mtz

I can confirm I don't have the skin on my account yet. (Not that I'm bothered by it too much though :V )

You could achieve the exact same effect by having a literal real-life sheet of paper next to your screen which lists all missions and their final stages. You could achieve the exact same effect by holding your Shift key down with a clothespin. You could achieve the exact same effect by using transparent adhesive tape to attach a small paper dot to the center of your screen. Options currently available in the Advanced Launcher will be officially integrated into the game when Little Orbit fully releases the UE3.5 version of the game.

Frankly, I believe this is the best option here. Getting JT in Asylum is really easy, because - as you said - players only really have to exist there to eventually get the rewards. Baylan complicates things because you have to (except for the "get assists" or "stun" objectives) pretty much kill players in specific ways. That, even without the restrictions, can be hard to do, considering just how chaotic Fight Club gets.

Buying items would make you able to use them at any time without having to rely on others or praying that someone you're playing with will have the weapon; same principle would apply to modifying weapons. I see your point and I partially agree, but personally I think the negative feedback loop you're describing would be a result of people misinterpreting simple statistics rather than the intended outcome. The idea is to encourage weapon diversity by pointing to varied options that APB offers. I agree in a way. The current state of our matchmaking system is quite shoddy as a result of, among other things, rampant dethreating - but I wouldn't say we need a new system, but rather the current one to be fixed. I think one of the biggest barriers behind Armas trials being truly useful is how they're only really usable once a year for a very short period of time - which, depending on how long it takes for a mission to spin up, might not even be enough (if we talk about the 30 minute period for F2P players)... and let's not even discuss the situations when the weapons won't even be useful in a mission due to the circumstances (for example, getting a trial lease of an SMG and getting forced to play The Fast And The Incarcerated instead, where you would really be better off with an AV weapon).

...which is clearly why you posted five more times without actually contributing anything beyond personal attacks directed at me instead of arguing the things I've said. 1) My deepest apologies if the phrase "ad personam" is too complicated to comprehend. (Should I be saying "comprehend" or is that also too complicated to use in a discussion?) 2) One of the major points of this thread is the discussion of the negative influences of APB's current monetization model and how in a transaction between LO and Player1, these two parties are the ONLY sides that benefit from it, which in turn fosters an environment of hostility towards those who decide to spend money. If you consider this to "literally have no meaning", then I'm afraid this confirms my suspicions about you not actually having read the thread for what it is and instead picking a fight with strawmen.

What happened to that promise? :[ Man, it'd be awesome if you actually tried to address what this thread is about instead of fighting strawmen. New players have neither the equipment options to adequately fight higher skilled players, nor the experience with the game to put their equipment to good use. For the sake of desperately trying to say that this is not the case, you furthered the problem just so you could be able to bring up an anecdote. I fail to notice any marketing taglines of APB that encourage players to "be d-bags to new players"; the most you could point to here is the generic "from nobody to nightmare" stuff, and that's if you wanna be real stretchy. Using ad personam again instead of addressing the key points of the thread. How many times is it now?

The post never presented players as a negative externality (because how would that even work?); at all points this term referred to methods of inconveniencing new players, most commonly through setting them at a straight disadvantage compared to long-standing players. One of such disadvantage is the severe limitation of available options. You're trying to rephrase the argument so that it fits your line of reasoning. Unfortunately, it doesn't work as you wish it would. In a transaction between Little Orbit (first party) and a specific player (second party), other players will be the third party, as they do not all receive the same benefits from the transaction. You're thinking of externalities exclusively as tangible/physical costs and ignoring the situations where they are effects. You don't need me to tell you that interpreting things at face value and through exact words is not the way to go. I've been referring to the issue of our current matchmaking system, being that experienced players skew the threat system through forcing uneven matches by deliberately ruining their own threat. It's as if you punched a baby to prove that babies are able to participate in fights - 1) you forced one upon them for the sake of your argument, 2) they really shouldn't be participating in fights with presumably grown adults [at least not until they are adults themselves ',:) ] 3) congratulations on admitting to apparently playing matches far beyond your skill level instead of fighting equally-skilled people. I've been willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but at this point I am honestly convinced that you didn't actually read the thread and instead started responding to things that weren't actually said anywhere but in your imagination. I suggest that you compare your posts with the actual discussion before you start acting all triumphant about "winning" it (keep in mind: it was always meant to be just a discussion, but you felt the desperate urge to... prove your superiority through insults or something? instead of actually discussing what was said in the thread). (Adorable ending there, trying to make yourself look like part of "the cool kids!". Would've worked better if you tagged the actual person who usually says that catchphrase.)

