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Quake Live tried this and it was deemed a failure as advertisers pay for view time and players only spend micro seconds looking at in game environmental ads.
Vehicle kits draw players in as they are applicable to player tradeable vehicles, If clothing kits could be trade they would have further appeal.
Vehicle kits would be even more profitable if vehicles in general were so balanced with each other.
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If your semi-automatic weapon can shoot as fast as an SMG, Why is it even semi-automatic in the first place?
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Is it just me or is everyone miscalculating DPS? The usual formula of “attacks per second * damage per attack” does not conform to reality.
It took making my own game and expericmenting with TTK as an idea to eventually figure this out but it's quite simple.
Take two weapons: Machinegun vs Shotgun
Machinegun rate of fire is 100ms, Damage is 10.
Shotgun rate of fire is 1000ms, Damage is 100.
Standard DPS of MG is calculated to be 100.
Standard DPS of SG is calculated to be 100.
I argue that that in reality the time between attacks starts exactly at the same time as damage is dealt.
Meaning any weapon with a fire rate that is a factor of 1 second will have fired when the timer starts and when it ends.
Therefore in the span of 1 second the Shotgun will have fired twice and the Machinegun will have fire eleven times, Making the true Damage-Per-Second of the Shotgun 200 and Machinegun 110.
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It's very often that when a player types abandonmission, The active mission will find and match opposition due to the sudden change in team composition.
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Why can't weapons which are disliked for being too good become balanced by excessive ammo cost and weapons which are underwhelming become valuable for their profitability?
Essentially what would happen is that good players gain a reason to handicap themselves against bad players who retain a means to level the playing field.
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I agree that all weapons should just shoot at their maximum rate if the fire button is held down, Nothing would change except the steep learning curve being smoothed out.
Any weapon which is only balanced due to the required skill to perfectly time manually firing each shot is too easily exploited by automation.
Likewise any semi-auto which isn't good despite firing automatically is severely underpowered.
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Those vehicles could be viable for player acquisition if spawn cost was actually used as the balancing mechanic it's clearly intended to be.
If a slot-less and rent-only Benkz Mhuller M1, Balkan Kolva, and Balkan Ambulance respectively cost $500; $10,000; and $3,000 dollars to spawn then most players would look elsewhere even if all other vehicles spawns was multiplied by 10.
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8 hours ago, glaciers said:of course it does, especially in the context of pvp games, the entire point of balancing is to attempt to eliminate as many factors as possible to pare competition down to personal skill
Randomness is the only thing that eliminates personal skill from the equation, Fighting when the odds are stacked against you doesn't eliminate personal skill from the equation.
8 hours ago, glaciers said:if equity of equipment doesn't matter when it comes to apb then why are you even suggesting mechanics intended to balance different levels of equipment?
The mechanic already exists! Are you going to tell me that money serves no point in the game and there is currently no relationship between the cost of equipment and its relative performance?
8 hours ago, glaciers said:xp is irrelevant, neither your suggestion nor my issues with it are about xp
How have your issues not included XP? By your definition APB as a competitive PVP game should pare everything down to personal skill which would include access to every piece of equipment.
8 hours ago, glaciers said:one of the problems i have is the reverse situation, when a player with expensive weapons "overcomes" an enemy with cheap weapons because he spent more money on armas, or more time ramraiding, or more time in social
What weapons currently in the game would give a player enough of an advantage to consistently win against an equally skilled but differently equipped opponent?
Are those weapons ARMAS exclusive? How does making these superior weapons more expensive to use make them better?
Why should gameplay around Crime and Enforcement be so pointless?
It's been a core part of the game since the games inception, before it was a F2P game, and before the current dev team touched it.
Why shouldn't it possibly matter how much time a player spends doing non-mission activities?
Social doesn't print money, You had to do something well enough to make a player part with their cash.
That would become even harder if money was more important to gameplay.
8 hours ago, glaciers said:why does an idea need to make sense? how is this even a question?
