Genobee

I'm still very concerned about the fact I literally cannot play RIOT on the NA server. There just aren't enough people willing to give it a go.

Can't say I hate them personally. I do however feel that they could stand to greatly improve in a number of areas. People voicing concerns is a good thing. There's someone left that gives a damn. Means there is still some hope for the game if they can turn it around.

They way the SPCT folks were posting it did seem like the goal was to attract new players. However they aren't going to win anyone over if the existing ones are grabbing their torches at the mere mention of RIOT. ...and honestly the influx of cash they'd get from a deal with EPIC would probably help save the game if anything. If they could strike a deal it'd probably be beneficial to them despite the inherent negative view some gamers have. There's a significant customer base on EPIC's store that won't give a rats patootie that there's a controversy. Have a look at Dauntless. The game was lamenting in development hell. Money was tight, time was running out, and there weren't a lot of people left on the project. EPIC shows up and bam - suddenly tons of new things thanks to them throwing money at them. Plus a huge increase in players due to the increased visibility and ease of access through the launcher. Not saying it's all good, I'm just saying it isn't all bad. IF they could ever somehow manage to secure something quite so lucrative that is. APB is in a horrid state. The playerbase has all but up and left. The remaining ones are at LO throat after RIOT. Yet I suppose it would look good to have a solid shooter running UE4... assuming they can get that finished. Which is looking a tad bleak given their inability to even get the UE3.5 upgrade out the door (not saying they are bad, just being brutally honest about the current perceived state of things here). I don't know. Something unexpected needs to happen to save this game. RIOT wasn't it. Their attempts at balance changes prior to this definitely weren't. A new anti-cheat isn't changing much. Then in general I'm just not sure why they insist so heavily on fighting the community. It just doesn't add up. They talk a lot, listen, and they still go do the opposite after all that.

Yes and no. Spending a year(?) on content the playerbase has been vocal about disliking was risky. Making a BR was risky - especially off a different type of game. All of that was a VERY ballsy move on their part. One I frankly haven't expected to pan out but did admire the willingness to at least try it regardless. That said there have been plenty of signs and chances for them to go in a different direction. All the warnings were there clear as day yet they forged ahead. I'm not very happy about that. It just doesn't make sense to me. It wasn't going to be a moneymaker from the start so.. why?

Was just thinking that I missed you seeing what the community preferred before taking action on changes. Nice to see you back at that again.

Been calling it from the start. Creating a BR from an existing title is an incredibly risky move. Let alone making a game based around that in general. The market is over-saturated with very little room for new entries. Failure is the norm. Especially with Fortnite still keeping things "new and fresh" to enough of an extent where they've seemingly had no issues with player retention as of yet. It's like trying to compete with WoW when it was at it's peak during classic to WOTLK. It ain't gonna end well. That said there is a chance it could pan out nicely, but I've been concerned about it too. What can you do. They've got their own way of going about things. This was chosen as the ideal direction to move in.

Hiding threat is an idea that has been kicked around for ages now. Always thought it was a terrible idea. People seriously enjoy clawing their way up higher. Especially in FPS games where a lot of players seek to show off/compete with eachother. How many of them have some type of rating system in place? A great deal of them. Especially the popular ones - for good reason. People like it.

Doesn't sound like it. Original post by MattScott mentions them not being able to easily slice out a piece of the update. And that was delayed until next week when they'll hopefully have the problem with the patch sorted.

They are still using BattlEye for now. They did not update to the newer patch:

How did I miss this? Very pleasant surprise. Thank you!

It was removed during the G1 beta. Showed you what weapon you were killed with, by who, and what mods both they and their weapon had. Here's a quick and lazy example pulled off an old RTW era video: On a related note I believe there is a sound that used to play on respawning that is no longer present. Lots of small details have been slowly removed over the years. Some I get. Most baffle me to this day.

MoneCristo was the guy responsible for that update. It was mostly him trying to resolve issues with the super-ultra-over-the-top bloom shader he created for the G1 release of the game. Players requested it and he went out of his way to work with everyone on getting it to an acceptable state. Was looked on quite favorably at the time. I still feel it is an improvement to say, the 2011 G1 shaders, but still lost out on some key elements from the RTW builds that gave APB it's signature appearance. Problem is during the first time they majorly re-did it a lot of the original stuff was just plain lost or busted from that point onward as I recall. Due to all the changes they'd done to the game over time. Plus things just getting lost of course.

Wouldn't hurt. Could give them a reason to finally put more work into the joker ticket store too. Though I gotta disagree on the consumables part. Those things were a horrible addition to the game that I still think needs to be changed. It didn't add anything of value besides obnoxious systems that quite frankly did not belong in the game. If they were just plain mods I'd be all for it, but as they are now.. dear god please don't let them expand on that.

Yes please. It also helps provide a better sense of speed. Well at least the illusion of it. The bland static camera we have now is just too lifeless. The old camera helped give the game that tiny bit more character.

Old emissive values on objects that are supposed to be lights. So they actually look like they are glowing. RTW's "high quality bloom" which applied a special star type glow to especially bright objects. Old global illumination values. Tired of things looking all kinds of wrong because they cranked it up too high. It's what causes that weird lighting problem that seemingly comes from underneath everything.

Still not sold on RIOT, but we will see. The work has been put into it. May as well see how it all shakes out, eh? Also the N-TEC 7 Compact amuses me greatly. Been begging for a setup in that very same vein for quite some time now. Especially after the C2 failed so darn miserably and was just plain kicked out of the SMG/AR hybrid role. Figured it'd make the perfect gun for a second attempt at it. Went so far as to dredge up my old suggestion about it earlier this year. Back from when I was in the old defunct SPCT program. That and I'm a huge fan of already made assets being put to use. Hate seeing work done on something only for it to be wasted. Irks me to no end. Well done on all counts with that one I'd say!

