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MattScott

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Posts posted by MattScott

  3. Posted · Edited by MattScott
    Update

    Hi everyone,

    Here is a quick update about the ongoing outage with our Voice chat system.
    On or around August 24th while my team was at Gamescom, Vivox experienced some network issues and shutoff the APB voice servers.
    I took us a bit to diagnose the problem, but I reached out and spoke with their President and engineers to see what happened.
    At the time we were told they could have our production servers back up in 24-48 hours.

    However now they are indicating that a solution on their end *may* not be as simple as they thought. I am still waiting for next steps or an ETA. Hopefully they can resolve it soon. Otherwise we may be asked to take a break from Unreal 3.5 to integrate the PC version with their new service. Unfortunately that leaves all our console players without voice service till we can get a patch approved by Microsoft and Sony.

    I apologize for this disruption with the game. I know it is an important feature for team missions and our Social district.
    We are working as quickly as we can to resolve this.

    Thanks,
    Matt

    Update: We got a follow up from Vivox saying that they now feel they can recreate our servers in a new datacenter (possibly) by the end of the week without any changes from us.

    Update 9/12: Voicechat is back online. Vivox took care of the issue with brand new servers on their new platform.

    • Like 12
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  5. Posted

    Hi everyone,

    First, I want to thank everyone who came out and played in the Citadel Prototype districts. I have previously apologized for the mess we made of balancing weapons. This mini-event allowed us to collect invaluable information. I want everyone to know that we are listening and not ignoring the feedback we receive. For the most part I feel like once we make the next round of changes we will be close to what we're looking for.

    Next, I am excited to announce that the new Trading System is now on OTW. We invite players to come check it out and give feedback, but please note there is a Rank/Rating 15 limit to access Trading. This is a requirement for production, so not everyone who logs into OTW will immediately be able to test the feature. We understand that may be frustrating for some players, but there wasn't a simple solution for removing it. My hope is that we'll be able to launch this feature to everyone soon.

    Also the next patch will have a number of very important fixes. We were finally able to reproduce and fix the hitreg issue that has been plaguing the game.

    Lastly, I know everyone has been very patient while we get organized. With many of the latency issues, hitreg, and Trading out of the way, I feel like we can now exclusively focus on the Unreal 3.5 upgrade and on the new mode. It's critical that we launch 3.5 so we can address matchmaking after that.

    Have a great Labor Day weekend.

    Thanks,
    Matt

    edited for clarity

    • Like 35
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  7. Posted

    4 hours ago, killerskull said:

    EST time zone least loved. Im sure the lone US server has majority of the pop from there.

    3 hours ago, Keshi said:

    No love for jericho 😢

    All of the Citadel players had to deal with significant latency when they did testing on OTW, so we wanted to do something special for them. We are going to do a similar ‘Play with the Devs’ event on Jericho too.
    • Like 2

  10. Posted

    Hi everyone,

    The reporting in our Support system only extends 90 days out. So these are going to be changing from here on out..

    Here are the current CS stats this week:
    - 76,568 total tickets have been created for APB in the last 90 days
    - 8,161 of them have been closed.
    - 98,443 interactions back and forth on tickets.
    - 1,472 of them are untouched.

    Thanks,
    Matt

    • Thanks 5

  11. Posted

    20 hours ago, ultim8killer said:
    can any date be announced for the new trading system ?
    because yesterday's post i think lacked informations if i may say.
    18 hours ago, Keshi said:

    Thx for the update @MattScott
    So any ETA on the trading system?


    It was in QA when I left, but there was an issue trading weapons (which is what the bulk of the system is for). I believe that got cleared up, but I'm still seeing unresolved items in our issue tracker.
    I've been in Germany all week, so it's possible those have all been fixed but not marked complete.
    If I had to take a guess, we'll be releasing Trading the week of September 3rd.

    Thanks,
    Matt

    Edited to clarify target release date for Trading date.
    • Like 3
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  13. Posted

    Hi everyone,

    We've been a bit busy at Gamescom this week, so I apologize for some of the silence.
    Lixil has been here all week with me doing meetings, so her focus has been split between the show and her normal duties.

    Despite the rumors, we didn't have a booth and we were not showing off the new Engine upgrade.
    The purpose of the trip was mostly to focus on physical distribution and the rollout of Descent later this year.

    Couple quick updates:

    1) We are still working through Weapon Balance issues.
    Many players have voiced frustration that we didn't listen to them. From my perspective, I don't feel like that is true. Many of their comments have been taken into account. We simply got too excited and jumped the gun before changes were complete. New changes are still being posted to OTW, and once we've settled on the proper balance, we will update Production. Again, I own the mistake. We are working to rectify things.

    2) It appears there was a scamming report being broadcast in-game, and our GM handled it poorly.
    I want to start by acknowledging the player who was trying to broadcast warnings and help make sure other players didn't fall into a scam trap. While they were technically violating our name-and-shame rules, I suspect their heart was in the right place. I understand the frustration players experience when scam tickets take a long time to complete. They take hours and hours to sort through logs and systems to revert items back to their original owners. That is one of the large reasons we escalated the new trading system ahead of the Engine upgrade. We are doing our best, and that is why I have publicly posted for players NOT to trade right now.

    I also want to acknowledge the effort of the GM who dealt with a tricky situation that was far from black and white. All of our GMs are under the microscope. Their's is a thankless job. This person did the best they could attempting to enforce our rules, but ultimately they made the wrong call. There is no way they could have known it was okay to allow the player's behavior, and Lixil was unavailable due to Gamescom.

    Lixil has spoken with the GM and worked through the issues. It wont happen again.

