mtz

Presumably the people of San Paro got upset at the Institute for some reason. Maybe the vandalism is meant to represent San Paro calling out RedHill IOT's plans and giving them bad reputation as a result. Maybe it's meant to represent the criminals of San Paro vandalizing whatever they can for shits and giggles. Maybe it's some author acknowledgement/meta nod towards the negative perception of RIOT by the playerbase. Regardless of what it is, the billboards have been vandalized for a long time now.

This billboard is also seen in other places in San Paro (for example, on the south-east corner of the building directly north of the City Hall in Financial) and was a part of last year's RIOT ARG (alternate reality game) which was organized by the fine folks at Little Orbit to tease the now-inaccessible Riot gamemode. The ARG consisted of accessing the site whose address was written on the billboard in one of the corners ( https://www.redhillinstitute.com/ ) and solving puzzles regarding the Redhill Institute of Technology. Among the puzzles, we were guessing passwords to RedHill IOT employee mailboxes, deciphering scrambled images, and putting codes together. Worth mentioning is the fact that the billboards were not the only in-game development related to the ARG. Devil Dog, the Prentiss Tigers specialist contact, was relocated to the St. Medina Hospital in South Havalynd shortly after the RedHill website posted a news article about a mysterious virus killing two patients of that hospital (presumably to oversee its vicinity for suspicious activity). The gamemode was scrapped. Ultimately, it did not capture many fans due to many technical shortcomings (and being released during the process of working on the Engine Upgrade, which made a lot of people say that LO really should have focused on the Engine Upgrade instead of content) — however, it allowed Little Orbit to gather more technical information on how APB's mechanics work, test their skills at programming a new gamemode, and prove that they are interested in expanding APB beyond what it already is.

There are some missions in the game already which shift roles of both teams. "Constructive Criticism" has the Enforcers defuse bombs on 3 portacabins in Stage 3 and the Criminals burn the same portacabins down in Stage 6. "Bad Investment" requires the Enforcers to take over an area in Stage 4 and the Criminals to retake it in Stage 5 (though as far as I'm aware, the objective completes faster for the Criminal side for some reason; could be me misremembering things though). I don't know how possible it would be to redesign missions, but I agree that it would be nice to see some more variety in mission flow.