...what are you even trying to say here? "Muzzle Brake (Horizontal)" redistributes (or redisperses) recoil. More vertical recoil, less horizontal recoil. It's not a flat reduction to statistics; it never was one. And how exactly does my playtime factor into being able to read item descriptions? So you proved that low threat players struggle against experienced people... by deliberately getting matched up against low threat players as an experienced player. ...congratulations on perpetuating the problem, I suppose? Care to actually elaborate on that thought instead of trying to act all smug and superior? The thread could use genuine contributions instead of more of you punching down and trying to establish superiority.

This basically boils down to ignoring the problem and calling it a feature. Modifications have their mechanics explicitly stated in their description. Even the specific example used here - Muzzle Brake - specifically says that it reduces horizontal recoil at the expense of vertical recoil. I don't understand your argumentation (or phrasing) here - how would someone not reading item descriptions lead to cheaters getting away with their cheats? 1) Now you're just using ad personam. You can do better than that. 2) Selective quoting makes posts occupy less space and clarifies which part of the post is being addressed in a given paragraph. 3) If I needed to address a point with a reply, then by definition it hadn't been clarified enough, nor was it insignificant to the point of not warranting further discussion.

Is it really entitlement, to want a fair fight when you enter a game? There is a significant difference in the capabilities of a R9 player with the unslotted STAR 556 and no character mods except for the Field Supplier when you match them against a R255 player with all character mod slots unlocked and a 3-slotted weapon. These match-ups unfortunately do happen. The promise of "eventually working up to be a somebody" isn't an appealing prospect when a brand new player is matched up against max rank players with endgame modifications and there seems to be no end to the initial losing. It's as if you were tied to a chair and continuously slapped in the face, with the slapper insisting that if you persist for long enough, maybe you'll have a chance of slapping back too. You seem to be misinterpreting the whole point of 1) minimizing negative externalities, 2) giving players a way of balancing gameplay through blacklisting. On the note of progression locks, what would you say about the fact that the most commonly used weapon modifications (Hunting Sight 3, Reflex Sight 3, Improved Rifling 3) have a severely reduced rank cap (R60, if my memory serves me right) in comparison to R195? As a sidenote, I'm honestly not a fan of the holier-than-thou patronising tone you seem to take on in your post.

So how exactly is it LO's fault that pre-buyout G1 mishandled/discarded the necessary data? But that is your hierarchy of value. A different player could give us a different answer, perhaps even one that is exactly opposite to yours (i.e. "take away my cosmetics, leave gameplay elements intact"). How would you go about handling a situation where different parties voice different concerns? Once again: this entire thread is blaming LO for things out of their control.

Yeah, "just because" they have no way of verifying who actually spent money. Without these logs, any random schmuck could lie to them and go "yeah I got all of armas bought, pls gibe it to me again" - and how could they possibly verify that? You do realize that Innova shut down in early 2017 and had everything in its Armas completely free in late 2016, right? Little Orbit literally hadn't even been in charge of G1 yet when that happened. It's literally not their fault that they can't fix this situation without issues.

