MrChan

Cheating situation's been bad since PB was turned off in October 2016 and we had no client side anti-cheat, just the slothful FF to rely on. Some days are worse than others, but the general trend has been about consistent, imo. And it hasn't changed much since LO came in. Actually their first week here was probably the cleanest week I'd seen in a while. Also, FF isn't actually turned off atm. OP, would you prefer them to implement BattlEye untested?

Unless he swapped over since I logged out, the guy advertising hax on Baylan was an Enforcer.

I doubt they'd have done it with the intention of inducing players to cheat and then get caught. That being said, if previously clean people opt to cheat expecting to get their account back imminently in a mass unban, but then totally have their shit ruined because LO don't unban cheaters from after they took over, I'll have less than no sympathy. Although I expect pretty much no one's been stupid enough to do that.

FF has often been lethargic in squashing cheaters, even obvious ones. This is nothing new, and it's why we're getting BattlEye.

Maybe she's just shutting down people's bullshoot early?

As someone who plays a lot of racing sims, I can tell you that teleporting cars is just horrible and for the purpose they serve in game, APB actually does something right by putting them server side. Actually even a high, but otherwise stable and consistent ping cos you're playing on a US server from Europe often gives you 'netcode' contacts where the cars 'collide' despite both players seeing clear daylight between them. Especially in faster categories. Now, imagine instead of car v car, car v squishy player and you kill them even though you miss by 3 meters. There are enough deaths due to barest side-swipes as is.

If they fixed performance, less people would have to run with potato graphics and that would improve the impression of how the game looks. It is about 9 years old and always had a slightly cartoonish aesthetic, imo. So there's only so well it's going to hold up until it's rebuilt on Unreal 4. Which is quite a while down the line.

It's early days, but so far Lixil's by a mile the best CM / Forum mod I've seen. Anywhere. Gives us freedom, but no tolerance for serious nonsense. And more to the point, she's always clear and upfront about what she's doing and why, utterly shattering the perpetual fantasy worlds of people who've previously been able to rely on poor forum moderation as an excuse for their behaviour.* I hope she's being well paid. *This comes with a caveat that poor forum moderation was a genuine problem. I'm referring to people who would've acted like cretins anyway, and are now doing so on here where the forum is properly run.

The worst part is, there are a few good people here who can handle the position, but I suspect most of them won't go for it and all the wrong people will. Lixil, (I had to think about whether to suggest this, cos I know you're good at what you do), but can make one suggestion based on my own experiences as a GM on Football Manager Live? If GMs are going to have serious obligations re: checking on player behavouir or being generally being available to players at all times when logged on, then I think they should ideally have a separate GM account and their identities kept anonymous from their main account. Or have their GM tags only show up on one or two of their characters. If they're required to be "on" all the time, there's a good chance that perfectly capable and well intentioned people will just get burned out and not want to play the game, because to play the game they have to also GM at the same time. That'll leave you with people who are attracted to the 'power', as such. I've seen it happen. The GM team at the start of FML (which didn't include me, btw) was a lot stronger than the one at the end of it. tl;dr, your GMs will need to be able to have 'downtime' in the game or they'll probably stop playing it. And yes, I know people are reading the anon account suggestion and thinking "Are you out of your head? Have you forgotten the Mod Squads?", and yes, that's a fair point. They were anonymous and they were at best horribly inconsistent or at worst absolutely terrible, and someone of them (imo) abused the anonymity. But that was (imo) partly because the more capable mods had left or fell out with Tiggs and the Mod Squads didn't seem to be particularly well managed or supervised. I suspect Little Orbit will have a much tighter grip on the reigns.

I've been in this game 7 years, I think I have a good grasp on what the community is like. I'll qualify "all" into "most" if it makes you happy. But based on my estimation most people who want an SS or Wehrmacht uniform in APB want it to see how far they can push boundaries of socially acceptable behaviour and see how many people they can offend because they get off on that, not because they think it looks nice. If you're an exception, then good for you. But excuse me whist I view the general claim of "it's for the looks bro" with scepticism based on my experiences of APB players to date. I'd consider a pair of Jordans a far less specific item than an SS or Wehrmacht uniform. You don't look like Michael Jordan or like a basketball player because you wear them. Most people would probably notice that they're a Nike shoe before they're a Jordan. Likewise, the act of selecting or buying a pair of Jordans is different to making an SS uniform in APB. You go to either a physical or online store and are presented with a selection. Not everything will be in your size. Even the stuff that is mightn't be comfortable, or it might have a reputation of being tat that'll fall apart. The Jordans might be you preferred option out of what's available rather than your ideal shoe. Customising clothes in APB is much freer. You're not restricted by your own measurements (or your own gender), or the availability of items. You can have nearly anything if you have enough time and talent, or if you have enough money to pay someone with the time and talent. Yet with that freedom of choice, you pick something that associates you with with a regime that murdered millions of people? And is still idolised by racists today? A couple of people in this very thread are still saying "Nazi uniform" despite the removal of swastikas, and in doing so sort of prove that the association still exists. What I find telling is the attempts to de-fang this. "Look I removed the swastika, it's not a Nazi uniform anymore!!! It's just a generic army uniform now, isn't it pretty?". I'd actually respect "yeah it's offensive, but I want it and I place my desires above the sensibilities of everyone else. Tough." To me, it betrays an unwillingness to really take ownership of what you're presenting.