I’m making this thread after being inspired by a conversation among some of my friends regarding the Russian community organizing an APB tournament. (Which, credit where it’s due, is pretty recognizable of them. If my memory serves me right, it’s usually been the Russian APB players who have been trying to organize APB tourneys.) This is going to be a very long post. If you can’t (or can’t be bothered to) read through it, I’ll try to provide a summary of my points at the end of it — but I invite you to give the whole thing a read. I’d like to emphasize this right now - this is just my opinion. I am not saying that this is an absolute truth or fact or anything of that sort. You are welcome to disagree, provide your own opinion and all that stuff. Without further ado... -=-=-=- Personally, I don’t think that APB in its current state is a game that is ready for competitive gameplay. I am not talking about the performance side of things, though obviously it would be a factor when it comes to having people actually play the game. Let’s leave the hitreg, bugs, issues and other problems on the side for a moment — I think that the biggest obstacles appear far before we run into that. There are a few reasons behind why I formed this opinion, most of which boil down to APB’s core design as a video game. I will try to list these reasons in a way that makes sense from a narrative point of view instead of ordering them by importance or anything of that sort. Starting with... Randomness-Influenced Gameplay The name of this section is not a technical term; I just made it up on the spot to describe what I have in mind. Even though mechanically APB has all the makings and potential of a skill-based shooter game — that being a diverse range of weapons, all of which have a specific purpose and are dangerous when put in the right hands or used in the right situation, and several ways of minmaxing performance both by the players and their equipment — ultimately it falls flat because there are still some things that cannot really be accounted for. You can plan your choice of equipment in accordance to what is needed at the moment, by analysing enemy equipment or recalling the layout of the area you are supposed to be fighting in, but there will always be some things you cannot reliably predict. Let’s have our first example be traffic. Our community as a whole doesn’t really know anything about the way APB handles traffic generation. Pretty much the only thing we know is that the city has streets which will occasionally have cars spawn on them. This alone creates situations where randomness may just decide the outcome of your next fight. You may or may not have an entire street filled with cars, letting you take brief cover behind them and approach the objective more safely than if the street was clear. Similarly, you may end up without any cars and far from even the closest car spawner, or you may have an ever-convenient Cisco appear before you, just in time to quickly get you closer to where you need to be. What about pedestrians? This, of course, is less noticeable, as our fellow San Parians can’t really do much else than walk around, crouch in fear, run away when they hear gunfire or see an approaching car... but they can still stop bullets. And that one single bullet may just be the thing that saves you from dying. As I’ve said, this is a very slim and rare occurence, but it still can happen one day — and depending on which side you’re on, you may either be happy about that one bullet winning you the fight, or mad that the civilian got on the line of fire and denied you the kill. Streetcars and pedestrians are both unavoidable elements of a city. San Paro would not feel like a believably true city if it did not contain them... and yet we, the players, don’t really use San Paro as a city. A World Designed for Violence City planning is a difficult thing. We have an entire profession dedicated to it, we have internet communities showcasing buildings that look and feel evil, we have video games focused around letting us build our fictional cities. Us humans have a clearly defined idea of what a city is meant to be — but do APB players know that? How long did it take you, dear reader, to realize that Financial and Waterfront are closed loops, with no exit roads in sight? And after this, I would like to follow up with a different question: Do you think of San Paro as of a city, or a collection of small fighting arenas? I remember watching this one video which talked about America’s problem with school shootings and how some schools are being shaped specifically around trying to provide safety to children in the case of such a tragic event. The issue with creating a building with safety measures in a combat scenario is that the defensive capabilities eventually become their main purpose. That weird protruding wall in the school hall turns out not to be a goof on the side of the architect or the builders, but a deliberate choice — and once you realize that, the perspective of a mass shooting will be the only thing in your head whenever you look at it, looming over you as a grim reminder that a tragedy may occur here. In video games, we usually see the inverse phenomenon — maps are designed for fair fights instead of comfort for living or actual use or functionality. At their very core, multiplayer maps are arenas engineered to provide a combat situation that lets both sides test their skills. It may be decorated like a city or its part, or made to look like a town altogether, but fundamentally they are just layouts, built around the gameplay mechanics of the game they are in. Taking Counter-Strike: Global Offensive as our example — the Tunnels on Dust II... what purpose do they serve from a living standpoint? Suppose this were not a game map, but a part of an actual town that people live in: what role does this building serve? It has no closable doors, no discernible doors to any rooms inside... what is the point of it? In gameplay, you never really have to pay attention to the functional side of things. It’s not what you’re there for. So why should you care? And, more importantly, why would you? It’s a part of a balanced map; is there any point in disputing its faithfulness to reality? APB, however, is in a different situation. Its problem is that it has to be a