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MattScott

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Posts posted by MattScott

  2. Posted

    Hi everyone,

     

    More progress on catching up with tickets.

     

    As of today, there are 1,033 total tickets open (unsolved) which is 159 less than two weeks ago.

    There are 831 total tickets that have not been touched (contacted) which is slightly higher than the last update.

     

     

    I'm actually surprised we were able to keep pace and still bring the total open tickets down.

    The last three weeks had a significant uptick in support requests.

    We had one on vacation for a week.

    We had another out with a family issue.

    And the entire team has struggled with getting sick (it's rampaging through our offices right now).

     

    Everyone was back healthy on Friday, and as of yesterday Customer Support was following up on one tickets from January 26th 2019.

    If your ticket is older than that, and we have not reached out, then I recommend updating your ticket and asking for status.

     

    Thanks,
    Matt

    • Like 6
    • Thanks 2

  3. Posted

    Hi all,


    I have just posted about this issue.

    You can see it here:

     

    1 hour ago, Alani said:

    too bad RG responded much more quickly to these DDoS things than LO...

    The issue isn't a lack of response. It's the lack of a viable solution that fits our current network.

    Basically, we have had to re-architect the old RG network so we can build a new defense solution to type of attack that is hitting us.

    That process has been ongoing for weeks now, and we are very close to finishing.

     

    Thanks,
    Matt

     

    • Like 6
    • Thanks 4

  4. Posted

    Hi all,

     

    This is frustrating. We have had an ongoing issue on Jericho with persistent DDoS attacks. I have spoken about this a little, but the issue is basically a form of attack that we had no defense for, and the attackers have been relentless over the last couple months exploiting the issue.

     

    We have been working with our ISP to design a new solution, we pushed hard to get the new solution working on Wednesday, but there was a problem and they couldn't finish.

     

    Today's attacks have been particularly bad.

    I apologize to all the players getting bumped.

     

    We are working on the issue.

     

    Sorry,
    Matt

     

    UPDATE 4/2: Effective this morning we have completed Phase 1 of adding new DDoS protection for Jericho.
    There will be another update in about a month, but we should see significant improvement in the amount of downtime.

    • Like 19
    • Thanks 8

  5. Posted

    58 minutes ago, vfterlife said:

    Did you have enough resources to test with a full district?
    Past experience shows that everything works differently in reality. This would help open OTW now 😞

     


    And it will be interesting to hear your hopes for this mode before it starts. Have you eliminated what has disturbed past events?

     

    - Every 10 seconds, someone must be spawn behind.
    - Square territories. Zones are parts of the (street) district. This game should not be so.
    - There is no musical accompaniment. Silence.
    - Complete unavailability for beginners. I guess you want to make some noise with this mode. Waiting for new players? They will be destroyed by the grandmasters millions hours in apb, ntec, ofc.
    If the entry threshold is high in APB itself and this cannot be changed, then RIOT should be as accessible as possible to beginners (i think it: no percs, no rank limit. All weapons and modifications are buy/find in the match itself.
    So that players with 255 ranks have 0 advantages over those who entered the game for the first time.

    (Beginners do not think that they need to levelup in the game/buy weapons for money to play normally. Players do not think that the game is decided by the donate),

     


    You said that players can enter the area with their weapons... It upset me, really. Why did you do that? 😞

    We haven't done a full district test, but we have gotten fairly close. The plan is to open this to OTW as soon as the mode mechanics are fully working as intended.

     

    There were a lot of lessons learned in Epidemic and Slay Bells. We tried to apply all of them to RIOT. Hopefully, we can collect more feedback from OTW to address items we missed.

    The mode was very much designed for new players to jump in and have fun. It only uses randomly grouped teams to help balance things.

    Lastly, there are weapons to find. You can also enter the mode with your choice of load out, however you have to collect money in the mode to unlock those weapons for use.