Unless you were just saying that my words were illegible, The criticism that an idea "makes no sense" is ambiguous and nondescript without anything to specify it.
8 hours ago, glaciers said:the problem with the weapons i listed is you've listed each pair as being in the same tier, yet they have significantly different places in the meta
You didn't/haven't explained how this is a problem.
8 hours ago, glaciers said:if the intent is to influence player choice then its a failure, if a player is going to pay t2 ammo cost there's no reason for them to choose the issra over the ntec
What reason do players currently have to use ISSRA over the NTEC?
How will those reasons go away when the ammo they use suddenly costs 10x more?
8 hours ago, glaciers said:its a leftover feature because its part of a different design ethos that apb has been moving away from, albeit slowly
No it hasn't, The game couldn't have moved away from that "ethos" when it hasn't been able to move at all.
8 hours ago, glaciers said:just because the people who ruined apb intended for lower tier vehicles to underperform doesn't mean they need to continue underperforming
The cheap vehicles wouldn't be considered underperforming if the more expensive cars didn't always give you their moneys worth of performance.
Buffing the the "bad" vehicles into usefulness is impossible without harming gameplay dynamics and making everything feel and play the same.
8 hours ago, glaciers said:its extra work to reach the same place then, even ignoring the other problems cost balancing may introduce
This is just mathematically wrong.
Adding an ammo type for every weapon and balancing each with unique ammo costs is less work than balancing every weapon's equip time, magazine size, ammo count, reload speed, range, damage, rate of fire, recoil, damage fall off, running hipfire spread, walking hipfire spread, standing hipfire spread, crouched hipfire spread, crouched moving hipefire spread, standing aimed spread, aimed walking spread, aimed crouched spread, moving aimed crouch spread, and probably more I am forgetting.
8 hours ago, glaciers said:this varies wildly depending on consumable use and player progression level, but its entirely possible to only use free consumables without worrying about inventory management
Which method is easier and which is more sustainable? Buying consumables outright so you can use them at will or altering how you play the game so you never run out in the first place?
Would you say one player is being rewarded and the other punished or are these just equally valid ways to play the game "competitively"?
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10 hours ago, glaciers said:it should be convenient because the entire point of the game is competition? if players are actively discouraged from playing their best, i'm not really sure what the point of pvp is
Competition does not equal equity of equipment and certainly not in a game like APB.
10 hours ago, glaciers said:contact xp is irrelevant, the issue is cost/money and its effect on mission performance
XP is not irrelevant in a game with progression, Just because its been so long since you had anything to unlock doesn't mean its not a core principle the game is built around.
10 hours ago, glaciers said:the race metaphor doesn't really make sense because everyone is not starting from the same place, nor is every mission a self contained competition
No metaphor, I am pointing out that the correlation of increasing difficulty between "duration of effort" & "intensity of effort" is a natural consequence and not an imposed punishment.
A player skilled enough with cheap weapons to overcome an enemy's skill with expensive weapons is rewarded with significant gains in profit, How is that not skill rewarding mechanism?
10 hours ago, glaciers said:new players complain about explosives because they don't have access to explosives, preventing them from learning the strengths and weaknesses
So you think new players should get access to OSMAW and OPGL?
According to what you say there is no point to PVP when the game actively prevents new players from playing exactly like old players.
10 hours ago, glaciers said:the tiering just doesnt make sense imo, even narrowing it down to weapon categories - nfas and jg are both the same tier? shaw and euryale? ntec and issra? opgl and eol? how are legendaries in general supposed to be tiered?
Why does an idea need to "make sense" and what exactly is the problem with the weapons you stated?
That ammo cost from weapons of the same type but of different characteristics would influence player choice?
10 hours ago, glaciers said:if you dont understand the differences between the pioneer and the mikro or the resulting effects on the meta im not sure you should be discussing balance
My bad I had thought of the Packer Vaquero and not the Nulander Pioneer, I never thought to compare these two completely different class of vehicle.
