its understandable why you are upset, but it doesn't make it acceptable or correct.

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12 hours ago, Gateron said:

I don't have that turned on. Turned it off rather keep the advertised speed i was promised :).

I assume joke as I don't think any of them can be turned off. Most you can do is prevent the updates from existing on your machine in the first place.

5 hours ago, MACKxBOLAN said:

Fkn Mole I Tell Ya

At this point your RP interjections in this thread are one of the main reasons I'm still going through it.

At minimum I smile from me so feel free to throw more of the 'story' in to break up the argumentative crap.

14 minutes ago, MACKxBOLAN said:

{Shoves Mattress Pad Under Cell Bars and Lights It On Fire} 

 U Gimme My Fkn Truck n Make The gAme Work

 (Throws food tray at guard window)

Honestly caused me to chuckle!

 

Now, the content. The BB code on this site is so limited/broken...

Let the bashing commence...

[My attempt at a civil debate...]

I want to weigh in on the back and forth about dethreating and server ranking from my own point of view.

First (so you're less likely to want to jump down my throat and berate me), some context and stats:

I'm pretty much a perpetual silver (a bit of that is by design, more later).

I currently have just over 2000 hours in the game and, while I understand that I could easily of padded that stat in Social, I didn't. That's boring and, in my view, pointless. I enjoy playing the game.

I've seen a lot, raged a lot, smiled a lot, been accused of hacking a bit.

I have only one account; Citadel (originally Obeya) with three characters: 1 Crim (Jobs2k: 255), 2 Enf (Laney: 255, Jobs2k: Can't remember the rank but low and pretty much unplayed.

Now, the content.

After many years of playing I feel like the main reason to dethreat, especially in the current segregation system, is for someone of a gold skill/experience level to gain access to bronze level servers.
My reasoning is simple - gold can go to silver any time they want.
A frequent exchange when I kill a gold player goes like this:
"You're shit. Go to bronze."
"I'm silver, this is a silver server."
"Then you should be on bronze [Insert random slur]."
"I'm silver, this is a silver server. You should go to gold."
"You're stupid. Gold servers are empty. Everyone knows silvers play on bronze and golds play on silver. Fuck off you stupid noob scrub."

Let's break that down a little. Apparently, because I am not playing at the level a gold player thinks I should be to go against them (even though I just killed them) I shouldn't be in the server they are in. Now, I know that the most likely instigator of the exchange was 'butthurt' due to 'death by scrub'. People don't like to lose. I'm allegedly a person and I don't like losing.
Now, why would/should the silvers go to bronze? I see two reasons.

1.     They can fight bronze level players there.
2.     They can 'escape' the golds there.

They can fight bronze players, but "silvers play on bronze" so they'll be fighting both. Silver on silver is cool, it's the way it should be, but they shouldn't be slapping around bronze players.
Why not? Because the game needs to keep players, not lose them. Bronze and green players need a place where they can be safe from stomping until (at the very minimum) they feel comfortable to branch out.
"But wait, you said golds dethreat to gain access to bronze!"
True, and I'll be the first to say that I don't have a foolproof solution for that incredibly complicated problem. What I will say is that I don't condone it and I wish LO every bit of luck finding a way to stop it. At the end of the day this game will succeed or fail based on holding a player base. Having newbs getting stomped and leaving is, in my view, the biggest root cause of the game being 'dead/dying'.
The next point thrown out is that "gold servers are empty". My immediate reaction is "OF COURSE THEY ARE! You're all HERE!", hence me saying that I shouldn't have to go to bronze because they should be in gold.
I realise that (while I feel that is correct on the face of it) it isn't a viable solution at this time because the player base is so small. I understand that people don't want to take on the same 10 - 20 players for 3 or more hours.
The answer to this goes back to bronze players getting happy and secure enough in the game to enjoy it and stay. They then become silver, but happy silvers. They can take a bit more and they understand the game enough not to instantly feel victimised.

To finally explain what I meant by being silver by design...
I'm not generally at gold skill level because I don't play for a sustained amount of time. I'm back and forth in many games I play, spending multiple days focused on one or two until my desires shift. This means I frequently return to APB in a 'rusty' state. It also means that towards the end of each period of playing APB I have recovered what I had before and even progressed into 'gold territory'. This creates a few issues.
Due to my feelings on what is fair I only enter servers that match my displayed threat level. No, I don't go gold and instantly switch servers, but I do check what my threat is before going to the server list.
I know that players can move to one threat level either side of their current threat level. This means silver can go to bronze and gold. While my view of fairness means I don't go to bronze, I only hold that view when I'm playing alone or with similarly skilled players (well over 90% of the time). However, if I am bringing a new player in, and trying to help them find enjoyment in the game, I'm not going to take them into silver! At this point I will enter a bronze server, but I spend most of the time helping them understand the main mechanics and watching their back to stop gold experience silvers stomping them. I rarely end up at, or even near, the top of the mission stats.

Because I don't know when a friend might express an interest in joining the game, and I want to support the game and grow the player base, I essentially give up making an effort (though I won't go AFK) when I go gold. I basically maintain silver as a personal balance. It allows me to play at my general level even when I'm rusty while also helping new players when desired.