believable city and a balanced battlefield — and at times, it doesn’t really know which one of those it wants to be. For an example of this, look no further than the highway/overpass stretching around Financial. There is an old video on which it was completed, but ultimately the highway was converted into this unfinished state, because it served the gameplay better to have it be unfinished, with dropped parts of it serving as ramps, and scaffolding being left next to it in several places. The districts themselves are filled with narrow corridors inside the buildings, fighting arenas neatly condensed into apartment blocks. If you pay attention to your surroundings, you will eventually notice that fighting spaces are confined in their city blocks, with barely ever any opportunities to shoot someone standing on the other side of the street. Most of the time in Financial you will not see any fire exchanges happen from two sides of a street. Sure, there are a few entrances to each spot every time, but all of the surrounding buildings act as giant walls containing the fight inside them. This weird blend of plausible city architecture and shooting zones creates an experience that is neither 100% the former nor 100% the latter. Credit has to be given where it’s due — San Paro does a pretty good job of imitating an actual city. However, this creates a problem with the actual balancing of matches, simply because... The Urban Jungle Does Not Care Competitive environments in video games are expected to have as minimal randomness as possible. If you want a fair playing field, you expect to play a game that puts you up against the same environment as your enemy. This is why conventional 5CP maps in Team Fortress 2 have rotational symmetry. This is why traditional Capture The Flag maps in video games are symmetrical. You have to go through the same areas as your enemy, as otherwise you would be dealing with issues such as one team having a height advantage or straight up better angles and so on — and even if the gameplay is asymmetrical, the rules usually switch the sides for each team, so that the defending team gets a shot at attacking in the second half. APB has none of that. We are members of one faction, pitted against the other faction in a mission. In order to maintain some impredictability, mission objectives are randomly chosen from designated spots within the district, so that you hardly ever (if at all) run into the exact same mission as before. If you lost all your defend stages and the final stage, that’s it; you don’t get to have a rematch against the same team with the same objectives, but as the attacker. The system actively tries to present you with an inherently different experience. Your best bet of a rematch is a prayer that the system picks your team against a different team for the second time, but in a different mission — which may still be a defend mission for your team. What exacerbates the problem is that some areas of San Paro have become notorious for being very difficult to seize control of. Financial District’s Ferjandro Shipping, known by some as German Fortress, is a glaring example. Its rooftops offer a height advantage to almost all sides, with the south entrances being bottleneck corridors “hidden” behind ladders, and the entire north side not requiring any attention due to a building blocking the sightlines to those who don’t attack from either the west or the east. Another notorious spot is Armory Wharf - Armstrong & Chen in Waterfront; it is the first warehouse north of Eva Orlandez, east of the “Fortuna Maria” Transport Ferry. If one team knows how to maintain a hold over this area, it’s exceptionally difficult for their opposition to breach through that defense, as they get a height advantage (since the only 1st floor entrance is a bottleneck in the form of a door) and the westmost balconies are only exposed from the east and the north-east direction. Continuing: the roof of the Mist restaurant in Financial’s The Needles - Canalside is sniper heaven. If you are on said roof with a sniper rifle, you are constantly at a height advantage from all sides, with the only real threat coming from its southern neighbor, the Hope Mall — and even then, all it takes is to take a step back to get out of its render distance. If the game’s mission logic decides to put an objective in any of these places, the ensuing fight for control of the area will sometimes go on for several minutes depending on the skill level of the players. This exact problem is what gives these places their reputation. Often times, the players lose morale when they see where the mission is taking them, before anything even happens. The architecture of the city is, at the same time, that of a believable metropolis, and that of a laser tag arena. The randomness of objective placement can end up deciding the outcome of the match simply by putting the mission items in a spot that’s easier or harder to take control of. Redesigning the entire map, or creating a district map around the idea of making each spot perfectly balanced is out of the question. Doing so would ultimately be a rejection of APB’s roots as a third-person shooter game focused on urban combat — and what we would get in return are environments that may seem more fair, but ultimately end up being cookie-cutter pieces on flat ground that get rearranged every so often. This leaves us with a single question: how much "urban" can you have in an environment for it to be believable and still fair to the players? TL;DR: There are small things (such as traffic density, traffic movement, and pedestrian activity) that cannot be controlled or predicted by the players, but can potentially impact the missions. San Paro tries to look like a city you could believe exists somewhere in the world, but has elements of architecture more designed around gunfights and the use of cover. The aforementioned “architecture for violence” creates a playing experience which is inherently imbalanced, in the sense of two sides not being faced with the same challenge in the same fight. -=-=-=- As I’ve said in the intro to this post, I don’t consider this to be undisputable truth; it’s just my opinion. If you disagree, that’s okay. If you have any feedback, whether it’s in agreement or disagreement, I would love to read your post!

