Mercuie

It's been a bazillion years. We had no elective spawns to the current system with next to no adjustments to it. Yes after YEARS they sorta nerfed car spawn. But in game spawns are still horribly broken, especially on the edges of the map. And poor WF attack missions. Actually impossible in some spots if the defending team is competent. The fact that it hasn't even been touched for years is troubling on it's own. Nobody thinks the system is good and I have to believe there is something they could do that isn't a total rework to at least help it a bit. That we need car spawner isn't a good sign. And that we have to drive giant tanks around the map to protect it (among other reasons that people drive tanks) is shit design. I'm honestly surprised somebody booed me for thinking we could and should do better. Then again when the only players you have left have played this game the exact same way for 5+ years it's not surprising they would be against any change in that gameplay style. But seriously the fact that people wont install any other blue mod in their car... shows their is something wrong with the system. Balance is ... about balance. If it's just one mod then you ain't doing your job right. APB is supposed to be about a game where different setups matter. If there is only one good car setup ya doing the game wrong. They keep trying to mess with the guns specifically to try to get more diversity. That being said I know the majority of the player base that's left has no clue why it's died and is one reason I rarely post here. You can only go so far talking to walls.

And that is exactly the problem with car spawner and the spawn system as a whole. Time to kill that mod for good and make a properly working spawn system.

So much this! People forget the ammo mod for the car is even a thing. It will be nice if LO can actually get the game into a state where 1 setup just isn't good enough. That all the types of mods and vehicles in the game have a use and you may want to switch it up between or even during the mission.

If I did, I forgot about it. 2018 was awhile ago and I have a horrible memory. And I rarely ever come to the forums. It's mostly just people mad. So thank you very much for posting that to me. I really appreciate it. So it just seems like they'll hide it at one point or because of the 1 world phasey stuff it wont matter anyway. Awesome. Wish they would just do it now though.

Thanks Golder. And I haven't left. I just don't play my mains. I still get plenty of harassment and my own mental pressure to do well on my mains. Hiddens just let me relax.

Oh yeah redoing the threat system is a tough ask. I know they're planning on working on it at one point after engine update, but until then I really just think hiding it from player view would bring mostly positive change over the current system of showing it to players. They took away showing individual threat to try to help with that problem in like 2012 and now it seems it might be best to just outright hide it. That way instead of fighting Mercuie, Gold, 255. You just fight Mercuie. The system will know I'm gold but you and I wont. At the very least it could be worth trying out for a bit and seeing.

Threat and match making has been a plague on this game for ages. Be it people not wanting to be matched against golds or max ranks to dethreating to break free of having to deal with better players or wanting to do their own stomping. It also is a e-peen / ego thing for many players as well. So why not just hide it? From what I have seen on the NA servers with segregated districts removed we're getting a lot more varied op and districts that actually seem alive again. It seems to still try to match golds vs golds. But it also has been pretty good if one team has a silver that the other team has a silver too. It's honestly sorta fun to have players of different skill levels all on the same team. Problem is people still see the threat and all the issues that come with it and cry about it. So why not just hide it? We can't get rid of it and eventually you're doing the weird phasey crap anywho. Hide threat. People can't cry as easily about their OP. People can't dethreat because they don't know what their own threat is. People can't ego over it. It seems to just eliminate a ton of issues. People might feel like trying more against their op because they don't know the threat. And with the small player base we have the ego lovers will still be known. "Oh this person is tough" so you can still just ignore the battle if you don't feel like fighting it. Hide threat, heck even hide rank. Just let it look like players are fighting players while keeping the threat system in the background. At this point we really don't need to know. It doesn't offer anything positive to know.