No matter what is done there are going to be 'bad actors' that like to spoil things or just simply test (and play with) the boundaries. I realise that this will always leave LO (or whoever owns the game) open to criticism. That's a hard place to be and I applaud their efforts while simultaneously being glad I'm not in their position.

I would like to offer two potential solutions for the community to pick apart and criticise me for. Maybe LO might even consider if it is viable:

• Would it be possible to time lock moving out of your threat bracket?

Example: A silver goes gold. They can't switch instantly to lower server. They carry on playing where they are because it only just happened and they are doing well, having fun. If they haven't moved out of gold threat for 24 hours then they are refused entry to silver servers. Eventually they would have to stop playing (sleep, eat, RL stuff) so balance would slowly be achived. This would also mitigate people being silver, having a string of a few bad missions, then being unable to access silver to play with their friends. It could also have a knock-on impact of people trying to help others to stay at the same threat with them.

• Would it be possible to kick players with a threat level that differs from the server threat?

Example: The server has 39/40 Enf. A silver Enf goes gold or bronze. They are marked as 'kickable' and the server registers the time. A silver Enf enters the server. Server now at 40/40 Enf. The non-silver Enf that has the highest time being 'kickable' is allowed to finish the mission they are in, prevented from 'readying up' and kicked after X seconds. Server now back to 39/40 Enf.
If the server is below 39/40 Enf then players of differing threat levels can still enter based on current 'one either way' rules of entry.
This solution still allows for servers to remain well populated but they would slowly balance to being full of players of matching threat level.

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5 minutes ago, 2contigo said:

and the first time I see an official server like this closed so many days.
This should not be normal.
I've played other games that have also changed servers and don't take so long. Max one day.
APB has servers closed for 3 days, should not be just to CHANGE SERVER.
something else must pass !!!!!!!!
 

Might have something to do with the fact they either rushed it through now and did some other stuff on top of it while they were there or they would have had to extend the deal with the previous company(ies) for another year.

If you're trying to save as much money as possible to keep a game running you find the best deal to achieve the end result.

If that means it is better to pull staff in round the clock and force through some highly complicated logistics then you knuckle down and get it done. That's what LO seems to be doing in this situation and they are still at it.

 

This isn't a company planning a move of a few Gigs of data from one machine to another. Unless I've misunderstood things, they are switching out data companies, hardware and software as well as configuring and running large scale servers for high numbers of people with an aim of 24/7 continuous service.

Would another company have planned it all out and taken their time to have deals in place so that the switchover took the shortest time possible? Yeah, most likely.

Is that what LO would have preferred to do in this situation? Again... yeah, most likely!

From what I can glean as I check in on this situation between other things in my life, it wasn't on the cards this time.

Take a deep breath and find something that will bring positivity into your life and the rest of the world. After all, if the servers never come back on... what else will you do?

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2 minutes ago, safdfsgkjhdgsjkhs said:

what is exploit mitigation and how can we turn it off? (serious question lol)

I'm referring to things like Spector, Meltdown, Zombieload, Et Al. If you could switch them off, I wouldn't suggest you do.

A quick internet search on these topics and you'll probably join many others who are annoyed they have to lose some performance because of hackers and bad CPU design.

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31 minutes ago, Gateron said:

Yeah years ago when the game actually still ran 2 times better then now. I also had a i5 2500k on 4.5 ghz and it did manage to stay between 115-120 Fp few years ago. The game runs like garbage i got my i7 6700k OC on 4.5 i get 110-144 FPS now.

Have you factored in the dip in performance due to exploit mitigation in Windows and for Intel chips? It might not be purely the code in this game stopping it from being as good as it once performed...

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2 hours ago, SkyFix said:

Any estimated ETA ?

An estimated Estimated Time of Arrival?

2 minutes ago, Reverse said:

why does everyone turn into a weirdo cuz the games been down for a few days...

I think it is more possible that the 'weirdo' part was always there, it just makes its way to the forum more when the game goes down.

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41 minutes ago, GStewart said:

Do macros constitute cheating? It seems like Logitech, Razer, etc. actively encourage it.

From what I can remember in the G1 days macros were considered cheating in APB. At the very least they claimed they frowned upon it and didn't want it happening.

Just because a company wants to sell a product it doesn't mean they know every way you will be using said product. Macros are incredibly useful in a huge array of applications... Games like this shouldn't be one of them.

35 minutes ago, warau said:

Macros literally don't help any gun. Not the carbine, not the Obeya, not the Oscar.

They might not directly help the gun (though I would argue that there are many guns in APB that are intentionally coded to gain a benefit from precise timing of trigger pulls, which a macro would at least assist with) but macros DO directly help the player to do things like:

Hide behind wall, judge where the cross-hair will be after standing, hit macro that does all this in perfectly precise timing... stand click mouse 1 X times with exacting timing for fastest fire rate, crouch. It isn't hard to see someone doing this as their character's head is barely visible before they are ducking at the same time the bullets hit you.

Could this be attributed to network/hardware latency... or maybe I'm some noob that doesn't know how the L337 players time their shots?

Sure, until you see them do it in the exact same way with the exact same frequency across multiple missions. At that point you realise that there is very little you can do to dodge those rounds, let alone return successful hits.