I have a couple of questions regarding the ruleset, and I'm genuinely interested in the reasons behind the answers. Why is there no restriction on the amount of 4x4 Vegas' that a team can have? It is easily the most versatile car in the game. It feels odd to see a restriction on the amount of tank-cars (Pioneer, Espacio) but nothing in regards to what is easily an S-tier car. Why exactly is Spotter the only orange modification that is allowed? What makes Spotter be considered okay for competitive gameplay, while the others are forbidden? Why is the ALIG banned? Why is the N-FA 9 banned? Why is the FAR banned, along with a fair number of Armas weapons? (My guess here is that you want everyone to have the same weapon set available without spending real money - in which case I'd be willing to agree with the weapon bans.) Are preset variants allowed? As in, is the FBW with RS1 allowed or is it only the standard FBW? Though I don't intend to participate, I wish you the best of luck with organizing the tournament! I've been there and I know organizing is not an easy thing.

Everything has already been explained in the appropriate forum thread. On that note though, I know people dislike finding information on their own, so here's a shortcut of what you need to know: Little Orbit sold the rights to the "APB" intellectual property, not "APB Reloaded", to Unit Game. The terms of that sale state that Little Orbit retains the rights to APB Reloaded. Unit Game can do what they want with APB as a brand, Little Orbit can do what they want with APB Reloaded as an entity. The game we all know remains in LO's hands. If you fear APB Reloaded being handed over to "the Chinese" and undergoing severe changes to match the new culture, that simply is not happening due to the terms of the sale. If you fear the APB brand being handed over to "the Chinese" and undergoing severe changes to match the new culture, I'd say it's not likely to happen. Unit Game is a Hong Kong-based company. There is a distinction between mainland China and Hong Kong, as the latter is a Special Administrative Region with its own culture and a high degree of autonomy (which is unfortunately being challenged by the Chinese government — but that is a separate topic which is very political, and political discussions on the internet tend to go south very fast, so... let's not go there).

Obviously can't speak for the entire community, so here's my two cents: In general? Yes, there are still cheaters out there somewhere in APB. It's an inevitability in online games; there will always be some cheat that hasn't been detected by anti-cheating solutions yet. As a wide-spread problem? No. I don't think the problem is as severe as it may seem. The situation is much better than it used to be in the past - as in, before LO took over. Cheating was rampant under pre-LO G1, to the point where you couldn't go a single day without seeing a cheater. I'm honestly not sure when was the last time I personally saw a cheater in the game. OP, I obviously don't know what types of matches you were in, nor who you were up against. Perhaps you did run into a cheater a few times, I'm not discrediting that option. However, I still think the cheating problem nowadays is being dealt with at least 10x better than it was before LO took over.

Dethreating very much is bannable. The problem lies with actually enforcing it. GMs have to tackle several issues that happen in the in-game community; some cases are bound to slip past moderation. We're all human after all. (Allegedly :^) ) My experience is that it's very easy to breach into Gold while doing pretty average. Keep in mind that dethreaters really lowered the bar for what the system considers poor performance, to the point where you practically have to go out of your way to be considered eligible for threat level demotion.

I see your point, but I can't 100% agree. Honestly, right now I would much rather see a redistribution of threat within the existing system, or a rework of it. Due to dethreaters, there is a massive skill gap between the average Silver and the average Gold. I think that adding one more step to the ladder at this point would only cause further divide and serve to spread the levels even further apart than they already are. I'd love to see my threat level in a redistributed system. Something tells me that I would probably be a Silver! Not a bad idea, honestly. I used to play on this one Multi Theft Auto server once; even though it was international, there were distinct chat types/channels that you could chat in. You could use the Global channel to talk with everyone, but it was strictly English (with timeouts if you deliberately used other languages); you could use the Language channel which you opted into, and the server remembered your preference; you could also chat with players in your clan using the Clan channel in any language you mutually preferred. The obvious downside of separate language channels is that you would probably have to have moderators who speak those languages, in order to prevent things from escalating. As far as I'm aware, the problem with this is that there is no back-end system that would allow for this type of switch to happen. Clothing unlocks are just the tip of the iceberg. Male and female characters have completely different body shapes. There are customization options which only exist for one of the in-game sexes (the most obvious being Pelvic Width for female characters; Muscularity for male characters can change body/muscle shape, whereas the same setting for female characters only adjusts skin shading in certain places) — what is the game supposed to do with those options when porting a character from one gender to another? You're effectively asking the system to fill in a blank. Back to the clothes themselves — unfortunately, most Armas gear is not all Armas gear. There will inevitably be situations where you cannot give the character the other gender's equivalent of a clothing item because it simply doesn't exist. It's not just an Armas-exclusive problem — the Long-sleeved Shirt is a completely different item depending on the character's gender. Also, what about customization? The aforementioned Long-sleeved Shirt may have nicely aligned symbols if you're applying them to the Female variant, but the same symbols applied to the Male variant, even at the same angles, will not give you the same results. The only situation in which I could see this working is if all symbols were removed from the character's clothes... which is a problem in itself. The foolproof way of handling this would be to pretty much make it so characters are completely wiped and have to be remade in terms of customization - but they keep their rank, items, weapons and all that. And at this point, why not just have them make a new character? The way I see it, low ranks give the incentive to play the game more. No complaints about the first two, personally. Audio kits could be a nifty addition. The Mako and Kissaki kits, though, have some explicitly factioned things, don't they? I think the Enforcer kit has some on-board police laptops or something like that. Would be a tiny bit silly to give those to Crims. Then again, faction boundaries got destroyed with cross-faction content itself.

