MattScott

Hi everyone, Epidemic is here! And with it comes a nefarious plot to poison San Paro's Residents and turn them Evil! Having discovered a dangerous contagion that will turn citizens into mindless zombies, an evil corporation has paid our players to spread it amongst the masses. Unbeknownst to them however, two other corporations have had the exact same plan, and are preparing to release their own pathogens. Meet the three Epidemic teams: Here are some details and a quick rundown of how Epidemic works. Epidemic Daily Activities: We've created daily activities and rewards which will be randomly assigned once a day when entering this event. Complete these side tasks to gain extra rewards! Start of the Game: When you select the Epidemic district, there are three beginning territories (Top, bottom left, and bottom right) that your character will randomly get assigned to and these are the different infection teams: Undedox, Zombicine, and Necrocites. Your team's color is in the team icon at the top of your HUD and there will be the same colored toxic gas surrounding you. Don't worry! Your team's toxin can't harm you. Game Goals: 1) Transportation of Toxin Barrels: These are immediately available in your team's starting zone and need to be transported to neutral areas in order to spread your team's infection. Be warned: these barrels are filled with corrosive chemicals and can only temporarily carry the your team's virus. Once you pick up the barrel, it will slowly degrade and then eventually explode. They will take time to fully infect a neutral territory and they can also be destroyed by gunfire, which makes them vulnerable to attack. More barrels will spawn in captured territories, which will help you take your virus to even further places across the map. These barrels will be visible on your map as barrel icons. 2) Conquer Neutral Territories: When the game starts there will be neutral territories that spawn and noted on your map as task checkpoints (shaped like a baseball diamond). Also, their borders will be blue. To start, there will be six neutral zones that need to be captured by placing your toxin barrel within its boundaries. As the teams increase their infection percentages, more neutral areas will become available for you to infect. The more areas your team controls the faster you'll reach 100% infection. 3) Protect or Destroy Captured Territories: As soon as a toxin barrel is placed down inside a territory, the borders will change to the color of the team who is currently infecting it. Every captured territory will spawn a large barrel bundle somewhere within its borders and they keep the area infected. Once this bundle is destroyed, the territory will become neutral again and available for other teams to capture. These bundles are built with stronger materials and do not degrade over time. They are difficult to destroy and they are surrounded by toxic gas that will harm enemy players. End Game: 1) The fight to control Havalynd Central Memorial Park: The first team to reach 100% infection will spawn the territory that needs to be infected to win. In order for your team to win Epidemic, they must reach 100% infection and capture the park. 2) Reached 100% infection: If the park is still neutral, then all you have to do is lay down a small barrel and wait for it to complete it's infection timer to win. If the park is captured by an enemy team that's not at 100% infection, you must make the park neutral again before capturing it to win. If your team is not at 100% infection yet, don't give up. Your team can still capture the territory, forcing the enemy teams to make it neutral again. Protect the captured territory to buy your team time to reach 100% infection and have a shot at stealing the win! Here are some of the rewards available for this event. They include some of last year's rewards along with some new ones. Clothing (Backpacks and Head gear) rewards: Gun skin rewards: A sample of some of the new primitive rewards: And a sample of some of the new decal rewards: Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, First, I see lots of good feedback here that the web team can digest. Specifically I like the comments around: - Modifications to the Loyalty Area / arrow down confusion - Premium days left were trimmed for space, but we can find a way to add it back in Second, I also see lots of comments on pricing. I'll start by saying this effort was already complete and being implemented before I started the Developer Discussion thread. I'm sure many players will have there opinions on how this "could have" or "should have" been done. Please bear in mind that we are investing into APB in so many areas, so giving any discount on pricing flies in the face of convention wisdom. I'm doing it because (a) I believe it's the right thing to do, and (b) I committed to it in the Q&A. These prices were literally all over the place before, so it was a bit trickier to organize in a way that would insure every single weapon got a reduction. However I saw very few guns go up in price, and nothing that I'm aware of more than around 7%. The vast majority of weapons dropped by 15-50%, with the biggest drop on Account Bound pricing. We created 7 tiers for weapons that reflect the "Character Bound" price: Tier 0 = 3499 - is reserved for "Just Released Weapons" Tier 1 = 2999 Tier 2 = 2799 Tier 3 = 2599 Tier 4 = 2399 Tier 5 = 2199 Tier 6 = 1999 - lowest price Our designers looked at each category and assigned a Base Pricing Tier. Assault Rifles = 1 LMG = 4 Pistol = 5 Shotgun = 3 SMG = 2 SniperRifle = 2 Each locked slot drops that item down a tier from its base (with the exception of Pistols that have a fixed tier). Then we did some hand adjusting in some cases to pull weapons down a tier or two more if it made sense. Account Bound weapons are now +200G1C on top of the Character Bound price across the board. So as an example, the COBR-A "Venom" is an Assault Rifle. It's original price was 3299 for Character Bound and 3999 for Account Bound. Remember, before the G1C adjustment, 3999 = $49.99. Now that is simply $39.99. The new system starts that gun in Tier 1, which is 2999. It has all three slots so there is now reduction, but we adjusted this gun to Tier 2 to drop the price a little, which makes the new Character Bound cost 2799. +200 makes the Account Bound cost 2999, which now = $29.99. In this case there is a small decrease for the Character Bound version (500 G1C) but a larger decrease for the Account Bound version (1000 G1C). Also, we have not yet adjusted packs that have weapon in them, so those prices will still be a little wonky. I hope that helps. Thanks, Matt

