Mikiy

With less then 300 players on peak or so, cross district matchmaking likely wouldn't even make much of a difference anymore when it comes to the quality of the matchmaking, its kind of wasted developer time to chase that at that point. Good and timely matchmaking (you'd not want to wait 10 minutes between each game) needs way more players then the game even has at this point. They'd be better off to just bring threat districts back and hope a bunch of the more casual silver/bronze players this game used to had before threat districts were axed to come back to it.

exactly this. I wouldn't even care about the names, its ridiculous to have toons we spend money on being held hostage on a dead server.. and removing threat districts was probably the most silly move they ever did and very likely accelerated this games population decrease.

Those car changes... the 4x4 vegas used to be the goto car cause it has great handling, can do nice jumps, doesn't get stuck easily due to 4x4 and has better acceleration then the non 4x4 vegas, but slower max speed. Now after those changes theres max speed AND more hp speaking in advantage of the non 4x4 vegas, considering the 4slot 4x4 was the harder to get car (aside of the refer a friend program ages ago) that seems kinda like a weird change. Funny how the coywolf got a cargo upgrade but no nerf to its running away speed with a vip inside yet. Blowtorch changes.. i really see how the blowtorch needed a damage nerf.. it was such an effective weapon and so hard to dodge by people that forgot where their WASD keys were. ISSR-b vs DMR-AV any reason left to use a dogear after those changes?

That reminds me about the one game i had ages ago against a guy that was VIP, hiding behind a building, 2 entrances, he'd really react exactly to whatever entrance you'd about to take.. no spotter, no radar tower car, no teammate of him to tell him.. it was glorious. Most wallhaxers can't really hide that they have information they shouldn't have, but its hard to get evidence unless the walling guy is VIP and kinda dumb. Maybe apb could need something like CSGO's overwatch program, serverside recording games and having em reviewed with review-wallhax, but then this game is likely to small to support something like that.

Can't say im thrilled to hear about the move back to BE. Last time i installed BE it was rather bitchy, complaining about some unsigned file that was installed.. file in question (going by my notes here as its a while ago) was likely C:\Windows\winsxs\x86_microsoft.vc80.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_8.0.50727.6229_none_d089f796442de10e\msvcr80.dll sha-1 checksum:633a290738145fde18b93c8fe945b08ceffe3e3d which is part of vc++2005, virustotal confirmed it as microsoft published but unsigned. Over installing a vc redistributable didn't work as it was newer then any redistributables i found, apb's own (in its redist folder) at that time was really old and before some security updates even. (This won't hopefully be an issue this time, as it seems apb has moved on to vc++2012 by now) So i went through the trouble of mailing BE's tech support back then.. but that was completely useless as well.. they just suggested i ran some sfc check on my setup and so i did.. came back clean, and then they suggested over installing but all their links for grabbing the latest versions were 404 as support was dropped for that at that time, guess it was a template answer. Their last option was to go for a clean windows install,. which is a total unreasonable request tbh, as i don't install any junk anyway and reinstalling everything would have taken days and likely lead to the same result and just isn't worth it to satisfy one anti-cheats silly demands. Asking for further help to uninstall the file in question by identifying what software exactly it came with was flat out ignored. After some time of researching into that on my own i found that the file it complained about came as part of the microsoft help viewer 2.1.21005 which came as i guessed with a older visual studio install.. luckily i didn't need that specific side-by-side installation of visual studio and components anymore at the time so uninstalling it took care of the problem. But what if that would have not been the case? Basically BE is enforcing some signed library policy there that in some cases can flag legitimate files. Guess BE isn't made for people that do more then just playing games on their PC. TLDR; BE' technical support sucks and it enforces some signed file restrictions that may even in some cases flag legit files that come from microsoft themself.

Yea flaws config on low was what i used at first too, wasn't really happy with the way the game looks then.. but it worked to work around the respawn crashes.

Having a rtx2070 super i had the exact same problem too, randomly crashing/hanging when selecting a spawn spot. But its all about graphics settings it seems, with the right settings it can be completely crash free without any issues on spawn, just not the best texture quality.

