MattScott

Hi there, It’s still early days, but right now we are using Unity to visualize the reconstructed art assets. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, It's been about a month since my last post on this topic, and many players have reached out to me to ask about progress, so I'm going to take some time to do an update. I also want to talk about the SPCT and testing to help shed some light on their role and activities. At this point, we have all three platforms Xboxone, PlayStation 4, and PC on the same code base, and all three platforms are compiling. We are working through some issues with Xboxone and PlayStation 4 that will need work before we can actually run them. But the PC is up and in test. We are behind where I wanted to be. We'll do our best to catch up, but we had some technical challenges in January getting the new build up and running for testing. We had just gotten the game to run internally at the end of the year, but I seriously underestimated how much effort it would take to build an environment that SPCT could hit externally. I'm sure there was a lot of frustration on their side, week after week, when we would tell them "be ready this weekend", and then the servers weren't up. Once we finally got things sorted out, the entire SPCT had to spend hours downloading the build. Then we had more problems getting into the Action Districts due to a networking issue. We figured out a work around that let most team members in, but then the disconnects started. Right now the server is very unstable and crashes based on a number of broken things that players can trigger. Due to a number of issues, players get disconnected every 5-10 minutes. Again, I feel for the team attempting to test or explore issues when they are getting constantly kicked and have to log back in. Week #1 We have now had almost a full week of testing, and in a way the SPCT and Little Orbit are exploring this version of the game together in real time. My raw initial impression of this build is... it's a mixed bag. I have publicly stated that that I didn't think UE3.5 was going to be that big of a change. And in some cases, I was wrong. There are some significant changes to loading times, visual look and feel, and CPU/GPU usage. However there are also LOTS and LOTS of oddball bugs, crashes, and generally unexpected areas where the game behaves strangely. I'm going to try and give regular updates on our progress, so everyone can track where we are, but for now here is my best general update: Most of the code is based on the console version. That's great for engine optimizations, but generally bad for many aspects of gameplay right now. The menus, districts, weapon balance, and other areas are all based on what you can see right now on XB1 and PS4. My team will be pulling across all the PC specific pieces and updates as fast as possible, but there's a fairly big gap at the moment. There are lots of frustrating bugs (like not responding to ALT-TAB) that make the game not much fun to play. We need to slam a bunch of quality of life changes in as soon as possible, or I worry that SPCT folks are going to get very frustrated. Visually the game looks very different. Materials were updated. Textures improved. Reflections improved. Lighting changed. There are aspects of the game that I'm still hoping to adjust, and I'm sure each player will determine how much they like or dislike the new look, but I was surprised how much I liked it. Framerates seem to be more stable, but generally slower than Live. This is due to a number of unoptimized things. I'm confident that we'll actually get the game running better than Live once we apply some fixes. We are going to need to do some work on the districts themselves. Missing kiosks need to be replaced. Some elements need to be removed, and collisions will need to be thoroughly gone over. Update UE3.5 Screenshots I know some players have asked for a new round of sexy screenshots from the new engine. However given where we are, I don't think hyping this effort is the right route to take. We have time for that later. Instead, I'm going to make an exception to the NDA and allow each SPCT member to post a single bug or feature they found interesting from their experience so far - good, bad or ugly. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, Yes. We are working on it, but there have been a couple different DDoS attacks today. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, Over the last couple days, a significant amount of accounts were banned. We do not normally acknowledge or discuss these bans, because it's a toxic behavior, and I believe the community is better off without it. However, my mods have had to deal with several posts about the issue, and I also believe in being upfront with the community when there is a situation. For context, I recently posted publicly that we were tracking a number of cheats/hacks and that we were working with BattlEye to detect and block them. Over the last couple days, many accounts were finally banned as we wrap up that process. This included two groups. 1) Accounts permanently banned based on company evidence These were all researched by my team so that proper evidence could be directly collected and added to their account. I do want to thank the many players who reached out with copies of cheats, videos of evidence, and the vast amount of /reports that were collected and processed by our analytics systems. All of these things helped us identify problem areas. Overall, this wasn't a lot of players, but it was a large amount of accounts. This means that we banned all or most of the accounts owned by the player caught cheating - not just the account they cheated on. We tried to be extremely careful and diligent about how this was done, but at the time you get caught, all your accounts can be banned. Clearly this came as a surprise to some players. For the most part, we do allow players to reroll and come back. But that is not a free pass to cheat, damage the experience of other players, while you play consequence free on your main. 2) Accounts temp banned based on new BattlEye detections We have been working diligently with BE to improve their ability to detect and block the latest round of cheats. We have seen a big jump in global BE bans. Per our policy these are initially implemented as temp bans which give my staff a chance to review them to make sure we aren't mass banning innocent folks. If you feel you have been banned unfairly, please make a ticket with support at https://support.gamersfirst.com. I know Support is still behind, and we don't want to make innocent players wait unnecessarily. @Selali has temporarily assigned some resources to review incoming tickets over the next couple days to try and address these as fast as possible without negatively impacting the rest of the players who have been patiently waiting for their issue to be addressed. We will do our best. But please be patient. Finally, I understand the temptation to make the game easier by cheating, but please don't. We continue to build out our internal systems, and over time they will get better and better. While you may get away with it for a while, you open the door to losing all of your accounts. A number of very unhappy players today learned that all their progress and even real money spent on the game was lost, and they wont be able to participate in engine upgrade or any of the other new content coming. For that I am deeply sorry. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, You have my sincere apology. I can assure you that we have in fact been DDoSed nonstop since early January. This has been a very humbling experience for me. We never saw anything like this in 2018. One day right after New Year, we hit nearly 1300 concurrent. Something I hadn't seen in months. And the very next day we got hit nearly every 30 minutes with the largest attacks I've ever seen. Additionally they did something new that our previous protection couldn't block. Since then we've had the occasional 12 hour break here and there, but for the most part the attacks keep coming on Jericho. We are working with our providers to get the situation cleared up as quickly as possible. Thanks, Matt