Hi there, Looks like you just caught us mid update. All JMBs are available, and new pricing is now live. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, The first phase of the new ARMAS Store has been rolled out, so I wanted to take a moment a let you know about it. Our initial focus has been on readability and discoverability for a more enjoyable browsing experience. You also will notice the main (featured) page has been redesigned and modernized with the following changes: Featured Carousel - We now have featured items rotating atop the main page to highlight the new and cool items available. Larger Item Cards - In addition to being bigger, items on the main page are now categorized and scrollable for better browsing. Streamlined Navigation - The navigation bar as been updated to reflect how users search, grouping similar categories. Weekly Discounted Items – Check back each week, because we have started featuring selected items with a limited time discount. Overall Price Drops – We took the time to review the first batch of our pricing and have standardized in a number of categories, bringing down the overall cost by as much as 20-50%! More is coming in the weeks ahead. We will be refreshing the individual item pages in addition to the presentation of the items themselves so stay tuned. We hope you enjoy this and continue to look forward to making ARMAS that best place to get all your APB gear. Thanks, Matt

To be clear, we intended to run the events a week sooner, but we had some bugs on both console and PC that required us to hold it back. In future years, I would prefer to launch Halloween content earlier in October. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, We aren’t closed. Just getting hammered with a couple back to back DDoS attacks. The team has been working to mitigate what we can. Thanks, Matt

*cough* I stand by what I said.

Hi all, As much as Selali came out and took responsibility for this, we are also seeing the ‘cost’ of a changed policy. Coming from kids games, my initial reaction in the Q&A was that I didn’t want to see nudity in the game. On a personal level, I’m not bothered by nudity in the slightest. But I still believe that it doesn’t add value here. Players aren’t given agency on seeing nudity or the questionable symbols other players sometimes use. Consent is the key - not the actual content. However, after that stream it became clear that policing nipples was not a good use of our time. It is after all an 18+ M rated game. There is a warning label on the game that should properly set expectations, so we went back to G1’s long standing rules. Those types of changes (which I believe was the right thing to do) still have a cost. Now I try to go back and edit posts so that later visitors get the full context and ‘final word’. It’s my attempt to prevent confusion and this exact situation in the future. Honestly, we (not the GM in question) deserve a little chiding on this. My advice to the community is to keep watching and see if we keep making the same mistakes... you’re seeing how the sausage is made in realtime. Lots of growth and learning happening across the entire team. That’s inexperience. If we keep making the same mistakes, then we’re incompetent. Thanks, Matt

Yes it will.

I’m curious why threat calculation hasnt been adjusted to fallback to asymmetrical matches. For instance, I wonder if we could match 3 medium threat with 2 slightly higher threat to make it more even. Or 3 vs 4.

Hi everyone, Just a quick note to say how much I enjoyed checking these out. I honestly wasn’t sure how much the community would engage this kind of a contest. I am really impressed. Well done. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, I’m going to save a bookmark to this thread and unpin it to focus on the Community Discussion Thread. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, I just posted the updated Halloween schedule. We will be going live after server maintenance early on Oct 30th Pacific time. Sorry about that. With all the chaos in the office getting things ready, we forgot to post the new date. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, I have just posted that once the Halloween events go live, we will be pushing up a significant overhaul to ARMAS. This includes a site wide adjustment to Weapon prices. Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, Looks like a scheduled announcement didn’t go up to explain the delay with the Halloween events. We needed a couple extra days to fix some issues. We are going to take servers down for preparations on the evening of Oct 29th, and the event will start as soon as we come back up the morning of the Oct 30th Pacific time. Both events will run for 2 weeks. Instead of a sale on G1C, we have massively overhauled the ARMAS store and done a significant adjustment to Weapon pricing. Thanks, Matt

Hi all, I’m posting about this now. We needed a couple extra days on Epidemic, so we are going to patch both the console Headless Horseman and PC Epidemic events late on Oct 29th to go live the morning of the Oct 30th Pacific time. Both events will run for 2 weeks. Thanks, Matt

Just arrived in Paris for Games Week, so I’m a bit tired, but I wanted to post a quick update. On the Halloween patch we will be FULLY reverting IR3. Both the upside and downside will be going back to the way they were before weapon balance. There was a lot of discussion internally, and I don't think we want to introduce anything ‘new’ until it has had a chance to go through OTW player testing. It was correctly pointed out several times that reverting the downside and leaving the new upside will make IR3 more powerful than it was before. Sorry for the confusion, Matt

We investigated hosting servers in Brazil almost immediately, and the cost was very high. However I think with a smaller footprint of 6-8 servers to support player districts it becomes more feasible.