Lets just hope that deal doesn't include any thirdparty tracking/spyware/malware nonsense coming from the ad company that gets patched onto our computers from the games patcher then. As long as its just some textures placed in a non intrusive ways that don't affect playing performance negatively without any active program components that track or spy on us it would be fine. I've uninstalled games before that included redshell.

There is some truth in the argument that facing better players teaches newer players how to play and it will make em better in the long run, even tho they may start with a lot of losses initially. However a gaming community is a lot more diverse then just people in prime time gaming age and good health. Games also have people with disabilities playing (be it only one working arm, one hand, less fingers on a hand, one eye not working etc.. ) or simply being older players that aged past prime time for gaming. When you get older your reactions only get slower and you won't respond well to adrenaline spikes anymore... yet all of those people may still enjoy playing a shooter casually. Aging happens naturally to everyone, picking disabilities up can also happen to everyone so there is a lot of reasons why there are high rank low threat players that stay that way and why golds also should be able to lose threat if their performance gets worse. This game simply doesn't feature a player pool large enough (especially on the us server) to support better match making without the old threat segregation band-aid fix especially when taking grouping into account and finding a match within a reasonable waiting time.

Question regarding the friendlist change.. the friend list is still toon-wide and not server-wide accross all own toons right and accepting it is too right ? So if i lets say want to add one clanmate's 4 toons across my 3 toons on one server... we'd have to exchange 12 invite/accept windows now ? I hope those can be send when the other one is offline at least, otherwise organizing the logging through toons to get it done would just be ridiculous time intense..

High rank has nothing to do with high skill tho. You can have a dozen rank 255 toons and still not be able to keep your gold in silver district.. simply because of having disabilities or being an older player with blurry vision and slow reflexes. Most of those tryhards in bronze (the types that go gold in bronze every time) only get it because they use cheesy guns like attac's, ogre's, volcano's alot or run into people that are much worse then them (due to poor matchmaking)... you may think they are DT'ers but im sure they get their patootie handed to them easily by real golds and thus lose their threat normally anyway. Also poor match making simply is the result of the limited population in districts and the games overall low population, its rather unrealistic to think it would go away easily.

The guy writing the article said " I never have more than a passing interest in changing my appearance when I play games, no matter how fancy the tools to do so are. " so basically everything this game is unique and excels in compared to other games was totally lost on that guy. He shoulda put a tl;dr up saying just that, cause that woulda saved me the time reading the article. Its really not worth reading. Theres always those peope that don't care how their character looks as long as the game has a cute wallpaper (read: a good looking map). For me it was always the opposite, the map can look like from the 80ties it wouldn't bother me.. less map distraction is a rather good thing. I like the uniqueness and creativity people put in their characters and cars in apb together with an okay weapon balance and map thats maybe less about looks but more about balance (every spot has at least 2 entrances etc..). There really is no other shooter out there that can compete with apb in character customization.

"so hackable" - guess someone hasn't watched videos on youtube yet what hax modders can do in GTA online.. apb is kinda tame, seen muuuuuuch worse in other games already.

Can you make a similar type of statement regarding other very popular edits that ain't done by the advanced launcher ? Namely those, - always-sprint config change - no-mouse-acceleration config fix - crouch button config change - sound file removals Often when watching people stream apb i've noticed that they removed certain sound files, music, death themes, some map sound emitters sometimes voice overs.. which provides a much better experience for the viewers as the background music isn't as much disturbed by some humming generator or the annoying joker ammo voice over or trolly people trying to grief the streamers with extra loud car music following em around. Ideally i guess it would be nice to have some in game options for all of that.. However for now if would be nice to know if any of those changes could be a problem with the implementation of BE, especially the first two on the list are pretty much must-haves id say.

So i've read here ( https://forums.gamersfirst.com/topic/116-questions-for-lo/?page=3&tab=comments#comment-1603 ) that the new GMs are volunteers, which i kinda read as theres players that volunteered with GM powers now. Considering apb is well known for being a game with a rather toxic community this seems like a rather bad idea and makes me want to ask the following questions.. - are those volunteers players themself ? - what tasks do those gms have exactly ? - what special powers do those gms have exactly ? - assuming they are players.. what is your selection process for those people ? - assuming they are players.. how you prevent them from using their powers (if they have any) to take revenge on people that beat em before ?