Within 300 meters the Mikro and Vaquero will win any race against any other vehicle, Their acceleration allows drivers entering the vehicle to escape grenades before they explode.
10 hours ago, glaciers said:i do think its an issue that a large majority of apb vehicles are essentially ignored, but i disagree that buffing the unused vehicles is "pointless" and that making 3 pioneer spawns negate mission profit is the right way to balance things
Buffing all of the underused vehicles so that players choose to use them is pointless in my book because that would make them all equivalent and thus boing to drive.
The only way to balance all of these vehicles without removing all the characteristics that make them unique is to make the price-to-spawn an important characteristic.
10 hours ago, glaciers said:most low tier vehicles do not perform well nor were they intended too, its a leftover from rtws attempt to force rpg progression into a pvp shooter
Its not a leftover feature of the game, Its an underdeveloped core principle of the game.
If they are meant to underperform then why do you want them buffed into equity so that players use them?
10 hours ago, glaciers said:its just more work, even if ammo cost is increased as a balance mechanic weapon stats still have to balanced as well, cost cannot be the sole balancing factor
Most weapons are already mostly balanced through their other characteristics, Making ammo cost an important factor just balances the difference that remains.
10 hours ago, glaciers said:consumables have been free as mission rewards since they were implemented iirc, adding an additional way to get more didn't really do much either way for consumable issues
Players don't earn enough free consumables to make it a self-sustaining process, They have to buy the consumables to make them a staple in their gameplay.
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10 hours ago, glaciers said:a lot of this boils down to making players choose between mission performance and saving money, but choosing mission performance can (and likely will) lead to it being impossible to continue to choose mission performance without being funneled into other activities - essentially punishing players for consistently performing at their best
Why should it be convenient for players to utilize the best weapons and vehicles all the time? Why should we assume what it does for the game is good?
Players still earn contact reputation even if they lose, They would only lose money if they chose to risk outspending their earnings for winning/losing the mission.
Playing for performance is to sprinting as playing for sustainability is to jogging, Its hard to win a marathon by sprinting just as its hard to win a dash by jogging.
Losing a race against someone who has the skills to sprint through an entire marathon when you can only jog is only punishing when you chose to wager money on it.
10 hours ago, glaciers said:tiering categories like this doesn't make much sense for performance-based cost (opgl/osmaw being t4 despite not even being meta?), something already seen with vehicles, with the pioneer and mikro in the same tier despite significant performance differences
OSMAW and OPGL are very good at what they do and which no other weapon can even emulate, New players have long complained about having to fight players with these weapons.
A weapon's type doesn't just determine how viable it is in any given situation but also how it changes the performance of your teammates and the map's meta.
Rifles are tier 2 because they can compete with weapons that can potentially outclass them while outclassing weapons not as flexible as them.
Submachine guns are mostly tier 1 because they can't compete outside of short range, The Submachine guns that can use tier 2 Magnum ammo instead.
As CQC weapons Shotguns have many inherently large advantages over Submachine guns, Which is why Shotgun ammo is tier 3 and most SMGs use tier 1 ammo.
High-velocity Rifles are tier 3 ammo as they outclass anything they can outrange and their shorter range pitfalls are more easily compensated for from a players sidearm.
Machine guns such as the SHAW and its like use ether tier 2 Rifle ammo while the ALIG and its clones use tier 3 High-velocity Rifle ammo.
I don't understand the supposed performance differences between the Pioneer and Mikro, They drive differently but not enough for me to say one was better than the other.
Do you think players should have a reason to consider using lower tier vehicles, Or do you not care that conservatively speaking players never buy and use 60% of vehicles in the game?
Outside of pointlessly buffing every vehicle into equivalency, Increasing the cost to spawn is the only way to make lower tier vehicles viable choices over the popular high vehicles.
10 hours ago, glaciers said:i think you'd need each weapon to use its own specific ammo and each vehicle to have its own unique spawn cost for this kind of balancing to work, which is too much extra complication imo
Most low tier vehicles perform quite well even compared outside their tier, But the cost disadvantage for using a high tier vehicle is too low to affect the player's choice when it should.
