Daarin

1. Is the matchmaking update a do or die thing? I mean that in a sense are you going to try your hardest and keep working on it until it """works""" even if turns out to be harming the game, or give it a decent try and if it fails as a concept (because of how it changes core design of the game, not talking about technical execution) revert the game back to current matchmaking system? I have also written a bigger post about my concerns with new matchmaking system here: https://forums.gamersfirst.com/topic/20886-my-thoughts-on-2023-roadmap/?tab=comments#comment-229993 and i would appreciate if you could read it. 2. If all the things from past roadmap go according to plan, how many average concurrent daily and unique monthly players are you expecting? Wgat do you think would be peak possible playerbase for APB if most of your goals are met now and in future. Is the main plan to slightly increase the playerbase and work on player retention, or to work on promoting the game and reaching out as many players as possible? 3. Are we going to see more events and sales, and i mean that in quantity, not in terms of quality? There is an easy opportunity to always have the events and sales going on, why not for an example always have something on discount, both on armas and JT store, free rotating weekly trials for JT store guns, more ways to earn JT and other rewards with logins, small missions. New event every 2-3 weeks with basic rewards that are already in game would be very engaging and easily boost player retention imo. 4. Are you going to be investing into more projects or are you going to focus solely on APB now? However you look at it, the game has been neglected, besides one or two devs doing their best to improve it. Are there any plans to increase the number of devs working on the game? 5. When can we expect more active engagement from staff and more communication? And how frequent is the communication going to be? 6. Beard grooming tips, do you use any products etc..

How did it look like? I dont think i was around

These people are weirdest of the bunch to me... So you have cheats... but you aren't actively cheating, only when you assume that opposition does, so you are some sort of a justified cheater / not a cheater? Your friend is no better than any other cheater out there.

It would just make people use "look behind" button way more, adding a new meta move to use... I have to say getting used to it in APB i miss it in a lot of other games, its so nice being able to just press a button and look 180 degrees behind you instead of moving your mouse all the way to turn around

Potentially good mod to use is CJ3, however, there is no reason for this sale to be exclusive, nor for this gun to cost more than 3 open slot weapons on armas

All things aside, could you at least have written a list of discounted items?

I have been using symbol overlays for 8-9 years and I didn't have a single issue with them. I can see some potential issue with how older overlays worked - they made it possible to overlay any window of any program, therefore having to interfere with game itself. However one I have been using for last few years, and I forgot how I stumbled upon it after hours of searching is one called Nomacs. It's open source and it only overlays the Nomacs window itself, through an option in inside the program. Generally not a good idea to download any things off random Russian video, whether you are Russian or not (considering the Russian cheater culture), especially one that has a file thats hosted on some sketchy random link, and not on official site. I'm sorry if your ban has been caused for no reason, happened to me once in other game after playing it only for few hours, and never got the clarification why I was banned to begin with, so how was I supposed to know why I was banned in first place and how to not get banned again..

And i found out in the literal last minute before shutdown what i missed out on... Great. I can't believe i've played through almost every time things like these happened and never was informed about it...