    • Like 4
    • Thanks 2

  6. Posted

    50 minutes ago, Lily Rain said:

    I am now convinced that I have the power to read the future....

     

    unknown.png

     

    48 minutes ago, Selaya said:

    Okay... weird conïncidence LittleOtbit ? Looks kinda like my tattoo.....

    esvt.jpg

    I made it after the new year. 

    Nice work! Remind me to ask you two for the Lottery numbers next week 🙂

    • Like 2

  7. Posted

    18 minutes ago, Fumiku said:

    "These players will get an account wide title "Conspiracy Cracker", and an exclusive new Weapon Skin made just for the event."

    So there is the RIOT free skin and a themed event skin ?

     

     

    13 minutes ago, IROCkiller said:

    I'm assuming it's going to be a Redhill themed skin, which I would LOVE

    There are two different skins. One is a RedHill themed skin for the ARG. One is the free skin for RIOT Preseason which is the Japanese themed skin.

     

    53 minutes ago, Ketog said:

    @MattScott I would like to mention that while i was documenting the post, the FIRST picture of the redhill billboards were from @Kevkof he is the one at the origin of the ARG spreading in discord.

    I made that edit. Thanks.

     

    56 minutes ago, Ketog said:

    Awsome ! also im totally up for the creation of an official APB discord (APB Discord Rich presence integration when ? <: )

     

    Even if all servers had the main objective to bring the players together they all got their bad side too , having an official APB discord server would finally make everyone in those discord servers to be treated equally without any kinf of background modding / favoritism , which has been a problem quite a few times by now .

    For me, it comes down to when not if we make an Official Discord channel.

    The main issue is resources to properly support it.

    We already receives criticism for lack of GMs, long Customer Support times, forum mods, etc. I just want to make sure we don't overextend ourselves.

     

    1 hour ago, cheater said:

    You get a reward for Bruteforcing ? LMFAO WHAT JOKE

    I have already posted on this topic. They didn't just Brute force the password. They used the Morse Code hint to limit the number of characters, so they could eliminate all the other letters and numbers. 

    • Like 5

  8. Posted

    Hi all,

     

    As promised here is the final breakdown of the ARG event complete with reward descriptions and who will be awarded them.

     

    First, I want to use this opportunity to address a bit of lore clarification that has come up from players. The district in San Paro is "Red Hill". The company name is "RedHill Institute of Technology". There is a tiny space between Red and Hill in the company name, so I know we weren't super consistent with that and felt the need to clarify.

     

    Stats from the Unofficial APB Discord channel:

    @SKay posted a fun breakdown of the Discord chat during the ARG. There are some interesting stats there. I appreciate the support that Natzu and the team on that server gave us. (Many players have asked for an Official APB channel, and that is something I'm still considering)

     

    Stats from the Redhill website:

    Since Skay posted their stats, I figured I would do the same. The game ran from February 23 through March 28, and was never directly advertised. The URL was initially only available in-game on select billboards and was later spread by players here and on Discord. During those weeks we got more than 2.2K unique visitors to the site.

     

    The highest single day was March 27th with 738 unique visitors. Anonymous user data showed our most engaged player visited 38 times and spent a total of 5 hours and 43 minutes going through pages and images. 

     

    21.83% of visitors were from the US.

    19.62% of visitors were from Russia.

    8.4% of visitors were from Germany.

    6.11% of visitors were from the UK.

     

    And now.. the rewards.

     

    Redhill Newsletter Reward

    We had just under 300 sign-ups as of EOD 3/28. That list has been pulled, so signing up now wont get you the reward. Some players used fake emails. But for anyone that took the leap of faith and trusted us with their real email, we'll be mailing out a unique (1 time redeemable) code for an account wide Tin Foil Hat.

    4EeubjY.png

     

    Participation Rewards

    The ARG itself was very experimental for us. We had initially decided on a reward structure that would limit the winners and go to the Top X that solved the puzzle. But as the game evolved it was clear that codes and solutions would be shared with the community. Rather than discourage this behavior, I wanted to encourage it. So we changed gears and decided to eliminate the reward limit and group effort based on tiers.