I agree on the UI front here. I don't think that changes of this caliber would be possible with the current interface/UI. On the subject of rewarding even the smallest time investment - I believe the weapon lease prices (and the whole thing with mod slot versions being locked behind a role grind) can be discouraging to newcomers. You get a temporary version of a gun by investing money that probably took you at least two missions to accumulate (assuming we're talking about a completely new player with nothing on the account), you don't have a way of giving it a test drive, and if you don't like the weapon for any reason, you can drop it and decide that you wasted your money - or you can suck it up and play even more with it, in hopes of eventually getting enough kills to unlock mod slots. (And after that you have to grind even more for mods.) However, I don't have any idea of fixing this issue. Raising the normal monetary rewards for missions (i.e. the money you get without premium) sounds like a great way to devalue everything and cause problems with the Marketplace economy. Rating/Rank locks have always felt arbitrary to me, and I think the game would benefit from their removal. About grinding - yes. Even though I may have given off a different impression earlier in this post, I think the grind isn't an inherently bad thing; having it in the game could get people to spend their time in the game, however I think it would be beneficial to everyone if it was kept to cosmetic rewards only, so that actual gameplay changes are more easily available. On the topic of making APB easier to get into - that was one of the key thoughts behind the shared inventories idea. In-game gear turns from "things that only I can use to my advantage" into "things that my entire team can use to our advantage". If you are playing the game in a close group of friends who are also new to APB, you can buy one car by yourself and make it a spawnable option for other players in your team too (as long as you're all online together at the same time, obviously). If you are joining a friend who has already been playing APB for a while, you can use your friend's gear when you're both playing together. This system largely depends on people trying to work around the mission limitations by looking into buying more diverse gear. If an N-TEC gets blacklisted, teams might see it fit to turn to the STAR or the FAR in order to still have the same weapon role in the team. Similarly, if an ALIG gets blacklisted, it might be a good idea to invest into a DMR-AV or the Dog-Ear. And about competitive/ranked environments - oh yes. I would love to see teams adapt to the dynamic rulesets. You can blacklist the N-HVR, but this would mean that your team can't use it either. You can bring an N-TEC with a meta mod loadout, but it would mean that your enemies can use it too (provided that someone doesn't blacklist one of its mods altogether). All that said - thank you for contributing to the thread! (I've given you a reaction to match ) This is something that I've mentioned in the final section of the opening post. Giving players an opportunity to try out weapons owned by their teammates (or enemies) can invite said players to buy a weapon they find interesting at a later time, in order not to have to rely on others having it. Buying an ARMAS weapon for yourself would also give you the option of applying mods of your choosing to it - as mentioned before, shared weaponry could not have its mod setup changed by anyone other than its owner.