The old spawn system the game was designed around. I know you could force push the spawns, but god the way they have been since the change has made Attack missions in Waterfront and any open spot in Financial pure hell. Just wiped the whole team? Don't worry their tank just respawned them all 5 feet away. Blew up the tank? No worries, they just respawned 60 meters away in view on both sides of the objective. I miss when people got out of their tanks for combat. Pre HP buff, pre car spawner, pre high burn, and pre blow torch. Concs and rockets could actually blow up tanks, well back then they were cars. And when you blew them up they actually exploded killing people near them instead of going up in a poof of smoke and becoming super armor. I miss that dumb mission where you had to drive away and like earn points from not hitting stuff or getting shot at. Made cars like the Mikro and Jeep feel useful for missions. I know it was broken but it was something different! Game has been out for what 10 years? No new missions added ever (just modified). Just new modes that fracture a player base that already can't fill a district in NA. And finally I miss the game before the new 195 mods and consumables were added. They just made the game less dynamic. Nade spam became the norm and repairing and riding on your tank for item holds was the go to. They made and make it nearly impossible for new players to stick around because the game play is nearly impossible for new players to counter (it's really difficult for experienced players on new characters to deal with). Anti vehicle weapons do a laughable amount of hard damage that even the low HP cars can actually eat a lot. The tanks just laugh it off even before needing to blow torch it. TL:DR: I miss the days before tanks.

Are you sure you guys fixed it? Stuck on "entering district"

I use most these guns! It gets boring using the same gun every match. Though I think most players disagree! Heh.

Noooo! I'm not that Mercuie. I'm a different one who is cooler and never did all those dumb videos and streams! That guy was a dork!

APB Players don't like the idea that different guns are for different ranges and locations. They got too many years of Reloaded being bad at their jobs. This is probably a really difficult time for them with all these range adjustments and the idea that the gun you like might not be the best for all places anymore!

Yes they desperately need to do some mission balance passes. So many things are inconsistent or dumb. Sometimes you have to break into the car, sometimes you can just get in. Sometimes the enemy can see a car and sometimes they can't. Missions where you just pick up an item (or just get in the car) should have shortened timers or switched over to actually having to do an action. Hidden Menace still has the "whoever is holding it at the end wins" for a final objective. Lots of little things. Very much need to be looked at.

It would just make it more convenient and easier to find if they were in mission districts. Either having their own vendors that show up on the map somewhere in district or just add what they sell to the current list of contacts. Heck that might even get people to understand about that currency easier and/or motivate them to actually do the JT quests in district. Sooo many people don't know about or really understand that whole system or that many things are available through them. Now that you put a ton of ARMAS guns in the game via the JT vendors I think this would help getting players into finding and trying these guns. Also I don't think you earn enough JT's or the prices of weapons are too high with JTs, but that's another topic. But consider giving a few for doing missions as well.

I'm really impressed with a lot of your guy's ideas. Seems like you all really do wanna help fix issues that have been plaguing this game for awhile. I only cover a few things below because you guys already have great ideas that should be looked into. Also almost everything I suggest below is to remove heavy vehicle meta. Heavy cars should have a place, but not be viable for every location or strategy, just like our guns. And to be honest I might have gone too far. So take these with a "needs more testing" sort of view! CAR SURFER - Remove mod and give this as a baseline feature of pickups and if ever possible vans from side doors. Bringing viability to these classes of cars. REMOTE DETONATOR - If we have to keep this mod reduce the HP of the car on a scale. Heavier cars take the bigger HP hit, while lower HP cars barely take any, making it harder to just drive up in heavys and zone people. Plus the changes Dopefish mentioned. This could also help bring viability to more ranges of cars. RADAR TOWER - Remove it's always on detection and turn it into a pulse that either the player can control or a timed thing that happens every 30s or so. This could balance it in a way to have a longer range as well. RESUPPLY BOX (both) - Like Dope said, remove the ability to resupply grenades giving a real reason to equip Mobile Supply Unit in cars again. This increases viability for smaller cars that can get into more locations and also makes players think more wisely about when to use grenades. HIGH BURN FUEL - Still does explosion damage but reduces that damage and explosion range. This mod makes people cry when you spent 40 hours blowing up a group in a heavy car only for them to get out and poop on you. This would actually make you move away from your car at the explosion point, but not very far. I'm talking small range here. Like less than 10. You could scale this with how car explosions work already (big cars blow up further) making it so small cars you might not have to move at all and big cars you need to move a little. SPAWN SYSTEM - While some areas of the map have benefited from elective spawn, many MANY more suffer from it. Spawns are way too close for any objective that is outside. This hurts Financial in a lot of spots and makes Waterfront attacking the worst thing to ever have to do ever because no matter how many times you kill the defenders they're back and in view before you have a chance to even do the point. - Push out spawn distances. With this game you should never be able to spawn in view of an objective. You died and you should be punished for it. Not rewarded with a new location to continue your assault. This also speeds up missions a bit because dying on a defend will be more costly, and defending is already the much easier task. - If not push out spawns, change the spawns into a Left/Right system (similar to before elective spawning). Let each side get a half circle on their side to choose from. This needs to be implemented on the edge of maps regardless because right now edge of map spawning is a nightmare of enemy teams spawning one in front of the other making for a very annoying death and also extra far spawns as one team usually gets the closer ones. That last line of text was messy but I hope you got the point. Don't hate @ me. I just want to help make the game better!