What about the discounts? Premium accounts get discounts for Armas items. The only way I could see this working out is if the 1 day Premium status did not allow you to get discounts — otherwise we would probably upset customers who have had to get longer Premium periods on their accounts just to get discounts. Additionally, there could be people who already have Premium but decide to buy the 1 day Premium. (I'm not saying it's likely to ever happen, but it's a scenario we need to account for.) How would the system distinguish whether they get Premium discounts or not? You would probably have to program a mechanic to define a specific 24 hour period where the account has in-game Premium but is shut out of Premium discounts. I'm not saying this is a bad idea, since it's definitely a convenience for people who are mostly interested in designing. I'm mostly concerned about the technical side of this. (I secretly wish for something like a Creator/Designer Pass, where you pay a price that's lower than the price of a Premium packet, and in return you get the Premium benefits for designing only. No gameplay benefits (more money and standing from missions) or discounts on Armas; you get the Premium symbol layer limits and that's it. You pay less cash, and you get to place 50 tattoos, 50 car symbol layers, 50 clothing symbol layers, 100 layers on symbols — but you don't get longer Armas trials, Armas discounts, APB$ bonuses, contact standing bonuses etc.)

Oh, alright. I mean, you could have just said "I have never actually used LTL in my entire life" in your opening post to save us the trouble, but still, better late than never! Less Than Lethal weaponry is straight up less versatile than its lethal equivalents. LTL requires a specific playstyle that puts the user at constant risk - a stun needs to be secured by physically approaching the stunned criminal and interacting with them, otherwise the target will just get right back up (with a slight resistance to stun damage to boot). Kills are easy to get - arrests are a challenge. If you genuinely believe LTL is broken and/or overpowered — sorry, but I have reasons to believe you have never actually even tried using it before.

Devil's advocate: it really wouldn't be that hard to create an in-game excuse for faction infighting. Criminals vs Criminals could be simple fights between rival gangs; Enforcers vs Enforcers could be one group perceiving the other as a rogue element within the CSA-registered units. Still gonna be a hard "no" on giving Crims LTL though.