This thread is a consequence of a discussion that was initiated during my APB stream; the discussion concerned things such as the impression APB leaves on a new player. During the talk, an idea emerged that I believe is worth discussing here on the forums. As it stands right now, new players are at what they perceive to be - and what practically is - a massive disadvantage. Allow me to paint a picture: You download the game, you start it up and you create a new character. Upon joining an action district, you are given one primary gun (before tutorials), one secondary gun, and a bit later you're given one orange mod and one grenade type. As you are put in a mission, you are put against people with flashy symbols before their names, driving massive cars that seem to eat your grenades and still be able to drive, flinging grenades that chew through you, and shooting weapons you haven't even had the chance to see until that point, After a streak of lost fights, the mission concludes - very probably with a loss for your team. As you open up the scoreboard - which is an inevitability, as the pop-up at the side of the screen simply won't go away until you press Tab - you see the cards of other players in your mission and you notice that nigh all of them are using weapons with three modification slots, running all possible character mods and consumables, Some of their weapons even have golden icons on the scoreboard. The obvious conclusion is that they're using pay-to-win gear that you can't even reach, leading you to question whether staying in this game is even worth it, seeing as you're getting your butt handed back to you by those who have spent money on the game. Not to mention the fact that your team will probably jump to insults, demeaning you for daring to be new to the game. The idea discussed in my stream concerned fixing the general attitudes of the community by readjusting the way content distribution works in APB in order to combat negative externalities (or, the process of making every player other than the paying one miserable in small ways). This consists of a few parts that I will try to explain in detail in the following few sections of this thread. x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x 1) Share unlocked content within missions and groups. Make gameplay elements able to be used regardless of rank by people in the same mission and group. Locking content to individual players depending on how far they've progressed in the game does not give the newcomers a level playing field. Comparing even just the orange character mod options, a new player will only have the Field Supplier at their disposal up until they reach Rank 195, at which the options really open up (e.g. Blowtorch) - and this is just one of the categories. We also have vehicle mods and weapon mods that are further limited by rank restrictions. What I think would be a good way of fighting these limitations is to make the players share their (selected) weapon/mod/equipment/vehicle unlocks between people in the same mission. In other words, it would be a system where each player can influence the range of items which appear in their mission by contributing them to the mission pool. Extending the same functionality to people within groups would incentivize teaming up and also allow players to "test-drive" weapons and other inventory options. This does not impair the experience of players who have purchased items from ARMAS, as they still have the rights to use the items. A parallel can be drawn to Payday 2's monetization system and how it incentivizes paying for playable heist DLC. You can play all heists in the game even if you don't own their corresponding DLC - the only caveat is that someone else has to host the lobby for you. This can lead to people socializing (and sometimes even making friends) with other players who have spent money to unlock the content. Purchasing heist DLC gives you the privileges of hosting a lobby for it yourself, creating an example of a positive externality. Everyone benefits, no one loses out. (Maybe except for those who keep solely to themselves and don't spend/contribute anything.) Obviously, this would require some changes to the gameplay flow - and perhaps most importantly, to the way missions are started. 2) Add a pre-game period before the mission begins AND let players blacklist items. Give each player a warm-up period to analyze their options and prepare for the mission, while also letting them blacklist elements of gameplay. Let's assume a scenario where the player is outside of a mission. They can choose to freely edit their inventory, change their equipped weaponry and the range of mods that will be mounted on their weapons. Once a mission is initiated, the game also starts a pre-mission period during which the players can analyze the items contributed to the mission pool (and quickly readjust their inventory with the new options, if need be). When the actual mission begins, the players will be able to use the items within the mission pool, on both sides. Additionally, each player can blacklist one item (from any category) in the game - said item will not be able to be used by anyone in the mission, even if a duplicate or a reskin is provided. (In order to counteract this system being misused to prevent new players from playing, the STAR 556 and the Obeya FBW would be unable to be blacklisted.) Weapons with mods applied to them will not be able to have the mods removed or changed, even by their actual owners. If you mod a weapon, you have to commit to its mod setup for the rest of the mission. Blacklisting a weapon is also a blanket blacklisting of all of its presets and reskins. For example, if the N-HVR 762 is blacklisted by a player, this also includes the PSR 'Harrier' R&D III. If a weapon modification is blacklisted in the match, the effects of the mod would be cancelled for the length of the match. The weapon with a blacklisted modification would still be usable, provided it's not blacklisted by another player in the mission. If a player is called in as backup and their blacklisted item is in the mission pool, players will receive a warning in the top middle section of the screen that their item will be forcibly unequipped after 60 seconds, forcing them to switch to another, non-blacklisted weapon. On the list of weapons on the inventory screen, blacklisted weapons would be explicitly depicted as "not available". Once a mission is over, all items "borrowed" from other players are forcibly unequipped from the players (unless they are in a group with the owner of the items). It's also important to note that any and all blacklist restrictions would only apply within a given mission and that mission only. If you finish a mission with someone who blacklisted Car Surfer, then start another mission without that person, Car Surfer will not be blacklisted in that second mission. 3) Display item use/blacklist statistics in-game and on ARMAS. Have each item's description display clearly how often it's blacklisted in recent matches. With the implementation of this system, it would be possible for the game to, in a way, balance itself. Checking an item's properties both in the game and on ARMAS should display usage statistics, more specifically how often the items are blacklisted from matches. This would give both the players and the developers an idea of which items are considered problematic. Mock-up of a part of an ARMAS page for a preset weapon: With this type of information, it would be easy to find out which item is the most often blacklisted by players. A 2% margin can be chalked up to preference, but an item getting blacklisted in 40% of all matches in one week would be grounds for concern*. (*Numbers are not exact figures and are only meant to illustrate the thought process.) x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x The expected changes: In its current situation, APB as a whole feels almost deliberately stacked towards making every non-paying player's life worse. The only party which benefits from any non-cosmetic purchase is the paying player, and even when we talk about things that are not related to paying (and instead are locked behind progression), much of the content is exclusive to players who have grinded enough to reach the endgame/rank 195+. The introduction of the changes suggested in this thread would hopefully have the following results: Players who spend lots of money on the game (colloquially speaking, "whales") would no longer be the only beneficiaries of ARMAS purchases. Their purchasing power also becomes an asset to other community members, turning the public view of a whale from "a selfish big spender" into "a sought-after player who opens up a large variety of options", both to the whale's team and to the opposing team. This also does not take away anything from the players who have spent money on the game. A non-paying player can only have access to a weapon if they are in the presence (in a group or in a mission) of someone with that weapon - or if they actually buy the weapon themselves. The ability to shape the flow of the game by blacklisting items gives an opportunity for the underused equipment to be viable. As a specific weapon gets banned, it may become a necessity to use its alternatives that serve the same purpose. As a result, players may turn to using weapons they normally never use - or buy more options in the same field, which have a lower chance of getting blacklisted, but perform the same job just as well. Similar logic would apply to vehicles - if the Pioneer or the Espacio were suddenly a prominently blacklisted item, players would turn to other alternatives, Players are given an incentive to group up, or even join clans with others, regardless of their paying status. Those who pay, will provide their team with benefits. Those who don't, will put themselves forward as potential team/group/clan members. Inviting friends into the game becomes easier, as when you group up with them, you also automatically give them a free lease of your inventory while you're in the same group with them. This lets new players test out gear in the game without spending money or hours of their time on grinding for it. It also gives the players an incentive to play the game together without having to worry significantly about one player falling behind on loadout options. Most of the content becomes truly available to the players regardless of their time investment, making the game more approachable, Modifications usually understood to be gameplay changing - and which are only really available to R195+ players - become more commonplace and the players can personally gauge each mod's, vehicle's, or weapon's viability without having to grind for it. x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x=x I believe that the introduction of the system described in this thread could be beneficial to the community and to the game as a whole. However, I'm not presenting this as an infallible plan. If you see issues with this idea, please feel free to voice your concerns. We can only create change by providing feedback to each other. If you agree or disagree with something written in this thread, leave a post explaining why, and make your voice heard.