To be honest, as always, I'm surprised anything in this game is done at all ever. Games that have smaller playerbase and are over 10 years old rarely get significant updates, and APB code being APB code makes it far worse. But it has been case for APB for its whole lifetime about things being barely added and done. In last 5 or even up to 7-8 years, if i remember well, only things we've got were some important rebalances (which are essentially just value changes), 64 bit upgrade recently which granted was effective, 1 legendary weapon, few vanity clothes on armas not even the packs. Im not sure what anticheat has done, as i keep seeing cheaters, even blatant ones last night. I really wish FFbans was brought back so at least we know who got banned and got some relief... but devs looked at ffbans thing from different perspective. Thing about APB is there simply isn't a proper replacement game for it, nor there will ever be one thats attractive and playable similarly enough for APB veteran generation. Person who played the game for thousands of hours will always be attracted to APB one way or the other. You can't really do much at this point to change that, reshape the game in any way you want, and people will still come back once it gets significantly improved/changed. In my opinion, the value of APB is in the player's accounts, all the items and creations tied to them. You can mess around anything else, but if you can revert it, people will eventually come back. And it took years of not doing pretty much anything, and game's playerbase drops only by around 10 concurrent a month. If you take a look at player charts, lowest points were November / December 2022, and a game got x2 player boost after 64 bit update, so players will keep coming back regardless, as long as there is something new and improved. On other hand, gaming market for shooter games has been deeply stagnating in last 3-4 years as well, there hasnt been any groundbreaking game to take up the throne and set the new standards, everything was just trailblazing. Even though we've had few TPS releases, they are at this point competing to have the playerbase size of APB. Current trend is "extraction" shooters which is just an awful genre which only few games could theoretically pull off well and i cant understand why every dev is chasing towards it... anyhow i derailed too much As much as it gets you a few whiffs of hope as you read the roadmap lines, you have to accept is that its lucky even if 20% of it is done. I appreciate the criticism but it is just the way it has been for APB. And im sure that there is at least one dev putting his all into making the game work, but its not enough, and im not sure how to fix that? Make a kickstarter? Mass sales? Maybe in a few months, maybe a year, or who knows even 2 or 3, when EU reaches critically low playerbase they'll try their best to pull the last available strings, although FFA sale seemed like one last pull before matchmaking update, which is a big experiment. PS edit: Hypothetically speaking, game going open source is an interesting idea and experiment, as im not sure how it would work out. It could be a fun playground for a while if owners just let everyone have all the items instantly, but that would kind of get boring eventually. Biggest gripe with private servers especially for shooter game would be handling of cheaters, then the accounts, and keeping the game up to begin with. So while it might be a fun place to just play APB purely for APB and missions, considering you had enough players for that, progression would definitely suffer. I imagine it would look something like OTW currently, where there is everything available for free

Guess what, all guns in JT store are doing exactly this

Sense of rarity is definitely needed in games, its a goal for players to chase towards, if everything is readily available and easily accessible game loses an important element of progression and collecting. We could argue that there are multiplayer games without any rare items or progression, but those are few and irrelevant to this example, and APB wouldnt be standing here to this day if it were one. Every single game today runs off "artificial rarity". There are events and seasonal sales, in some games there are only few items available on sale everyday out of thousands skins in game, CSGO literally survived on lootboxes. All these 3 are false sense or rarity. There is no other reason to sell event only items only during events, . No one buys chirstmas outfit in middle of summer in real life sure, but in game why would you prevent others from doing that besides creating the sense of "rarity" and limited items. APB is the game that had lootboxes for over 10 years, now they just changed form to JT gambling, nothing has changed in practice. I guess by definition you would be renting an item with a chance to get a permanent version of weapon now, but it really is same. Reason why Ursus costs 5 million and Hazardous costs 500k is also artificial, based upon stats of guns which are controlled by devs. My point is, how do you create "real" rarity in a digital world where everything is just a variable. Every single game can just be adjusted by devs for all players to have all items. So every sense of rarity is false sense of rarity which is artificially created by developers. Them adding 5% chance for drop, gun stats, etc, all of it is artificially made. How do you create real sense of rarity in games? How would you reintroduce the FFA so it doesn't lose its value completely and ruin the value for owners already? FFA used to be the ultimate goal for money collecting, after 20ish million you kind of already have everything, especially if you dont care much about having custom items from other players, so the remaining thing to collect is FFA. Also, no one is forcing you to get FFA, if anything its easier to get now. What is getting exploited are people who love to gamble and people who owned FFAs prior for their items losing in value. For a person who genuinely wanted to get FFA to play with it, it costs around 10 million now, instead of 20-25, so its a positive change to them. This was an easy cashgrab, which reintroduced a famous weapon to be available to wider variety of players, and they went for it with minimal effort, and it worked out great in terms of earning money and getting the gun more widely available to players. I used to mind it at first because i got sold FFA because people had insider information about the event, but i think im over it now. What i wish is we got a new legendary instead (there are literally unused gun models still which could've been sold as fun and useful legendaries), big summer sale with 50% off items, or better summer event where we can actually earn some things, but i guess they needed money this time, since there havent been new things on sale for a while. Also, also, one of the examples of real predatory things in this game are faction locked packs, and no ability to buy account wide cars. Having to pay 20$ to get coywolf or vegas 4x4 per character instead of having like 25$ or 30$ account wide option is an example predatory practice.