Making new types of ammo for every weapon and balancing each with its own price would be less work than adjusting every characteristics of every weapon until they're all "balanced".
Imagine what problems the game would have if consumable items like Med Spray cost $200 instead of $2000 and you get an idea of the effect cheap ammo and vehicle spawn has been.
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On 12/13/2021 at 12:54 PM, glaciers said:1 and 3 aren't contradictory, a new player is going to be just as bad at customization as they are at shooting enemies
ramraiding and mugging are not only skewed almost entirely in favor of criminals but are also not engaging at all for most people, funneling new players into these activities so they can continue playing missions leads to a poor game experience imo
Not everyone who starts APB is bad at shooting, Like they have never played a shooter before.
I completely disagree that ramraiding and mugging heavily favoring Criminals over Enforcers, Farming empty servers does not compensate for always getting ambushed and losing work.
A major reason why non-mission activities are not found to be engaging is from contact missions being profitable enough that it makes these activities feel like a waste of time.
Which means Criminals pretty much always raid solo and rarely to play the game of cat-and-mouse/hide-and-seek/risk-vs-reward that made it interesting.
Factors for crime such as the bounty system at Notoriety 5 is currently disabled and the Notoriety/Prestige intra-mission system which was a core part of the game cycle is also gone.
Meanwhile Enforcer players rarely even look for raiders, car jackers, and muggers let alone mange to witness them because so few players do those activities.
Most Enforcers also don't know you can impound stolen cars for easy money on any populated server, But contact missions make it feel like a complete waste of time.
On 12/13/2021 at 12:54 PM, glaciers said:there are some smaller issues as well like new players starting with no money, or new players being much more likely to waste ammo in and out of missions
players do not always profit from missions, sometimes even when their team wins
Simply make free ammo for the default guns if it turns out that bad, Even if the default guns didn't get free ammo players always easily earn ammo money.
Just mug people or impound some stolen cars and you'll have your lunch money for ammo, Increasing profit on activates is also an available option.
Hand grenades would be a bigger money sink than ammo, But people have wanted grenade spawn gone for a long time and this could solve it forever.
Right now players only fail to make profit on a mission because they hadn't completed any objectives or earned any medals, The only time players lose money in a mission is due to demerit medals.
On 12/13/2021 at 12:54 PM, glaciers said:you've only given the ammo costs for 2 ammo types, so its impossible to determine that they would be the cheapest
I gave ammo costs for 4 types of weapons which showed the difference in scale between cheap and expensive ammo.
I also stated that more types of ammo should be made so each weapon can be balanced for its cost-of-use.
On 12/13/2021 at 12:54 PM, glaciers said:the starter weapons and vehicle being the easiest to maintain encourages or forces, depending on how able a new player is to keep up with costs, new players to continue using them, again widening the gap between new players and veterans
The default weapons are not so bad that they cannot compete with guns of the same type, In fact the FBW is considered one of the best sidearms in the game.
The default car isn't the only vehicle that is free to spawn, Increasing the cost to spawn vehicles encourages players to preserve a vehicle the more expensive it is to spawn.
It would make Remote Detonator unappealing to use with a high tier vehicle and encourage players to park high tier vehicles with mobile spawn more conservatively.
Right now players don't usually consider buying lower tier vehicles as their one advantage (cost to spawn) over higher tier counterparts isn't sufficiently influential.
On 12/13/2021 at 12:54 PM, glaciers said:i suppose it does come down to perspective, you see increased cost as a reason to use cheaper items where i see increased cost as a reason to only use the most effective items in order to maximize gains - i think a large portion of the community would also share my perspective, and so many people using strictly meta loadouts will naturally push their opponents to do the same
Whatever gains a player is maximizing by using the most effective weapons and vehicles which are the most expensive to use depends on what they are doing.
With contact missions the player is trading mission profitability for enhanced capabilities to earn contact reputation through better performance.