    3) We try hard not to delete posts.
    If you see a post missing, please do not make the assumption that we are attempting some cover up. I committed from the first day we took over that we would be as transparent as possible, and I believe we have made good on that promise so far. More than likely a missing post means we have hidden it to correctly sort out the situation. This gives us a chance to contact the parties involved and get informed. Most of the time we will simply unhide the post and let things continue. Sometimes that's not appropriate.

    In this case, we didn't handle hiding the post as well as I would have hoped. We'll do better in the future.

    Thanks,
    Matt

    • Like 25
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  14. Posted

    Hi everyone,

    Here are the current CS stats this week:
    - 77,422 total tickets have been created for APB since the new portal went up on 5/25
    - 7,821 of them have been closed.
    - 97,465 interactions back and forth on tickets.
    - 1,443 of them are untouched.

    I knew were bound to slow down. Many of the remaining tickets are ‘difficult’. But rather than copy/paste responding, we are doing the work to respond after properly researching each issue. I know in several cases our agents spent more than 8 hours on a single ticket. We got 400 new tickets, but we closed 377.

    Thanks,
    Matt

    • Like 9
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  16. Posted

    Hi everyone,

    Little Orbit has published 22 titles since 2010, and about half were developed in-house under studios we own. The other half were done with 3rd party devs.

    Right now we are working on 4 titles - all of which are in different stages of development. We are not looking at anything new for a little while. These are getting 100% of our focus.

    - APB which is split between supporting the last changes in Unreal 3, finishing Unreal 3.5, and initial work on Unreal 4. This is being handled by a combination of teams both internal and external. We absorbed the devs from Reloaded and have added to that team.

    - Fallen Earth is a server and client port with no source art. Right now this being done internally, but its all pre-production and exploratory.

    - Unsung Story has been a combination of external and internal, but we are in the process of shifting everything internal and expanding that team. Engineering is very far along, but art has been running behind.

    - Descent is being done externally and is nearly done. That title comes out this Fall.

    Each project has their own ‘rescue’ element, where we came in to help finish. I guess that has been our unofficial business model since 2017.

    Thanks,
    Matt

    • Like 10
    • Thanks 9

  17. Posted

    4 minutes ago, kidi said:

    Honestly, if you want us to test things like shotguns - europe otw server is a must

    This is actually being worked on. But remember, these aren't virtualized servers. They are traditional hardware that we have to provision and pay for 24/7. OTW US is a copy of what we run in production, so committing to OTW EU means additional cost year around.

  20. Posted

    Hi everyone,

    Okay. That was a rough weekend.

    First, I own rushing 1.19.6 to Live. I was feeling good about the testing in OTW on Weapon Balance and the other 3 features we're pretty well buttoned down. From my perspective, we have a backlog of finished work that will be coming out over the next 3 weeks, so pushing out on a patch means that everything shifts by a week or two.

    Having said all that, we definitely rushed the Weapon Balance and that wont happen again.

    Second, it's really frustrating when we patch in new content, and then spend the whole weekend getting DDoSed. I apologize to the players who got on and experienced lag, warping, and other issues. Many players on the forums took the opportunity to poke fun at our "potato servers" or the "crappy new net code". Unfortunately we were under mitigation all weekend, so no one really got a chance to experience the benefit of the changes. Rest assured this is still my top priority to fix.

    Here is how we're going to move forward over the next couple weeks.

    1) Weapon Balance
    We're working on a short term fix to shotguns that should stabilize things. That will be tested and go live as quickly as possible. Then over the next couple weeks we will continue with our A/B testing on OTW till we dial everything in properly. I'm not putting a time limit on it this time. We'll wait till it's ready before pushing any of the weapon balance changes live again.

    2) Showstopper clean up
    This week we will be patching in the Showstopper Thunder variant for Joker Boxes. 

    3) Trading System & Marketplace Policy Change
    The goal is to launch the new Trading System next week. Development is done, and we're going to spend this week testing to make sure we haven't missed anything crucial. In preparation for this launch, @Selali will be posting an updated policy on Marketplace trading. This policy change is being implemented to help Customer Service provide quicker turnaround on other more important issues.

    Currently, we have supported making trades through the Marketplace where players can exchange item-for-item with other players. Historically this system has been done on the honor system. But based on the amount of trouble tickets, Customer Service has seen rampant abuse which is why we are introducing the new trading system. Effective today, support will no longer be taking scam case tickets related to this type of Marketplace trading. We will strive to address all of the scam case tickets currently in the system, but going forward we no longer support this. The Marketplace will now be used to trade items for in-game currency and vice versa. The Trading system can be used to safely exchange guns and other items.

    Please note: if you wish to trade items for items, please hold off until we have implemented the new trading system in game.

    Thanks,
    Matt

    • Like 25
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  21. Posted

    1 minute ago, TackoGirl said:

    Why i can not set he limit back to 120 FPS ? I have my montior set to 120 but in the game 145 is still displayed .

    This is the exact issue we're looking into. 
    • Thanks 1

  22. Posted

    4 minutes ago, freq said:
    Hey Matt, any word on potentially raising it even higher?
    Not right now. We have a number of players who have expressed issues now that we raised it. Even thought their system *can* support the higher rate, they want to tune their system lower for better performance. I think we need to address that issue before we continue to raise the limit.
    • Like 4

  23. Posted

    Hi all,

    We don't often comment on suggestions.
    Sometimes they are just not feasible. Other times the suggestion is good, but the solution needs to be very different.
    But we do read and evaluate where in our timeline we can address an issue (if its something we think needs addressing).

    This is just a small note to let you know we see your comments.
    I appreciate the time it takes for everyone to post here.
    I can imagine how frustrating it must feel when there isn't any acknowledgment.

    Thanks,
    Matt

    • Like 13
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