Mind explaining to me how do you create a "real sense of rarity" with a digital item?

- Slim puffer jackets, unzipped (opened), but both versions availabled would be nice too (zipped up and unzipped), this thing will sell a lot 100% - Longer length coats / jackets, preferably parkas - Male suits and blazers that dont look like dog training bite suits, some actual proper fitted suit - Short sleeve collared shirts both for males and females with decent slim fit and non plastic looking material, fabric preferably - Rolled sleeve shirt - Opened (up to halfway) shirt with good material that lets you wear chains underneath - Male dress sneakers - Techwear pants - Cotton joggers with nice shape and pockets - Track suit top - Many models of popular Wristwatches - A lot of new Hand cuffs to match with wristwatches, black beads cuff - A lot more sunglasses models - Airpods (ez sale if you make them as expensive as 3D glasses) - Newbalance, Yeezy, Vans, style sneakers - Flip flops, sandals - Letterman jacket - Male hoodie hood down with a zipper, opened - Comfy baggy hoodie with hood down - Male turtlenecks - Polo shirts - Bucket hats - Nice smaller folded wool beanie - Wool sweater with nice material and wool details - Slingbags - Ripped designer slim jeans - Good looking boots - More hairstyles For me the most important thing about clothes is the premium look and shape. If the item in game exists but it looks bad, it is worse than not being in game at all. Half of clothes ingame look really ugly or have or materials or huge models which make your character look like some sort of taxidermy doll filled up with way too much cotton. One of items that actually looked ok in recent years is the Hockey torso shirt for females. Aim for something like that in terms of quality and shape. Dont make the clothes look like they are painted onto body, look leathery, meaty or as if they are plastic. And dont add any glowing elements to them. Moving away from city urban style dress code some other suggestions are: - Expedition hat - Combat / Riot helmet - Backpack with weapons from game holstered on it, like NTEC, Scout, Oca, Obeya, OSMAW, etc. It doesnt have to be interactive where you can choose any weapon, just make like 3-5 or even 10 different ones if you feel like it, so each one has one of meta weapons - More pairs of gloves

That is a very good point i haven't thought about at all, with phasing, if someone leaves the mission, its gonna be hellish. Backup will work completely differently, you would either have to stop the mission to wait for people to join in for 20-60 seconds depending on PC, or just have 1 player less for a whole minute + time it takes to find them. Imagine the opposition being able to call backup too afterwards... Just a whole list of issues to consider for a system which this game wasn't designed in mind for. But i actually wouldnt mind seeing them try to implement it, as long as old system can be reverted. Just so they can see the mistake they are making