To clarify: QoL probably means "ratings under posts should include lists of who rated what". Then again, I'm not fluent in QoL-ese (nor do I want to be). My take: For several years I've been a member of Facepunch forums, where such a rating system exists - though it's far more open than what we have here. While the G1 forums have 6 ratings, most of which are dedicated to positive reactions, Facepunch gives you a far wider scope of reactions - we have post ratings such as Agree, Funny, Winner, Cute, Friendly, Sympathy (showing compassion), Informative, Good Idea... but also more critical ratings such as Dumb, ["Rude Person" (thanks, forum filter!)], Bad Reading, Baby, or Snowflake. (A similar system exists on Knockout Community Forums, an offshoot forum where FP users and moderators are planning to move if/when the owner of Facepunch decides to shut it down, which he has hinted at in the past.) The idea behind this system is to allow feedback to posts without requiring users to write more posts which would not contribute anything substantial to the discussion beyond "I agree!" or "I disagree"; posting such messages would also move threads closer to the post limit (after which the thread is automatically locked). The caveat is obviously the fact that you have to own up to your opinion, as clicking on a post's ratings also shows a public list of users next to the ratings they assigned. On that note though, FP and KOC make a point of drilling the following mindset into its users: stop caring about ratings. Not everyone is going to agree with you - and that's okay. I like the rating system. I find it intuitive for gauging other people's opinions and finding out what individual users are like towards opposing ideas... but I'm not sure if I would like to see the same system here. FP/KOC's rating system works partially due to how it is moderated, not just by the moderators but also the community itself. Caring about ratings (including, but not limited to, editing your post to complain about negative ratings) is frowned upon - but so is spamming insulting/negative ratings under every post in the thread. I can't imagine the same thing holding true here - and asking LO to moderate ratings would only mean more unnecessary work they'd have to do on the side. In terms of general attitudes and maturity, APB's community is practically at high school level. We're all very cliquey and will generally flock to any reason at all to flex on others and show our superiority. Case in point: in the last thread where I participated, another user tried to invalidate my opinion by publicly assuming that I'm new to the game and/or silver-ranked, thus I should shut up. Obviously the user was wrong on both counts, but it still serves as a display of how we treat each other in this community. Now imagine this extending to people automatically giving negative ratings to posts not for their content, but for who wrote them. The topic is also complicated by the fact that we have a public score display under our avatars, showing the amount of positive ratings we've accumulated in total. I understand that one of its purposes is to reward users who submit thought-out, positively rated, and agreeable posts - but at the same time it "gamifies" posting (encouraging quick and witty one-liner responses at the beginning of a thread) and can discourage actual discussion (something like "this guy's saying something that the high-rated guy is disagreeing with. why should I listen to him?"). To summarize: TL;DR: I don't know if that's a good idea. I personally don't think it could be introduced to the forums - not with what this community is usually like.