With witness missions Criminals and Enforcers have different perspectives.
Criminals don't lose profitability using the expensive equipment as long as they don't get witnessed, While Enforces trade profitability for enhanced capabilities.
On 12/13/2021 at 12:54 PM, glaciers said:im also unclear on how this would actually affect weapon use, an ntec and a misery both use the same ammo type, so how does cost enter in to the decision to use one or the other?
Again, In the very first post I stated that creating more ammo types would allow further refinement of balance issues found with specific weapons.
Though that might not be at all necessary as one might think, Ammo could already be for guns what tiers stand for when spawning a vehicle.
Even based on current cost-per-round basis weapons could be split into tiers like vehicles:
Pistol ammo and Machine Gun ammo is the cheapest meaning any weapon that uses it is tier 1 ($0.09/$0.13)
Weapon that use Less-Than-Lethal Pistol ammo would be tier 2 ($0.25)
Weapon that use Rifle and Magnum ammo are both tier 2 ($0.33/$0.40)
Weapon that use Generic Less-Than-Lethal ammo would be tier 2 ($0.50)
Weapon that use Shotgun shells and High-velocity Rifle ammo tier 3 ($0.80/$0.87)
Weapon that use Flares, 40mm Grenades, and Hand Grenades make up tier 4 ($5-$15)
Rockets are their own tier like how the Mhuller M1 is when chop shopped/impounded. ($100/$50)
Machine Gun and Pistol ammo should be renamed to "Long Pistol" and "Short Pistol" ammo respectively, Many weapons that use it should be changed to use another ammo type.
Even if ammo prices increased 10x I don't think those weapon would break when they switched ammo type because its another means to balance these various weapons.
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4 hours ago, neophobia said:no, they don't contradict each other. new players lose missions and would have to grind harder. players who already amounted masses of cash wouldn't really care all that much - and would probably win more often. doesn't matter if it's easy outside - and damn would it suck to not be able to play the main game but having to grind ram raiding more.
How often are new players losing because they are not using the best weapons and vehicles in the game? I say not that often, At most they have the wrong weapon for the situation.
Again, New or bad players can always profit during missions because the default guns are free and use the cheapest ammo while the default car is free to spawn.
Old players having mounds of cash is a problem all MMORPG games face and the only way to solve it without resetting the economy is adding a money sink.
4 hours ago, neophobia said:"players have no reason to not always buy and use the 'best' weapons in the game even against lower skilled players"
nor would they then. you buy the weapons for 10 days anyway, not on a mission base so you wouldn't know who you'd face, ammo costs are always the same too within one weapon type.
If I was asking for an increase to weapon rental cost you would have a point as players would be forced to "get their money's worth" out of a rented weapon to not throw money away.
Making the ammo more expensive means players don't lose much money from having a wide arsenal, But over reliance on weapons which are best-in-class requires compromises.
Ammo type and thus cost does not have to be the same for every weapon within a class, It's a trivial and small change that adds another characteristic to balance weapons.
4 hours ago, neophobia said:others than that, it would shift the game more towards p2w since paying players would face way less constraints and could adapt to every situation much more easily - especially if they bought 90% of armas *cough cough*. no thanks. i don't see any good pro argument but a lot of cons.
Armas weapons don't have free ammo and the cost of weapon rental isn't high enough to create a big difference in profitability.
What permanent Armas weapons save is a players time as they won't have to grind weapon ranks to have a 3 slot weapon, Filling up those 3 slots then becomes a money sink itself.
Honestly a bigger issue for P2W is the money and symbol complexity bonus from premium accounts.
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3 hours ago, glaciers said:aside from this suggestion punishing new players, it also really only works in a closed system like csgo where money is only gained/lost within the match - no need to worry over shooting money when i can infinitely duplicate a half-assed anime symbol to sell on the marketplace
Making weapons in APB a potential moneysink as a means of balancing them is not comparable to Counter Strike in any way.