A matchmaking lobby where you start and finish 10+ matches if you want to without a single loading and seamless gameplay, always having something to do, watch other players play, interact with them in some way, while you are getting matched vs people in the same lobby, which feels alive and consistent, as people leave the district periodically, not instantly after they finish the mission. Also, people can join the district and just idle in there if they want to, sure it ruins the matchmaking to some extent, but its mostly newbies who do it on purpose and its most likely 5-10% of players on the map, otherwise people reserve an empty place for. I dont get the reason why would APB get turned into a hardcore competitive game because it literally isn't designed as one. You can by all means play it competitively - and this the true beauty of the game. Guns are balanced extremely well in my opinion, and there are strict rules you can use or setup matches to play competitively, even the tournaments were setup by CET, however it is designed in a foundation as a casual game. With phasing, and especially if you turn off collision and similar things, because apparently people abuse it that much to the point where its such a huge issue as blogpost says, it really leaves this game with nothing. It becomes just a third person shooter a big map and no headshots. Why would being with other people in district matter at all at that point? Why even have district chat? Why even have other players AT ALL and why not reserve an empty map for every single match? Lets take it further, the huge map isnt balanced, so why not just have everyone play vs each other at Baylan or some other cut off part of map? You need to realize that phasing and turning collisions off just completely ruins any purpose of districts, and changes the game from the core. The way the districts are designed is for a casual game, which can be competitive if both teams choose to see each other as a target they have to play their best against and win at all costs (to use the term, tryharding). And this works because community is small and you don't want to seem weak to people you usually beat in matches because down the line you get ostracized in the community and seen as bad player. In my opinion, this is the exact reason why you see so many low level alts which are playing well and have account wide weapons and vehicles available, because they don't want their competitive character associated and nickname with them all the time. Now if you consider that as an issue, phasing will make it even worse, since people would even have to create new accounts since i assume phasing matchmaking would be account wide. If the game had thousand+ of concurrent players on each region, gold and silver district segregation would work somewhat good enough, it isnt the perfect system because of dethreating, but that can be worked around in different ways. However, i would say that game can be a different experience each time even if the threats on both sides aren't matched up. 3 golds could lose to 3 silvers if silvers get a good spot, they use unfair mechanics such as running away, camping with snipers, explosives, etc, golds are undergeared for the occassion, etc... This game is foundationally unbalanced and unfair, and you are expected to lose matches just because of random stuff happening around. To make it truly balanced everyone would have to always get a good spot and always defend, because matches are always defender sided no matter what. Taking these things away just ruins the experience in my opinion, but maybe im biased because im a long time player, albeit there are still cases where i lose to newbies from time to time for all kinds of reasons, and i see it happen to other players as well. APB simply has no casual and competitive game modes. Fight clubs are simply deathmatch. You can either make the game be an always competitive shooter, make a split into competitive and casual districts - which was already attempted and people didn't like it, and in reality needs a lot more players to work out otherwise you are just further splitting the playerbase up; or leave it designed as it is, where people see matches as competitive, as long as they are played against well known players who see each other as competition or unacceptable to lose against. On another comment, extreme SBMM in itself is a big trap, because you would literally just end up playing vs players of similar skill all the time, and eventually it just turns into an ultra competitive wrestle where no one really ever gets to have fun and matches to relax. I agree that current matchmaking system doesn't work well, but changing it to phasing design ruins everything this game stands for.

