MattScott

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

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

Congrats SK4LP! That was the full solution to the final puzzle.

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.

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

Hi all, As much as I appreciate the banter on the forums, I appreciate the time spent by Ketog to post his findings. This is an irritating problem that we have spent months hunting down. Let's keep this civil and respect, what I believe, was meant to be a helpful post. Thanks, Matt

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.

Hi there, Some of the team has been away at GDC, so this was just brought to my attention. I'll have some devs look at it. Thanks, Matt

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.

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.

Hi everyone, I have put up my blog for the month. Apologies for running behind. My travel schedule was aggressive this month. EDIT: I also recognize this update has a lot of ‘almost there language’. But I felt it was better to socialize where we are now rather than keep waiting to post an update. https://www.gamersfirst.com/apb/news/2019/3/22/end-of-first-quarter-review Thanks, Matt

Hi all, Hasn’t been abandoned. Just postponed. We stopped balancing because it was clear we needed to first focus on networking, hitreg, and the engine upgrade. Once those are addressed, then I think we can work through weapons again. Thanks, Matt

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

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.

Hi there, I have passed this info along. Thanks, Matt

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

Hi all, We have had a rough week of persistent DDoS attacks against Jericho. We have protections in place, but occassionally an attack will come along and exploit a vulnerability we didn’t know about. The network team are working on the issue till it is solved. Sorry, Matt

Hi all, There have not been any DDoS issues today. I've contacted my network team to take a look at Jericho. Thanks, Matt

We have had multiple discussions with the FBI. We collect the evidence we can, and we pass it along. You'll see arrests are being made in this area (but not specific to APB DDoS attacks). But the vast majority of DDoS attacks come from machines that have been hacked - not from anything related directly to the hacker themselves. The problem is that the FBI, Amazon, Google, and other providers need to fix their vulnerabilities that facilitate the DDoS attacks in the first place. On our end we have protection in place for common forms of DDoS, and we continue to evolve those protections. But every couple months or so, someone will find a new vulnerability and hit that spot relentlessly. At the point, our engineers work overtime to fix the issue as fast as they can. Since Little Orbit took over, we have had several months in a row where we successfully defend all the DDoS attacks with little to no interruption for our players. If you look at the industry as a whole, everyone is dealing with the same problem. Toxic players have a bad experience and take out their frustration on the game. Thanks, Matt

Lots of good points here that have also been debated by other members of the community. Even though it does have a collapsing map, RIOT is not really Battle Royale. We have worked hard to create something that feels like APB but brings new gameplay, map changes, lore, and seasonal rewards. This is our first big push for new content that will be quickly followed by the engine upgrade. From there we have 2 other significant additions coming.

Hi there, We have OTW locked for testing RIOT right now. We'll open it up soon as we can. And we are looking at opening some regional servers after the engine update. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, Apologies. The lag is based on a series of DDoS attacks that have been persistent since Monday. Thanks, Matt

Thanks

For the record, nothing is getting delayed. Quite the opposite. The new mode and engine upgrade are coming, and that timing is driving our need to merge the servers so we can roll everything out properly. Let's be kind to the Russian members of our community. They have a right to be upset. They did not ask for any of these problems, and those being damaged are the ones that spent money to support the game with Innova. While we do not have the man power to do 1:1 item transfers, this still needs to be done the best way possible. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, I did receive a response today from Innova. I am waiting to see if they will send the missing payment transaction data, so I can find a way to compensate ex-Innova players. Thanks, Matt