A match in Counter Strike is zero-sum because it has no persistence while contact missions in APB are not zero-sum.
Losing the "match" but making money is a viable game choice in APB because there is persistence with money and contact reputation.
Witness missions on the other hand are zero-sum because the only thing on the line is money earned within the district.
If a moneysink was a bigger part of gameplay meta then there would be more competition in the marketplace for such easily made items and people would be less willing to spend so much for them. Not that it matters if you happen to successfully make huge profits selling infinitely duplicatable things on the market place, Nobody forced the other players to give you their money and time.
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#1 and #3 are contradictory.
If it's too easy to make money outside of missions then how does it punish new and low skilled players?
Players can always profit during missions despite being new or bad, The default guns are free and use the cheapest ammo while the default car is free to spawn.
#2 is merely a difference in perspective.
Most cars in the game have had no place at all in the meta because there is no reason to not always spawn the best-in-class vehicles.
Players currently have no reason to not always buy and use the "best" weapons in the game even on lesser skilled or equipped players.
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Jumpshooting was garbage though and made the game worse off.
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Experienced players kept overplaying the best and most meta weapons over and over until everyone got sick of it and left.
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Are you suggesting that only Criminals would be able to afford a 10x increase to ammo and vehicle spawn cost because Criminals can mug/ram raid?
If so that tells me I'm right; But that Car Jacking/Impoundment that needs an increase to profitability and not Ram Raiding, While Mugging just needs the bounty system turned back on.
I'm late to Enforcer gameplay but I have a hard time finding anyone ram raiding, mugging, car jacking, or carrying around more than $2,500.
I can find stolen cars to impound but I'm grinding contacts and not money right now, But as it is now it seems like a decent riskless farming method.
I would have more chances to witness if Criminals were forced to do those activities so they can afford to fight expensively with the "best" cars and guns.
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Why shouldn't money be a used to balance weapons and vehicles and alter player behavior?
I feel like this game mechanic shouldn't be ignored like it has been for years.
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For most of the games life many core aspects of the game are still unfinished, So much focus on combat has left many other problems unaddressed.
Why can players bail at any speed or in the air? Car Surfer would be more balanced if jumping off a moving car could injure/kill you.
No witnessing during missions without opposition and no reason to complete missions without opposition.
Non-mission making money in populated mission districts not being viable like it should be.
Weapons got many balance changes but vehicles remain unbalanced and nowhere near as diverse in usage as weapons are even at the most unbalanced periods.
Some vehicles are vastly superior while others are particularly underwhelming and most need more component and customization unlocks.
Same goes of Player Mods. Green and Blue mods are nowhere near as diverse in usage as weapons are or their mod usage.
Clotting Agent 3/2 is massively dominant over Kevlar Implants which is even less common than Fragile or Flak Jacket when it absolutely shouldn't.
The locked content and the pace at which players earn it when leveling up missions is the absolute best during contact tiers 1-3.
Endgame players need more of that, Separate contacts for new vehicle and character content.
There are many who want more component unlocks for the "low tier" vehicles.
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20 hours ago, glaciers said:because threat loss and threat gain are not equal for every player in a match
What if it was? Sure people's threat could get carried up and down by repeatedly playing with teammates with large disparities in skill but when is that really going to be a serious problem?
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1 hour ago, glaciers said:because global threat levels aren't dynamic, there is no mechanic that restricts a certain percentage of the active population to specific threat levels
Is that really necessary to achieve a bell curve threat level system? Why can't the current mechanisms they use to determine threat bracket a minority of players as green or gold?
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The only problem I had with threat was that the bracket sizes made no god damn sense!
Green threat was such a small bracket of the lower skilled players that anyone who was green was basically a PVE encounter.
Meanwhile gold threat was just too large a bracket compared to silver and bronze.
Why has threat level never followed the bell curve?
Make Clotting Agent 2's health regen the default regen stats
in Game
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Nah it's the lack of willpower and manpower on part of the developers and its been that way for years.