     

    I'm going to list these rewards in reverse order.

     

    These categories below (formerly referred to as Tiers) stack.

    That  means if you redeemed the code and participated and posted a winning solution, you'll get Category 3, Category 2, and Category 1.


    Category 3 - Final ARG Code redeemed in ARMAS

    This reward goes out to anyone who redeemed the long GUID-based code from the end of the ARG up through noon PDT today.

     

    Those accounts will get 3 Days of Premium.

    NOTE: Premium will start today and run through the weekend. All accounts who redeemed the code will get an email letting them know.

     

    There were more than 2,200 of these redeemed.

     

    Category 2 - Contributors

    These rewards go out to anyone who participated in the brainstorming and contributions to puzzle solving. My team is working with SKay and Natzu to pull the list of Discord usernames who where involved in the #redhill channel on their server. Admittedly, I opened Pandora's box here, because we need to reach out to each of those players and get their APB account info to deliver the rewards. My producer started that effort yesterday, but was identified by Discord as a Bot and shut down their ability to keep messaging.

     

    These players will get an account wide title "Conspiracy Cracker", and an exclusive new Weapon Skin made just for the event.

    NOTE: The Weapon Skin and title both need to be patched into the game. Give us a couple weeks to collect all the account info and get these in.

     

    Lots of players in this category. In addition to all the players who contributed to our Official Forums, there are well over 200 players who contributed on the Unofficial Discord.

     

    Category 1 - Winners

    These rewards will go out to anyone who was early to publicly contribute part of a puzzle solution. Again, this is a bit of a subjective thing to determine since there were 3 threads discussing the game (thanks @Yood for pointing that out). It’s hard for us to gauge who was absolutely first, and it's possible that people solved the puzzle and didn't post it, but I wanted to reward the people who got the solutions right.

     

    Obviously these players contributed, so they will all get Category 2 rewards plus 1000 G1C.

    The team is going to try and get the G1C issued today, so it can be combined with the Premium reward from Category 3 over the weekend.


    These winners from the forum posts are:

    Ketog & Kevkof starting the main thread, posting the billboards, url, and updating the post as details emerged which I think all heavily contributed to the success of the game

    Nanometic & SKay - finding the hidden link in the first puzzle

    MartinPL - finding the valid username in the second puzzle

    Latsha - catching the updated password hint in the second puzzle / finding the spectrogram in the audio file for the third puzzle

    Wewhoo - figuring out the password in the second puzzle

    CookiePuss & Weeb_TheEpicGuyV2 - piecing together the RIOT Preseason skin image

    IROCkiller & PancakePower - finding the bit.ly link on the camera that linked to the audio file in the third puzzle

    EyePop - brute force solve for final password in the third puzzle

    SK4LP - puzzle solve for final password in the third puzzle

     

    There are some others from Discord that I'll likely add to this list after reviewing.

    EDIT: I already have a couple more, but it's getting too cumbersome to keep editing the list of winners.

     

    NOTE: My intention isn't to overlook anyone, so if you feel you publicly posted the solution somewhere first, and we missed you, then reach out with proof, and we'll try and sort it out.

     

    Easter Eggs and loose ends:

    There are quite a number story items that were left open. Some of them will get addressed as the mode rolls out. Some of them *might* be carried forward in another ARG down the line before the year ends. I am considering an AMA or some other format where players can get online with the producer who worked with our design team to craft the puzzles and narrative. If that becomes a possibility, I'll let you guys know.

     

    Lastly the biggest Easter Egg was this image that players pieced together.

    tITMqEH.png

     

    This is a tease for an upcoming free weapon skin that players will be able to earn when RIOT launches.