We aren't going to do a free premium code this time around. But it's a great idea for next time. Instead, we modified the rules to guarantee that at least one non-Premium player will get a decent prize.

I think we can balance it so that latency is only part of the algorithm. At first SEA players might find themselves matched on servers that are farther, giving them higher latency. But I believe over time, since those players are still able to engage and play, we can market and attract new players in smaller regions to help fill in more local opponents. This is basically a chicken or egg problem. Cross district/region matching allows us to start the cycle that leads to higher populations / better matches. We have to include multiple matches in the same instance, otherwise the server cost would be excessive. I also agree that we need to preserve the open world elements of having players in other matches running around as nice ambience to your own match.

Agreed. Beastie was my first choice, but he's unavailable today.

My first reaction is: "It wont hurt" I feel like filling a Silver district right now is a bad criteria because it is affected by other issues like dethreating and general server population issues. The concept of "Silver" or "Gold" goes away. Instead I think players would choose to enter the type of action district they want.. Financial or Waterfront. Then we would load balance and put the player in whatever instance makes sense. That could be 3 instances of Financial with 40 players each. It could be 2 instance of Financial with 60 players each. Once they want a mission, we can match their skill across all of the players in any instance of the same type.

I think a lot of work needs to be done on how threat or skill is calculated. It feels like we should be measuring activity better, and change should be more gradual (like BXNNXD referred from an earlier post of mine).

Hi everyone, I have posted the first Community Developer Discussion topic in a sub forum here: Thanks, Matt

Hi everyone, I'd like to start by thanking all the players who threw out suggestions about topics they would like to discuss. The point of this discussion is to peel the curtain back and attempt a two-way conversation with you guys. I'm going to make the disclaimer that while I strive to be as transparent as I can, there are some things I can't share for any number of reasons. If I point an area out that is off limits, please do not assume that I'm trying to hide some evil intention. My hope is that we can use this discussion to help inform my team to some of your concerns, needs, or wishes, and then we can try to take those into account as we move forward. I saw a lot of comments on threat / matchmaking, so we'll try to tackle that one first. For most of these, I'm going to start by giving my opinion/context on the subject. Again, I'm going to make the disclaimer that I am not an expert on APB. I have employees who are that design these systems. Instead, I am the final vote. So it's important that I be as current as possible with the game and the players. The purpose of me exposing my knowledge (or lack there of) is so we can have a discussion on common ground. If there is a concept that I'm missing, then I trust that you, the players, will point it out and fill me in. So.. IMO: 1) Why is matchmaking so important in APB versus other games? APB is somewhat unique in requiring PvP conflict to progress through the game. Any time someone wins, someone also loses. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with losing matches. That's how we learn. But in an ideal world, those matches would be close, so that both sides get an opportunity to learn and get better. 2) What are my requirements for good matchmaking? - Matching based on skill that goes up or down each match based on an accurate assessment of how you performed as an individual and how you performed in your team - Matching based on latency so that all players have roughly the same response time from the server - Matching across the widest pool of players to narrow the difference in skill as much as possible 3) What are the problems I see in APB's current matchmaking? - Due to Unreal 3's notoriously slow loading times, and the fact that "phasing" or switching to another instance of the same district, isn't supported in Unreal 3 - APB was designed to only match one player against another player inside the same district on the same server. - Working off that limitation, they needed some way to segregate districts based on "threat" or some other skill rating. In theory, with balanced districts, the players are already close in skill to any other player, so that matching can work again. - Exposing the threat levels and giving players a choice on which districts they enter only breeds a way for players to undermine the necessary balance in districts. Is Threat broken? Yes. Is it frustrating? Yes. Here are my current thoughts on how to fix it. "Cross district matchmaking" The concept is to allow players to join whatever action district they want. No spamming servers to get into the one full district. They simply join, drive around and get to interact as part of the district while waiting for a group. Players are matched with other players across all instances of the same action district, so we can ideally narrow the range of skill as much as possible. Once they are matched, the server moves both teams to a different server where the mission plays out. In my opinion, this is the holy grail. We eliminate segregated districts, because it doesn't matter which one you join. We eliminate visible threat levels, because it's not information you can act on. We increase the pool of players you match against for even matches. What are the problems with Cross-district matchmaking? First, and most importantly, it requires us to finish upgrading to Unreal 3.5 which supports Phasing. We need the ability to move players from one instance of a district to another instance of the same district without unloading all the art. Second, we need to add latency to our matchmaking algorithm so that you are all grouped on an instance of the district that is closest to most of the players. Lastly, in an ideal scenario, we would collapse down to a single World with multiple servers in North America, Europe and Asia. Then we can distribute Regional districts in as many locations as possible for proper latency / skill / matchmaking. Thoughts? Thanks, Matt