This has been the most interesting and most ambitious roadmap so far, however it has a lot of things that personally seem contradictive or are either changing the core design of the game - which is why people have played it for over a decade now. Forum announcement asked for feedback on the ideas, so here are mine from a veteran player. I will briefly go over every topic and explain my view on it: 1. Hosting Upgrade #1 – 64-bit, Easy Anti Cheat, Epic Online Services Support, Prerequisites for other hosting code upgrades - Im all up for getting better anticheat protection, as long as it doesnt have any hindrance on the performance. Hopefully it works with minimal performance downside with new build - Releasing on Epic Games launcher is an interesting decision, i dont personally mind it that much, i just hope it is well timed so the marketing for that works out well 2. New Car - Im really excited for it and I hope the new vehicle is fun and balanced, and i wouldnt even mind you guys testing something new out, i hope it adds more flavor to gameplay in a good way and that it is easily accessible to everyone (Coywolf wasn't a good move imo, huge gamebreaking bug and 20$ per character to own it) - It would be interesting seeing some vehicles that have feather weight get more weight, especially cars like Cisco and Kurai 3. Hosting Upgrade #2 – New Mission Queueing System, Improved Matchmaking, Phasing - This is the make or break for APB to me and a HUGE red flag, and i think for huge part of community too, if not all veterans. Before even thinking about getting rid of districts (yes, there will still be districts, but you are effectively getting rid of them), think why do people play this game? Is it just for pure shooting? Is it just for pure competition? For customization? For lively feel of the map and world? Its all of those together in a weird but functioning symbiosis which kept people playing the game to this day. You are taking away the core feature of the game. There is so much to be said about the way how districts work and how it makes the game more interesting. I understand that you are trying to make the compromise for matchmaking but from my perspective this simply isn't it. Firstly, even considering that you might have to change district multiple times is taking a huge load on already very compromised performance of the game - while x64 helped a lot, it is still nowhere near stable. FPS starts dropping very easily unless extremely minimalistic config is running with very low res, and even then the game still has issues in certain spots. If i changed the district twice or thrice during one session i'd already feel inclined to restart the game to get its performance back up since once FPS drops, there is no way of getting it back without restarting. Secondly, this clashes with design in Hosting Upgrade #3, players will be automatically matched vs players across different regions as well? This creates issues with many things. Let me give you a hypothetical scenario. There are 300 players online queued up for a match, all of them are different ranks, threats and from different regions. How does the game match them up? If you match them with "mission queuing" matchmaking, they would either be playing against same group of 10-15 people from the nearby regions who are matched well with them or they would have to compromise where they get bigger playerbase to play against, but they have to settle for very high ping, where one side will likely be in huge detriment -- maybe you could fix this by letting people play one match on server closest to them, then next match give their opponents a benefit of better server, even with concepts like these it would still require massive reloading of maps which is something this game simply cant handle in its current state imo. In non-mission queuing matchmaking (if this were to be implemented beforehand), you would be splitting already split playerbase further. Instead of having 2 regions, you would put up 5, further diluting already small playerbase. Im all up for more players playing and everyone being able to play in their own region and others, but if it ends up being 6 20v20 servers because everyone is going for best ping and their community, instead 3 40v40, it makes things much worse. Thirdly, why would anyone be actively in a district and whats even the purpose of them if players are gonna be moved all the time? There isn't a single reason besides just driving around, doing events, or robbing - which puts people even at higher risk. Fourthly, how are people supposed to evade players they don't want to play against? District system made this pretty easy, especially considering there are factions. However, groups and factions already extremely limit the matchmaking system, so putting more constraints is just very difficult. It seems like the choice is stuck between scenarios where you play against 2-3 same sets of enemies all the time, or the matchmaking just goes haywire and makes a completely unbalanced match. There are just so many things to consider here, and so many of them break core design of the game. I could suggest some ideas that could perhap work if playerbase was much bigger, but regardless, it would be really sad for me if you traded the core experience and purpose of districts and just turn game into purely a match based shooter that has no regard for district presence However, on other hand, im open to and anticipating merge of EU and NA servers in their current state, it would be nice being able to hop on server once ones in your region go silent during late night, but adding any additional regions will just dilute the playerbase like i've said above, at least with current player count. 4. New Contacts - Not much to say here besides i hope that weapons will be implemented in good way, Im really looking forward to Scout being available as contact weapon... is it gonna have an Open slot? What will happen to all scout variants on Armas, JT store, and probably most importantly Sitting Duck / Reaper? Wouldn't they go obsolete? Definitely an interesting choice of weapons to give to Contacts. 5. Hosting Upgrade #3: Multi-World District servers - I've said some of the points from here above, so i'll focus on others. I think that integrating console players with PC players is a really interesting decision, even more interesting considering the fact that you are planning to have them roam around together, but not being able to play missions together? Its a half-baked idea, and i understand what the goal is behind it, and that crossplatform is huge nowadays and that it would be unfair towards console players to be matched vs PC ones, but i dont see how this could work out well. Just imagine the excitement of 2 people, one on PC and other on Console, hearing that they can roam around together, share their designs and items but... can't play missions together? Seems very misleading and rude towards players in a way, and this also gives more potential for griefing each other since neither side can play missions together... or do you plan to turn off the collision here completely? What is even the point then, it would be like playing a racing game where you see a "ghost" of other players. Not to mention that districts will be filled up for people who cant play together, making it far less likely for 2 teams to be matched on that same district. 