Just giving you an idea of the scope first. I'll be updating our progress as we go attempting to figure out some overall percentage. This is an accurate statement. For me, when I have so little overall understanding of the game, you have to be willing to learn as you go and let the project take you where it needs to. I think the goal is to start with a completely rewritten version of the current game including tools. That gives us a really solid base to work with, and we can get a sense of all the places we want to dig into. From there we can decide whether the level of change fits into the current game or should be done as a sequel.

Not going to lie. I wish we could have done something like this.

I am not familiar with the HQ bloom settings. Can you walk me through those? After we launch the engine upgrade, we have plans for the threat system. The current plan is not to go back to the old system, but we aren't staying with the current system either. I try to update the community at least once a month, and the link to that blog goes out in our newsletter, Facebook, Twitter, and here in case you want to keep tracking our progress.

Hi all, This was our first attempt at putting in a new vehicle, and it looks like there is a bug. We are going to be fixing that asap. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, We had a build staged for SPCT to test right at the end of 2018, but we hit a snag while one of our developers was on vacation. I'm going to give us some time to test and work some kinks out, and then I'll let SPCT post pictures. Thanks, Matt

I'm not going to disagree. Our focus is fixing the game, and we are holding back most of this sort of thing till after the UE 3.5 engine upgrade is live. However, in some cases we can't control the timing of opportunities like this or if we will get invited to participate. So I opted to do this one to get the experience. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, I've locked this thread, since we were able to fix the problem. We are looking into ways to help players trial weapons without opening up exploits. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, Here is some context on the choice and design for the Alienware car: We were given an opportunity to participate, but not much time to execute. We were told not to use the alienhead and given several other design limitations. My team has never engaged in anything like this, so none of us knew how hard these codes are to claim. We weren't sure if existing players could easily get them, and we didn't want to upset anyone with some crazy car they couldn't get. While I think we could have done plenty of things differently, I'm not a fan of creating rare, unbalanced items for a random promotional giveaway. We have a couple more of these opportunities coming up, so we'll continue to explore better ways to do them. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, We are looking at this issue. There is no plan to remake Waterfront, but there are ideas for making the existing district more attractive to play in. Stay tuned. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, I think we are way too early to assume that everyone is going to have to start over. As I have said in other discussions, we will do everything we can to help players migrate to the new version. I also agree that we would have to do a lot more than upgrade art to warrant that level of reinvestment. The goal of the rewrite is to get a new version in place ahead of the day when the code will literally stop working on modern day systems. My only real concern for bringing across progress, items, and chips is eliminating progress/items from those players who abused the duping issue. We don't want to immediately start off with a messed up economy. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, Rather than clutter up the forums with random posts, I'll be putting up progress shots on my twitter feed (@mattpscott) using the tag #ThisOldGame. Lately I've been bouncing back and forth between finishing the art import and starting some of the backend server programming. This test was slightly tricky because the raw data is Z-Up and rotations are in angle tenths for Yaw, Pitch, and Roll. I had to experiment a bit to get things to line up properly. Dynamic lights are all temporary values, so they don't match the actual game. I tried to line up the camera angle as best as I could for the comparison. Here are the latest test shots of Boneclaw. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We are looking into the Nekrova situation. Honestly we have inherited a mess, but we’ll do our best to sort this out. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, Here are a couple points of clarification: "Little Orbit support Cheaters or what?" I really shouldn't have to answer this. We spend millions a year on improving the game, building new features, and on anti-cheat systems themselves. APB is a PvP game that is only fun if you get a fair match. I've already gone on record saying that the game will die if we can't fix the cheating problem. Why would we subvert all that hard work and money by supporting cheaters and letting them run rampant? Does LO do permanent bans? Yes. With proper evidence, we ban cheaters. There is no warning or second chance. You get permanently banned. If BattlEye or any of our other systems flag you, then you get a temp ban ranging from 3-7 days. During that period, my staff verifies the information and converts the ban to a permanent ban. This happens in the vast majority of cases. "Support takes too long to respond to cheat reports." I agree. The turnaround time was atrocious. That's why we revamped the /report system to make it more useful. We are still responding to old reports that were submitted, but the team is now using data from the new /report system to focus their efforts. Who can ban cheaters? Only LO employees and paid contractors can ban players. We do have volunteers who help, and they have some power to remove problematic players, but they can also escalate reports or summon someone we employ directly. We did this because of the history in this game and abuse by previous GMs. Permanent bans are only a partial solution for cheaters. This is important. Bans only deter players who really want to play the game and progress. For those cheaters who don't care about their accounts and want to troll other players, they just come right back under a new account. We ban using various methods. They come back. We ban them again using other methods. They come back. The only long term solution to battle these cheaters is to block the actual cheat, and that takes time. Several players post or contact me with lists of "known cheaters", and then complain when they still see those players in the game. I get messages all the time from players with "proof" and lists of names. I always turn that information over to my team. However, we cannot act directly on player submitted evidence or testimonials. There are several reasons you may still a "cheater" in-game: (1) we are still collecting evidence, (2) we did an investigation and could not prove they were cheating, or (3) we found evidence but sometimes we'll flag that player for BattlEye so they can work on detecting the cheat and block it. Once we have collected enough data, then we ban these players. Waiting is sometimes critical to gathering information, because banning isn't an effective long term solution. As I have said before, we can never make the game cheat-free, but we are working hard to continually improve. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, I just saw this thread. Removal of the Free Trial system was purely an oversight on our part. It just got lost in the shuffle. In a game like APB with so many complex weapons, players need to be able to try before they commit. I’ve let the team know, so we can work on getting that back in. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, I'm looking into this. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We’ve reported this to BattlEye and asked them to temporarily disable it till we can test further. Thanks, Matt

Welcome ExpectoPatronum, I appreciate the sentiment, and DDoS is no joke. But this community has a twisted sense of humor. I take most of it as them just making the best of a bad situation. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, I’m sure you have noticed consistent outages in APB since Christmas. Unfortunately, we have been getting hammered by a new form of DDoS attack, and it is taking our networking team time to work up and test a new defense. For the time being, I’m going to put the servers on Mitigation, so at least things are up and stable. I honestly hate turning on this form of mitigation because it adds significant latency. Apologies. Bear with us. Thanks, Matt Edit: Apparently my network engineers have determined that the large Citadel crash this morning was an issue with our provider. We’ll keep watching things.

Apologies everyone, Since Christmas, we have been getting hammered by a new form of DDoS attack. Our engineers are working nonstop on a way to mitigate it. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, I appreciate the debate over whether we will need to start progression over for players, but it’s not really productive right now. Even my comments on the Q&A stream were speculative. No decision has been made, and wont be till we see the full new solution. Just so I have said it, I consider our veteran players the ambassadors of this game. It’s my goal to build something they will be excited about and help us grow again. Of course, the content itself needs to be able to attract new players as well. Wiping progression is not something I take lightly. It’s also not an ‘all or nothing’ lever. There are many waypoints along that spectrum that range from having progression stay mostly intact to the possibility of only minor elements being carried over. Rest asured, I’ll keep everyone posted on how we need to proceed. Thanks, Matt