Looks like the latest attempt to pass some type of legislation in the US on loot boxes has stopped dead in its tracks already: https://massivelyop.com/2019/05/31/lawful-neutral-why-josh-hawleys-senate-lockbox-regulation-bill-is-dead-on-arrival/ Unfortunate, but hopefully something a bit less open-ended shows up eventually. I mean I don't WANT the government involved with gaming. It'll get all kinds of messed up in some capacity or another. Problem is companies have abused gambling mechanics to the point where it may become necessary soon. APB hasn't been anywhere near as bad as other companies of course. Shocking as that may seem given the sheer number of boxes. There's in-game methods to obtain them in theory. Plus you don't really need any of those guns. They get floored by the base offerings. Unlike other titles that offered straight upgrades through random chance in exchange for real money. Thing is they will get caught up in this mess when something does happen. No question about that. Such a mixed bag of weirdness. APB could definitely stand to have a different monetization scheme. I do not doubt that in the slightest. Thing is I don't know what else they have to generate anywhere near as much revenue. Making money off a small title is rough. Then again.. I hate loot boxes. Yet I also hate government involvement in these types of things. It always somehow ends up worse. Bleh...

Agreed. I'd consider the engine upgrade the highest priority by a large margin. Followed up by re-evaluating existing content and slowly expanding on what there is. Personally I'm right there with you even on the anarchy part. I feel utilizing older unfinished content would yield better, safer, more viable results than a half-BR mode. Of which are highly prone to failure. Especially when they are tacked onto or built from existing titles. Anarchy, fight club, the old district minigames, etc just make more sense to me.

It is absurdly naive to act like Fallen Earth is nothing but a burden. The game is liked by a good number of people just like APB. Arguably the game was also ruined by G1 way back when too. They forced all kinds of poor decisions on the playerbase, chased everyone off, and then left the game to rot. Now they've gotta re-do a huge portion of the game to build it all back up again. There's a lot of potential in there if they can undo the harm down the line - sound familiar?

Honestly I'm willing to give the newer version of the program benefit of the doubt. With the old one people caught non-stop flak despite actually doing a lot behind the scenes. I mean I personally don't believe they've made that many good choices for their program. That said who cares. For all we know this is the case here. Yes some of them are coming across as jerks, but so does a lot of the APB community. Anyway I kinda have to agree with you on the content side of things. What we have now is beyond stale. It has aged like an opened soda left baking in someones trunk for years on end. Would be really nice to see some movement on that front. I mean the upcoming BR mode kinda helps with that.. yet I'm adamant that it isn't going to change much of anything. Those modes are an old tired fad by this point. It isn't going to be breathing new life into APB (at least that is what I'm very much worried about).

Miscommunication - the single biggest killer of APB in every iteration of its life. RTW dropped the ball hard when it came to managing development of the game. The studio failed to effectively talk between teams and released a poorly designed mess. Not to mention seemingly lost player feedback along the way. EA didn't exactly help either with backstabbing them and counting on the game to fail. Then you come around to the G1 release. Lots of talking early on, but they'd stay eerily quiet on some troubling issues. Such as guns costing $60 out of the gate. Plus intentionally limiting everything possible (hi gun leases only for F2P!) to force cash shop sales. Not to mention them focusing almost solely on having their team work on cash shop updates. Seemingly not permitting them to work on desperately needed fixes/content/etc for the core game. Plus people like [you know which old community manager] & crew deciding they want full control over everything. Banning people at random, slaughtering the old SPCT program. Of which, yes, actual work was done. People like me would be in there daily checking everything under the damn sun and debating things with the developers. Then outright ignoring people and the lies players started being able to call from the start (anyone remember those "retired" guns?). Lying to us about the engine upgrade, and how it was actually intended for consoles. Etc! I could go on like that for ages.. point is people and their bullshoot are what led us here. You can argue about the details all ya want, but a repeated collapse of communication with a touch of looking out for ones self at the cost of everything else did the game in.

I mean in all fairness people don't have to agree with the direction it is going now. They are welcome to feel it isn't the right call. That doesn't mean they want APB to remain a "failure" (a game that remained live this game is still a success in some capacity!). I'd be one of 'em, but simply because of how risky any sort of BR mode in a long-standing title typically pans out. Commercially those wind up being failures in a lot of cases. BR games in general do at that.. so ya know. Tad scared of the outcome and worry they may have wasted a lot of funds on an idea that statistically is a terrible bet, in my opinion. I always firmly believed an expansion on fight club mechanics was the more sound route to go. People have always complained about how bland it is. Hell, most of fight club is was never finished anyhow. People would probably appreciate seeing that glacier of an update moving again after all these years. Then utilize that as a test bed for mission changes, altering maps, etc. I'd always prefer they take a more measured approach over something inherently prone to failure. Especially one that in theory allows for lessons to be learned for other existing aspects of the game, and eases into new things over something highly risky and wholly new. That said some people are being total dicks about it. That I gotta side with you on. People don't need to be a-holes just because they don't agree with something. That's uncalled for and does no good at all.

Practically everything laughs at it. It really is that bad. Also the guns curiously do have quite solid ranges on them. The rifle one has a 75m range and the sniper comes in at 95m. Problem is every other stat on it is just so god damned abysmally bad that I wouldn't wish this gun on my worst enemy. Feels clunky, and underperforms massively. At least the Norseman guns are more reliable. Less clunky despite their gimmicky mechanics too. That's saying a lot.

It is quite amusing that words used in the freaking game itself aren't allowed on the forums.

Doesn't interest me in the slightest. That said thank you for doing an event regardless. Nice to see new things going on with this game.