I beg to differ. The N-TEC 5 by itself is a very good alternative to the STAR 556. It's a classic tradeoff of accuracy for damage. If you can keep the N-TEC 5 under control, you will be rewarded with a formidable gun. It is meant to be a good gun in the right hands. That is not a design flaw. What is a design flaw, though, is how stretched its versatility becomes with the right mod setup. And if you look closely, Improved Rifling quite literally is the problem here. Improved Rifling's downside is that it "increases maximum reticle bloom" — so the maximum possible crosshair size when firing in full-auto. When we slap IR3 on the N-TEC 5, the catch here is that you will almost never be using the gun in full-auto anyway when you're trying to tackle targets at range. It's not meant to be used in full-auto on the regular. This is also something that's lampshaded in N-TEC 5's flavor text: "[...] detractors often point out the requirement to fire in short bursts to maintain accuracy." IR's downside does not exist for the N-TEC because, realistically speaking, you will never be using the N-TEC 5 in such a fashion that the downside will ever come into play anyway. It is meant to be tapfired at ranges — and when it is, it can almost reliably pierce into marksman rifle ranges, giving the Obeya CR762 a run for its money. This mod — if not the existence of red mods in general — has become the elephant in the room when it comes to APB's balancing. A lot of the players have become too complacent about IR being a reliable range boost to their weaponry at a negligible downside. Think about it for a second in accordance to the weapon types in APB. Reticle bloom is a non-issue for the shotguns, since they're naturally inaccurate. Sub-machine guns never bloom out to the point where they become noticeably inaccurate within their range. Both of those CQC options are allowed to cause wounds beyond their intended ranges when modded with IR. N-HVR isn't meant to be fired on the move, and at a stand-still the reticle manages to reset its bloom between shots. OBIR returns to initial accuracy between bursts. None of these options will ever even be put in a scenario where the "increased maximum reticle bloom" downside starts working... and the weapon type it's "meant" to be used with (that being assault rifles) has its versatility increased to an absurd level because it lets you puncture wounds at range by doing what you'd be doing to land shots at range accurately in the first place. Combine all of the above with the fact that Improved Rifling 3, the biggest possible range increase, is locked behind a lower limit of player rank, and role progression or a five digit price tag, It's almost guaranteed not to be used by new players; as a result, it practically exclusively benefits those who are already acquainted with the game mechanics. Something has to be done about IR. Its downside is nowhere near enough to offset the benefits of increased effective range. It either needs a rework or outright removal from the game (which could probably be said about most other red mods).

As far as I'm aware, yes. I've tested it with the Goth Kilt, but I don't have a reason to suspect the regular Kilt would behave differently. From what I can see, most F2P options — Jeans, Skinny Jeans, Chinos, Combats, Warm-up Pants, Suit Trousers — can be worn under the Kilt. Some bottoms will not work with it, though, and will override the Kilt. From checking my own wardrobe options, I can tell you that Baggy Jeans, Baggy Shorts, Cargo Capri Pants, Basketball Shorts and Harem Pants do not work. There might be more of these items, but I don't have access to them personally.

"Today I would like to demonstrate how incompetent some of the players have been and how poorly they have behaved towards Little Orbit since their takeover." I can agree that the first IR change was not the best idea — however, what everyone seems to be forgetting is that this was Little Orbit's first time tackling such a game. They don't exactly have a track record of handling MMOs with a fragile meta. They've learned from their mistake and since then they've been more proactive about discussing changes with the community. Improved Rifling isn't fine and I wish the community could stop lying to themselves. The benefits of using this mod wildly outweigh the downsides — which themselves can be mitigated in various ways. I mean, hell, have you noticed that almost every single gun in the game behaves in a vastly different manner when modded with IR3 — or any red mod, for that matter? N-TEC 5 becomes a fucking harvester thanks to it. It almost gives marksman rifles a run for their money. N-TEC 5 is meant to be versatile, yes, but N-TEC 5 with IR3 pushes versatility to an absurd point where you can tackle most ranges in the game. The entire downside of increased reticle bloom is offset by just tapfiring — something you are bound to be doing if you want to land shots reliably at range. Just to get this out of the way: who died and made you an authority on declaring things fun or not? Moving on... Yes, a company without a triple A budget is bound to release buggy things, especially given the fact that they've been working on the spaghetti code that is APB in its current state. Some things are bound to slip past QA. This is a problem unique to LO how? As for RIOT: eh. I didn't hate it. I certainly didn't love it either, but I'd be damned if I said it wasn't an interesting idea to try out. (And I still believe they should've focused on Engine Upgrade first.) The crux of the issue here is that you seem to think that legendary guns are meant to be upgrades instead of variants. A legendary variant of a gun is meant to have a gimmick to it. It's not meant to be a straight upgrade across the board. You take those guns with the knowledge that they will not behave like their regular counterparts. I'd say that the problem here lies not with LO, but with you. What other form of compensation do you expect? You literally don't lose any premium time because they give days of premium back to you as compensation. Plus, trial weapons are 3 hours long, if I remember correctly. Perhaps you mean leases? It's either the NA servers as a temporary solution, or no fucking game at all. Pick your poison. You do realize all of this is the result of a problem they did not expect to occur, right? You are aware that the EU servers are stuck in customs, hence why LO could not put Citadel anywhere but on NA until the servers pass customs checks? Yes, because the last calendar year totally did not happen. The last year of LO running APB was not a thing, they've only taken over APB just now and they've fucked up the servers, precisely. In fact, it is a widely known truth that Matt Scott himself personally took a sledgehammer to EU servers just to mess with us! I'm sure of it! /s, in case it wasn't clear enough. I paid nothing to read your wall of text and I still want my fucking money back.