Yes, because as a new player (or just a player in general) I will jump at the option to choose between "instance" and "instance that will kick me out if I do anything other than constantly play missions". /s

Great - now the "only" thing that's needed is the removal of the front-facing District Select with panel display and making Advanced District Selection the standard interface! - because when you press the images, you have no control over which instance you are sorted into, as the game will pick any available instance for you. This idea will also complicate things for new players, who are already struggling to find their way in APB with how barebones the existing tutorial system is. The bigger picture is that of those people who are logged into the game, they still count as the playerbase regardless of their "in mission" status. If they want to race around the district and not participate in missions, if they want to have Calabria derbies, if they want to fight 1v1 in closed groups - they are just as valid players as you are. Unfortunately your bigger picture deliberately excludes and alienates parts of the playerbase which don't match your definition of playing APB. And who are you to say that they don't count as players if they find it fun to play APB for something other than missions? And just apologizing for the poll doesn't change the fact that you deliberately worded it in a way which insults and misrepresents those who disagree with the loaded question posed in it.

>using threat levels as an insult >using threat levels as an insult in a game where the matchmaking and threat levels are ruined by dethreaters >instantly assuming that someone with an opposing opinion has less experience with the game >dismissing opposing opinions without trying to provide counter-arguments >being smug about it all I'll take the game "dying" from people wanting to play it in a way other than playing missions over the game actually dying because people like you actively attack and drive away anyone who does not stick to the elitist hivemind.

It's rich to see you accuse me of being unable to read with comprehension (instead of, y'know, rebutting my arguments that I actually used) while proving that you didn't read my post. The opening post says nothing about empty instances not falling under the same ruleset, nor does it propose any amount of players that would activate the ruleset, hence why it's only logical to assume that OP wants to apply this "10 minutes before kick" ruleset to all instances. I addressed that in my post. You would have known that if you had actually read it. Once again, please do actually read it - and then we can talk.