     

    The plan is to do a RIOT Preseason as soon as the mode is ready - sort of a beta test for the various systems so we can work the kinks out in a live setting. This initial season wont have any Premium rewards, so everything will be able to be earned by players through regular play. The skin itself is the first in a series of new Japanese themed skins that were designed by our lead UI / UX artist. I feel like it represents Little Orbit's first "real" skin that we did from scratch with a full understanding of the system.

     

    Here is a WIP shot of what the skin looks like in-game.

     

    yakusa_skin.png

     

    Thanks,
    Matt

    • Like 33
    • Thanks 5

  10. Posted

    Hi all,

     

    We have some fixes that have been submitted bu a couple helpful players, but they were linked on a cheat site. We simply cannot direct players to a cheat site and ask them to download unknown files.

     

    My team is working through the files to see if we can:

    1) distribute them ourselves

    2) properly fix the issue in the game

     

    Thanks for your patience,

    Matt

    • Like 1
    • Thanks 1

  11. Posted

    4 hours ago, UubeNubeh DaWog said:

    My only question is "Why now?".

     

    The whole ordeal seemed incredibly miss timed, between the servers having the worst months of their life and no new updates or content to speak of (besides the RIOT game mode itself, which again is another piece of the game out of place because of the issues stated before.) wouldn't this kind of adventure have created more hype for the game, gotten more attention and been an even more positive experience overall if the game was in a better place?

     

    Im not speaking for everyone but i, myself was not interested in the slightest until the last few hours before the solve. Arguably because i had nothing better to do at the time.

     

    If this was implemented at a better time and place for the game i would have been eager to ride the bandwagon from the beginning. Although, it felt lack luster because every time i thought about getting involved with this new lore progression presented to the player base as a" deep seeded conspiracy". I couldn't help but think that regardless of how relatable and interesting this story was, the game itself is at a crawl.

     

    Not being able to continue onto the game with that same feeling that the ARG brought to the plate is a bit disappointing.

    I think you raise a fair point here.

     

    The original release date for RIOT was yesterday, but I made the call not to rush the mode based on continuing feedback from testing.

     

    March has been an especially bad month for server-side issues. The team has been scrambling to implement a couple new protection solutions.

     

    This is a case where the best laid plans meet the realities of game publishing and development. The ARG was meant to be a small lore tease for RIOT, and the timing was locked in ages ago, because it required coordination with the development team for the in-game billboard takeover. Once started, there wasn’t a good way to pause it.

     

    We have new internal dates that we are targeting for the public release of RIOT and the engine upgrade. The team is working overtime to hit those dates, which will hopefully address your accurate criticisms of the current game experience.

     

    Thanks,

    Matt

    • Like 11
    • Thanks 4

  13. Posted

    19 minutes ago, Kewlin said:

     

    What exactly do the tiers correlate to? I'm guessing something like: Solving, showing up (I.E. posting here or on discord,) and redeeming? Or is it time based?

     

    Tier 1 = Anyone who was early to publicly contribute part of a puzzle solution. (It’s hard for us to gauge who was absolutely first between the two channels).

     

    Tier 2 = Anyone who spent a reasonable amount of effort brainstorming and contributing to puzzle solving.

     

    Tier 3 = Anyone who redeems the code before my post on Friday.

    • Thanks 3

  14. Posted

    Hi all,

     

    Couple recap items for the ARG:

     

    - We did award 1 G1C to any account who redeemed the code. We needed to award something so we could track the dates for each player.

     

    - The rewards have 3 tiers. Everyone who redeemed will get something, but the tier will be related to your level of participation. The team has done their best to keep a watchful eye on the forum thread and Discord thread. We originally planned to only monitor the forum, but then random players started posting solutions that were being worked out on the Unofficial Discord. So I feel the need to include the participation of those dedicated Discord players too. We sincerely hope that players will feel the rewards match their level of effort. 

     

    - The last puzzle was hard. So hard, that we mitigated the length of the password by making it potentially guessable from the hint or even solveable by brute force. 