I wouldn't worry that much about providing your background. Anyone who wants to dismiss someone else's opinion without reading it based on their "skill level" in a game with ruined skill level calculation probably isn't worth listening to in the first place. I absolutely agree with the part where you bring up an example of a typical exchange between you and a typical Gold player. I've always found it peculiar how most Golds in APB excused playing in Silver instances with "no one plays in Gold instances", not realizing the circular reasoning. Hell, I myself am guilty of playing mostly in Silver instances just to get a quicker match. Unfortunately, it's a problem that perpetuates itself. Nobody wants to have to wait for a match, so the typical Golds take on the Silver bracket... instead of actually creating a Gold bracket, letting it exist by just filling it up with their presence. Unfortunately, I don't think we can do much with such a small playerbase at the moment. IIRC an attempt was made to incentivise gameplay in Gold instances by having them give out a higher total of mission-related Joker Tickets, but that doesn't seem to have done much. I can empathise. Back in the days of Open Beta Testing (or whenever it was that we still had visible threat levels and they went from Bronze to Gold, each having 10 sub-levels), I was at the point of constantly fluctuating between Silver 10 and Gold 1. I would win a couple of matches, get ranked up to Gold, get stomped by Golds, go back to the Silver instance, win a couple of matches there... so on and so forth. (Emphasis mine.) This is something that gets mishandled very often. Normally you want to design a working system that addresses typical concerns with the average user in mind — not with the outlier in mind. Bad actors will always exist, but if/when they exploit a system or a mechanic, one should fix the loophole instead of scrapping the entire system/mechanic altogether. Dethreating is a cancer on the game's matchmaking system. Players who go out of their way to skew the system to their advantage for easy matches against lower-skilled opposition should be punished for doing so. Dethreaters affect the entire game in their selfish pursuits — I'd risk going as far as to say that they are the main reason why over the years the Gold threat went from "the most effective players" to "anywhere above slightly average".

47 responses on record - here are the stats so far!

Good point. I've switched the quiz's settings, so now it shows you the correct answers after completing it. You might be able to notice that the short answer questions have several options on them - that's mostly just to account for people placing dots in their answers.

My initial idea was to encourage people to start looking for the correct answers themselves after they've done the quiz — but I understand that some people might not know where to start (or outright not want to go through the effort. Can't blame 'em, I'm also a lazy person ) If more people want the quiz to give out correct answers after the fact, I can change the quiz's settings to make it do that.

One of my friends said that I should make a quiz about APB's lore since I apparently know so much trivia about it. So I did! I also thought that I might as well share it with more people, so here it is. https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScdcbmtXmQPW-9ygyAYWw3-msZITLwC9rSmTs_GdxSTK1W89Q/viewform?usp=sf_link Maximum possible score is 34 points. The quiz is pretty much only so long because I couldn't come up with any more questions. There is no reward for the quiz - it's just something I made for fun. Feel free to give feedback and brag about your scores in this thread! Oh, and try not to cheat - you'll only be cheating yourself out of the fun If I made any mistakes, please feel free to point them out and I'll try to either swap out the incorrect question, remove it or fix it. I wasn't sure which section to put this thread in, so if mods have a better idea for that, a thread move would be much appreciated!

I've posted these exact ideas before and I'll post them again. Once again: these four points are not meant to be implemented all together. It's just a loose assortment of ideas how to tackle the Bounty system.