First and foremost, I'd like to say that it's honestly pathetic how the choices available in the poll are blatantly shaming those who disagree and painting their disagreement as coming from only one position. OP, you could have at least tried to act like you don't have personal bias here. If we're at that level of maturity, you might as well set the options to "Yes" and "No because I'm a stupid doodoo-head". "Playing casually in another instance" - you're not proposing that to be an option though. You did not propose a bottom limit after which the "10 minutes to get opposed" would kick in. It's clear that the proposed "solution" of kicking players out to other districts would be applied to all instances regardless of their playercount - effectively killing any possibility of freely exploring the districts on one's own. Additionally, kicking out "loitering" players would serve as an active impediment to any community-organised events. This would kill driving time trials. This would kill any car-related events. This would kill any fighting events (for example, WitchQueen's Snubnose fighting sessions). These are already not officially supported by the game's mechanics - and adding a time limit to playing in an instance when unopposed would only make this even harder to execute than it already is. The truth of the situation is that there is no single correct way to play a game. (And before anyone tries to be silly here - no, cheating is not a valid way of playing.) This is why players and communities create self-imposed challenges, tournaments, and other alternate ways of deriving fun from a virtual world. This basic idea is why speedrunning exists as a whole - gameplay focused on an alternate goal, in a different manner of gameplay. This thread is advocating for the implementation of a system which kicks out players who do not match OP's definition of "playing the game". To this attitude I would like to give advice: stop policing the entertainment of other people. Kicking them out for not adhering to your idea of playing is essentially as if you were playing with other kids in a sandbox, only to rip their toys out of their hands and scream "THIS IS NOT HOW YOU MAKE A SAND CASTLE! GO AWAY! I DON'T WANT YOU HERE!". (Plus, the issue of them "filling up slots in an instance" 1) implies that their presence is worthless to you [what a wholesome approach, isn't it?], 2) will stop being a problem when district phasing gets introduced in the future.)

I think that locking such features behind matchmaking rank/threat levels sends a message of "you only need this if you're a noob" - which only promotes hostility/toxicity. ...though at the same time, "difficulty levels" of districts are an interesting idea. How about a "Realism" or "Hardcore" District/Ruleset where almost the entire HUD is disabled, leaving only red names above players, mission info and objective markers (and maybe the radar too) on the screen? Of course that would mean things like removing the bounty system or giving everyone never-changing bounty levels with the same rewards, but the idea is still an interesting one. To me, at least.