6. Anti-Griefing Options / Streamer Mode - I havent thought much about this as i havent really seen many people have issues with this. Maybe if there are some really big streamers trying to promote the game and enjoy their time without being streamsniped you could make exceptional rules for them to have the ability to turn off the collisions. The nature of the game is for newbies to try and bash each other, and it is fun for them, and i say let them, at worst they'll ruin someone's mission, but i think everyone is used to this already happening once in a while. There are many ways and ideas to implement this but it isnt the priority now. 7. Upgraded Tutorial / First Time User Experience (FTUE) - In my opinion, i would simply put this as highest priority. Newbies need better everything, i would offer them far more gear, even a half-baked new newbie system would be better than the current thing. All these other updates will take time to roll out, but you'll always benefit from having more players and they will have higher chance of staying so after a good tutorial and better gear choices for start. Going crazy on marketing the game in current state is unwise, but you will always benefit from better tutorial system - and it has zero downsides and doesnt require particular timing. Dont get stuck doing other less important things since keeping the player retention and leaving better first impressions is one of most important things. 8. Server-side anti-cheat alongside EAC - While some people did cheat on purpose just to get their name out there, i think the relief of seeing actual cheaters which were high rank getting banned publicly did two very important things: ruined their reputation so they would be seen as a cheater and it would be harder for them to get back into the community, and give players relief by showing them that anticheat actually bans people and that /report wasn't useless - so they can take action against cheaters and see that they actually get punished. It was always a great motivation to keep playing once you realize that high rank player you've lost against wasn't better than you / certain guns being broken / game being broken (by not loading all shots/sounds properly, teleporting etc), but that the enemy was simply a cheater. Players who played purely to cheat for ego will keep cheating regardless because of the size of community and its nature. - I have a slight worry about how this anticheat works, since i've heard a lot about of false bans, personally i never had any issues or fairfight bans, besides few weird kicks at times iirc(?), so i'd assume those people are most likely lying and were cheating 9. Premium Revamp - Premium was always extremely unfair for any kind of creators besides theme/music. This kind of locking of the most unique feature The progression in the game is also already slow enough, with both money and experience from premium. With addition of trade system and premium earnings, i thought there would be huge inflation for legendaries. However they havent changed in price drastically, a lot of them fell down in price instead as well, its a really interesting turn of events.. Besides few most expensive ones, and everything feels actually somewhat affordable eventually in the game, and game doesnt feel like every other F2P game with rent/repair system that literally leaves you with nothing after you've paid for all the leases and things. Although i still think game is pretty tough on newbies considering how little equipment they get and how huge the hurdle to unlock it is for them. - I think rewarding premium players with extra tickets is a decent concept, especially considering they could buy legendary gamble rolls if they already had everything else unlocked. - Premium matchmaking is a hard no from me, at least with current playerbase counts. What you would end up doing is splitting the playerbase in two, which further complicates matchmaking. However, on top of that, you will make F2P players far more likely to face cheaters now that Premium players wont be facing them. Also one more thing to consider about APB is that cheaters aren't completely invincible, any experienced and well equipped player can potentially handle playing vs newbie/inexperienced cheater, since there are many mechanics to cheese them with, cars, distance, magazine size, car explosives, bricks and many more etc.. I more or less agree with other topics and dont see many issues with them Closing notes: There are a lot of interesting ideas here, but they require a much bigger playerbase to be implemented well, otherwise they are just taking away far too much from the core game experience with little to no return. If you are trying to change the APB from its core to get one shot to appeal to new players (by actually further subverting the initial appeal to begin with) and earn some more cash from it i understand that, its your game at the end of the day. I wouldn't like to load in different map / server every mission and having to wait extra time for everyone to load in, then have us spawned at equally fair distances, etc.... Game being unfair is part of the game (even the players have rules what is honorable or not), and i don't mean this by matchmaking, i mean this by all the circumstances happening around in the district, different missions, different locations, different missions other players are playing around those locations where you can bump into other people, have a noisy and confusing surrounding or props on map broken, NPC cars from the road gone... and more. Sorry for the big ramble and wall of text, i just felt like i needed to speak about this, especially considering that game would be redesigned from core. Hope you can gather some useful info from here.

Before reading take into consideration that this isnt a serious issue and i still can access the game without any issues. However it still has very weird nature so i wanted to point it out. Not sure how this happened, but it was pretty weird. Game was sitting in my library for years, and after not playing for few months i wanted to try out the new update and launched game from friend's chat window (lanuch game). However, after restarting my pc, the APB was gone from my library somehow. Im completely sure i did not delete it. After trying to install it from steam again, download started from 5.7gb out of 5.9gb. Im really not sure whats the issue, maybe my antivirus somehow deleted it but i dont remember it ever deleting the whole game, at least not in this manner.

This will take some time to get used to.... I'll still miss less spacing and 10 recent topics on right side (on home) from old forums.