Neither HVR variant deals 500 damage. Heavy HVR deals 850, Scout HVR deals 550. Also... you don't really understand what Clotting Agent does, do you? You start regenerating health much sooner, but the regeneration itself takes more time because you regenerate less health points per second. The "overdamage" thing is incomprehensible to me — I don't understand the concept you're describing. Heavy HVR is not "wasting 700 damage in its second shot", it's "forcing the recovery of 700 health points before it's safe to come out of cover again". Another thing: you're overly focused on sniper-based fights. Fire exchanges in APB occur on more ranges than sniper range — meanwhile you want to balance the entirety of the game around sniper range gameplay. And once again, Clotting Agent doesn't have faster regen. It starts much sooner, but is literally slower than regular non-CA regen. Kevlar Implants are not supposed to be a mod that lets you tank shots like an armored personnel carrier. It's supposed to be a tiny sliver of health that may help you in a fight. I have no idea why you insist it should become one.

Just kinda want to chime in that I still haven't received my RIOT weapon skin (and I feared to speak up about it so far :V ).

Disclaimer: I am not a developer nor am I involved with Little Orbit or APB:R in any way. This is not an official stance. As far as I'm aware, there are no repercussions for creating themes longer than the default 5 second limit. They don't really impact gameplay in any way either, since the game only ever plays the first 5 seconds, with only the theme's user being able to hear things beyond the 5 second mark. Long themes improve the experience of their users and don't ruin anyone else's experience... so I think they're pretty safe. The developers are aware of the long theme exploit and have been asked by at least one community member not to fix it — and thankfully they haven't fixed it so far!

You are trying to balance the entirety of the game around the existence of Kevlar Implants and the Heavy HVR. Kevlar Implants has the effect of slightly increasing your health. You are not meant to be able to tank several shots with it. It's supposed to be this tiny little sliver of health that could potentially help in some situations. You pick this mod with the knowledge that it will slow you down and put you at a disadvantage in some speed-related situations. Heavy HVR is a support weapon. You deal immense damage with the initial shot, which will soften the shot enemy enough for your team to pick up the scraps with a health advantage of their own. The downsides are that you are slowed down while carrying the Heavy HVR, and you have to reveal your location when you take a shot - which gives your enemy this ~1s to quickly process that "an enemy is shooting from that direction. find cover immediately or you risk dying". Scout HVR is also a support weapon. It shares the refire rate of the Heavy HVR, but is significantly less hard-hitting in comparison. The Scout HVR lets you regain the speed you lose by using the Heavy HVR, but the downside is that you don't deal as much damage - meaning that in a 1v1 situation your refire will need to be practically immediate if you want to secure the kill, otherwise Clotting Agent users will be able to regenerate lost health much sooner. The very moment you eliminate the Heavy HVR's need to take two shots, you cause a massive problem in the metagame: CQC weapons become obsolete. If a Heavy HVR is anywhere with a height or distance advantage, shotgunners and SMG users cannot close the distance in any way. While they will be exposed for practically the entire time they try to get into a closer position, the Heavy HVR user only needs a single peek to completely stop the CQC player's approach. If the defended objective is out in the open, the defense doesn't require you to be anywhere near the objective. You are equally deadly to a cornerpopping JG user - the difference is that you don't even need to expose yourself or put yourself anywhere near the actual fight. Targets of HVR users have no chance of fighting back. When you're on attack, specific dangers are present at specific ranges. If an enemy is at long range, you will know that they're a sniper and that they're equipped with a weapon hindered by slow refire. None of this actually matters if the Heavy HVR were to kill in one shot. You're dead and you have no chance of fighting back. The gun isn't meant to win you every fight at range - it's supposed to weaken the target and open them up to attacks from closer range. The fight starts and ends when the Heavy HVR user lands their shot - literal 0 TTK. Shifting the meta towards one weapon which immediately stops fights and forcing everyone to use Kevlar Implants in order to have a fighting chance against it is not the way to go. I have no idea why you want Kevlar Implants 3 and Heavy HVR to 1) be buffed, 2) become the new standard. If there is one thing I agree with in this thread, it's that Clotting Agent 3 (and to a smaller degree, Clotting Agent 2) obsoletes all other green mod options in the game. Everything else - dear Lord, no, no, no, we absolutely should not be doing this.