In creating this thread I was "inspired" by the thread about health bars. One of APB's longest standing issues is the fact that its method of conveying information is not concise. There are several types of information that are withheld from the player, or only revealed in imprecise terms. I believe the game as a whole could benefit from implementing steps to improve the communication of information. 1) Get rid of the bars in item cards AND/OR Overhaul item cards in general. Let's use a visual example here. Pretend, for the sake of the argument, that you are a new player who has never seen this game before. What does this item card tell you? What are the numbers at each end of the scale? Does this go from 0 to 100 or some other number? In that case, what is the 100? What is a new player supposed to understand by looking at "Reload Speed" and seeing the bar be in the middle? "This gun reloads medium fast"? What is health damage and hard damage? What is stamina, considering that there is no stamina drain from sprinting? What are you supposed to understand by the "Rate of Fire" stat - "this gun shoots about this fast"? This type of information should be, at the very least, given to new players in a concise tutorial. If that is somehow not viable, reword the existing descriptions (for example, rename Hard Damage to Vehicle Damage). As it stands right now, this item card provides no actual information, instead providing rough estimates without numbers in a game where people try to go for minimal Time To Kill. The changes should extend beyond just the weapon item cards and also apply to other equipment - perhaps most importantly: vehicles. The bars in the item cards should be replaced with either numbers or actual descriptions. "Ramming Ability: Minimal" or "Grip: Moderate", or even just straight up normal numerical values ("Health: 1,000") can convey much more useful information in a more efficient fashion. The item cards could also benefit from having modification changes reflected on them. For example, you could have the item cards show something like: N-TEC 5 Nol Reload Time: 2.40s but when you mod it with Magazine Pull 1, the item card shows: N-TEC 5 Nol Reload Time: 1.92s (2.40s) Obviously this would not necessarily have to look like this, it's just an example to illustrate what I'm talking about. 2) Clarify the health mechanics. As it stands right now, the biggest issue with health mechanics in the game is the fact that each player's maximum health pool is never explicitly provided to them. The magical "1000 HP" number is never given to the player by the game. As a consequence, new players practically have to rely on being in a combat situation and personally experiencing a weapon's damage output to gauge it ("okay, this gun takes 6 shots to kill me"). The game should provide a short tutorial or description of the health mechanics, while also explaining the stamina mechanics and how stamina is different from health (as both health damage and stamina damage are listed on item cards, and LTL weaponry is a part of the game). Right now we're leaving newcomers on ice and practically telling them "find it out yourself lol" - and this kind of practice does not work well towards player retainment. 3) Add a health bar to the game. This might be controversial, but opinions are meant to be expressed - adding a health display somewhere on the screen (by which I mean actual numerical values instead of screen tint/hearing impairment) could be a good addition to the game. It could help people with picking their equipment and knowing whether picking a fight is a viable option at their health level. It could also, in conjunction with making the damage values on item cards numerical, give a more explicit and hands-on idea of weapon statistics and performance. In addition to that, green character modifications would have their effects be more tangible and easier to estimate in combat situations. === As usual, I'm not claiming these ideas to be unambiguous improvements or something inarguable. If you disagree with an idea I'm putting out, I welcome your response telling me why you disagree with it. In the end, if we discuss our ideas, everyone benefits from it, since we can come to a conclusion about what is good for the game and what isn't. On the other hand though, if you agree with something said here, feel free to show your support towards it, to give Little Orbit an idea of what the community finds to be beneficial for the game.

I feel like this suggestion is a part of a greater issue - that being: APB does not really communicate any statistics accurately. It's never explained what hard damage does, what is stamina damage (which can be confusing because the game does not have a typically understood stamina system in the form of sprinting etc.), what's health damage - and to make things worse, it's communicated through bars out of all things. Players are never told that they have 1000 HP, nor are they told how much more HP they get from Kevlar Implants. Similarly, you won't know that Fragile will lower your HP to just enough to tank one N-HVR shot if you're at absolute maximum health unless you are told that by someone else. It's hard to gauge the actual properties of your arsenal if you can't calculate the functional damage output, accuracy, mobility with a given weapon and so on... The worst thing is that this is not something new. These topics have already been discussed in the past. That being said, I can only agree partially. I think enemy HP should be kept as hidden information, only really available as it is right now (i.e. you can only know the damage you've dealt once the enemy is dead, by seeing your points for the assist). Player health, on the other hand, could, in my opinion, be shown on the screen without causing too many issues. (Though there's the issue of where to place it on the screen.)

I remember actually numbercrunching the prices in KTTW. The document is gone now, but IIRC ignoring some things that are unavailable separately and/or accountbound, the total price of the pack was close to the actual full price if you were to buy all the items in it individually. Honestly, KTTW's greatest issue is that the price is jacked up by all the country skins - most of which will very likely go unused, since players will probably only use the weapon skin of their own country. (Well, and maybe the Japan Weapon Skin. I'd say it's the best country-pride weapon skin because the colour scheme and the simple dot look good and aren't overly in-your-face about HEY I LIKE [COUNTRY NAME] like the other skins.)

There's also Key To The City and Key To The World. I think those packs listed above are the only gear-related account lifetime packages/bundles. The only ones that are 100% account lifetime are the ones that specifically mention it on their pages. (For example, the Juggernaut Strike Pack has "Account Lifetime Pack" listed on its page in bold red lettering.)