     

    NOTE: While the password has been posted, no one has shown the puzzle and solution for how it was solved. I will still give a tier 1 reward to any player who posts the correct solution. If no one gets it right by the time I post the rewards, winners, and random tidbits on Friday, then I will reveal how the puzzle was intended to be solved.

     

    - While the last puzzle was brute forced, I want to congratulate the team that took the time to implement the script. It is important to understand that it wasn’t possible to simply take all the numbers and letters from the spectrogram and execute the brute force script. That would have taken months to find the correct combination. Instead that team used the Morse Code phrase (which also intentionally contained the 4 letters of the password) to eliminate enough characters and get close enough to the correct steps to apply the brute force method.  

     

    I am amazed and thankful for all the players who spent countless hours brainstorming with the rest of the community to solve our ARG. This was largely driven by a very small team at Little Orbit, and you guys made the entire process so much fun for us.

     

    Thanks,

    Matt

    • Like 17
    • Thanks 3

  16. Posted

    On 3/23/2019 at 12:03 PM, Bansheevod said:
    1. Will I keep ARMAS items bought at Nekrova after transfer to Citadel?
    2. Is it safe to buy ARMAS nowadays on Nekrova server?

    Hi there,

     

    1. Yes. The plan is to re-deliver all the ARMAS purchased items that you bought on Nekrova.

    2. Yes. Any purchases right up to the migration date will transfer.

    • Like 2

  18. Posted

    1 hour ago, vfterlife said:

    Thank for easter egg, Matt! 

    news-16.jpg?v=53700-101

     

    p.s: 

     

    Oops. Good catch! 

     

    This shot got uploaded as a placeholder while it was being photoshopped with the article name over it. Ultimately I was in meetings off site and not reachable to approve the final header, so the team went with the old ‘Progress Update’ header.

     

    I’ll have to remember how savvy our players are and cover our tracks better in the future. 🙂

    • Like 3

  19. Posted

    3 minutes ago, Nite said:

    (Slightly technical) Curious question - is that the Multithreaded Rendering that DX11 does (immediate context/deferred context) Or is it some other method? There's the mention of consolidating between console and PC but from what I've read, PS4/XB1 use a whole different style of multithreaded rendering (which DX11 doesn't support afaik)

     

    Gonna be interesting to see that play out since DX11 multithreaded rendering doesn't get mentioned much as being the popular solution...

     

     

    It’s actually three different implementations (PC/XB1/PS4) that all need to fit the Unreal interface. PC has been updated to use the DX11 immediate/deferred pipeline that didn’t exist in Unreal 3. 

    • Thanks 3

  22. Posted

    Hi there,

     

    I appreciate the effort in creating these notes and ideas.

    Right now the team is 100% focused on the engine upgrade and RIOT mode.

    And then we can start evaluating ideas for changes to the main game.

     

    Thanks,

    Matt

    • Like 4
    • Thanks 3

  23. Posted

    28 minutes ago, vfterlife said:

    Prices have always been like this.

    There almost every week there were discounts throughout its existence. Prices have been equally low always. Before they made the armas free, they made a copy of the base.

    Since some players got different levels of discounts and some paid the full price, it makes it very difficult to determine what credit to give Innova players without the actual payment records.

    • Like 2

  25. Posted

    Hi all,

     

    As a small follow up, here is where we stand:

     

    I have received a single email last week from Innova saying they had been on a break and missed my earlier inquiries. In that email, they did say that all data was provided. I have repeated my request for the purchase history, which was not provided to G1 during the transition.

     

    The ARMAS pricing at Innova was very volitile towards the end, and it’s impossible to know which players paid full price, got a discount, or got the item for free.

     

    I am hoping to obtain the account payment history so that we can grant some sort of G1C credit based on actual payments made by these players. This payment history is missing from all data we have.

     

    Thanks,

    Matt

    • Like 6
    • Thanks 2
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