Really? I thought it felt great and easily hit everything I was aiming at.

This is their first real patch and they're actually trying. They plan to continue to work on gun balance. This isn't G1 where they patched it once and called it good. I'm interested to see what meta forms with this and with more real world testing that they couldn't get on the test server they'll be able to see better where to tweak and adjust things. It's been less than a day. I don't think we need to start telling them off when they haven't deserved it. This isn't G1, don't bring your built up hate for years of abuse on to a new team that is actively trying to save this game. Let this patch simmer for a week or two, see where things land and see what meta forms before making more adjustments.

Hey I wouldn't be against removing IR! It's seeming like a big issue to balance right now and I would be interested to see what would happen if guns were stuck to their ranges. Then again APB's locations are so varied that having a gun bleed out of it's range is actually useful since it's hard to cover a lot of ranges in random teams. Game balance is hard. Glad I'm not in charge. I would just delete the HVR and pat myself on the back for making the best change ever done in video game history!

The range on IR seems way too much. This easily pushes AR's into Rifle range with less drawbacks. Why would I use an OBIR or Obeya when I could just equip an AR with IR3 and still perform nearly as well in the closer ranges while gaining a MASSIVE improvement in my 50-70 ranges.

They're major mods with huge power behind them and it's incredibly difficult for newer and lower level players deal with some of the power behind higher ranked players. Flak Jacket works wonders for the explosion damage of rockets , OGPL, and Car Det, but it's locked until 195. Something that is insane to earn even with premium. Car Surfer and Blow Torch is a huge advantage if you're running or chasing down a runner or just trying to do a car hand in mission. It's near impossible for lower level players to take out runners because not only do AV weapons take 40 years to actually blow up cars, but those same cars are usually being blow torched while some dude rides on top killing any players trying to stop it. Another big disadvantage for lower level players. I'm not saying move where they are in progression this patch (though they should be moved at one point) but just lowering the required level to use it would at least give lower level players an option to buy off the market and equip. These are game changing mods that are limited to high ranks, which would be fine if low ranks didn't have to fight them, but they do making an already challenging situation that much more difficult because they lack the same options. One thing that was great about APB was that rank didn't matter that much. But these mods actually do and should be lowered to at least 40 or 85 for equipping. And I know I'm just talking about these few here, but I highly suggest that all 195 mods be lowered. And don't even get me started on JT mods. Thanks for your time.

I think it's better to fix the Yukon and then do a balance pass on the secondaries anyway. They're all over the place on viability and usefulness.

Do they ever do testing in an actual district? I have trouble getting a real feel for a gun in the vacuum that is Baylan. I can tell you I really like the COBRA, but I can't tell you if I think it's too strong or not because I can't test it properly with real world matches that take place with meta guns in different locations and such. My brain just doesn't work that way. Also thanks to all the people providing real feedback. Seems like the game is in good hands with you all.

Thanks Toberz.

Something to consider when talking about Assault Rifle balance is that there are only I think 2 AR's in the game you don't have to pay money or JT's for. Obviously the NTEC is better than the STAR. I think the NTEC could use similar damage drop off and ammo as the other AR's, but honestly without seeing a ton of people using a lot of AR's it's hard to tell what changes if any they need being most people just sit on one. This game really should release all guns with either no slot or one slot through progression. I think that would spike up diversity and help all of us see that maybe some guns aren't as strong as we think they are and maybe some guns we see as weak are actually pretty strong. Just my opinion, don't flame me!!

A lot of the basic system and gun balance changes they made when Revo and Jericho and such were still working on the game. Yeah later G1 lost it's mind and started screwing up the game, but they fixed a lot of what was wrong with RTW.