You specifically said "Nazi uniform" in your post? But if you really want to tease this out, are we really saying this: Fundementally changes if you do this to it? Come on. Humans don't blindy strip things of all context just because the bit that's technically illegal in Germany is taken out. Again, I don't mind if people are willing to accept Nazis running around everywhere in APB. With or without swastikas. I'm not offended by them. Just be conscious that the majority of people in this game, make a Nazi uniform because they want to piss people off. That (among many other things) promotes toxicity and arseholish behaviour in the community. That is a consequence you have by allowing it, and when discussing whether we want to have these things in game, I think we should really be talking about that rather than going "well it's not a Nazi uniform if you take the swastika off it."

If you're cosplaying in a Nazi uniform, then what are you cosplaying as? I think if someone was dressed in a full Manchester United kit, I'd consider it a safe assumption they like Manchester United a lot.

The issue with the N-HVR is that it's supposed to come with a mobility penalty as a tradeoff for being a hard-hitting sniper, but the ease and speed with which you can whip it out and set up a shot bypasses that mobility limitation. And it isn't like switching from a pistol into the HVR requires a lot of skill, because I pulled it out in FC last week having not used in months and was able to land shots in CQC. And I'm not especially good at this game. I do agree that it could possibly be balanced without changing the damage. They should increase the equip time (or disable 3PS on it) and increase the length of time it takes to zoom in & get the crosshairs to settle after moving and see how it works for a little while. Only if it's still problematic, should they look at the damage.

He said that there were undoubtedly unfair and inaccurate bans and because of that, they were unbanning the majority of people FFd for cheating. But he didn't say that the majority of the FF bans were unfair and inaccurate. It's an important distinction. It's quite likely they're unbanning the majority because they just don't have the resources to investigate each ban and only undo the unfair ones, not because the majority of bans were wrong. You should really look a little deeper into the FF ban statistics than just the overall number. Just over half of the bans, 8900 or so, were on characters under R40. You can bet most of those were just really bad rerolling ragehackers (at least 200+ were Film) who were squashed by FF quickly because they were blatant as hell and were absolutely not unfairly banned. Ditto the further 4400 between R40 and R80.

The worst thing about this is that I can only vote yes once.

The issue I have is whenever this is discussed, we discuss it in lofty terms about freedom of expression and so on, which effectively ignores the practical reality of things. And the practical reality of this is the toxicity within the APB community. That's the level at which I think this discussion needs to happen. Most people who dress their character in a WW2 era German uniform in this game are very likely using it as a proxy for actual Nazi iconography because they're not allowed have actual Nazi iconography. You can bet they'd plaster swastikas everywhere and call their clan "Gas the Jews" if they could. How do I know this? Because that's sort of childish, faux edgy nonsense that's immensely popular in APB. And we've all seen people who've doubled down and actually had the swastikas and the clans with names like "Auschwitz Holiday Camp". At least until they were banned anyway So they're just doing it to antagonise, and you can say "well don't let it antagonise you then, hur hur I clever." and I personally won't, but the desire to piss people off simply for its own sake is a large part of why the APB community is so toxic. Yet here we are wanting to enable another instance of it? Why? It's contradictory. Do we actually want APB to be one of the most consistently awful communities? Let's look at it another way: Should it be okay for people to continuously send whispers (which unlike charater customisations, can actually be blocked) to other people telling them to get cancer and die? I mean, they're only words, aren't they? It's only offensive if the recipient stupidly allows themselves to be offended by it, right? Now, if you don't see that as a rhetorical question and think it's ok that's fine. And it won't offend me at all if Little Orbit let us have all the Freedom of Expression in the world and the game ends up crawling with Nazis. I'll enjoy shooting them. Just so long as everyone is willing to accept what sort of community we're going to have. That's what the discussion should be, not "muh freedom man!!". By being here, you buy into a set of rules. Little Orbit sets those rules. It's down to them, in conjunction with the community, to decide what sort of place here is. And Nazi iconography didn't go away in 1945 either, btw. It's still used by hate groups (well, the ones that haven't been clever enough to sub in a Black Sun or Odal rune or some other less obvious symbol used by an SS regiment), so it's not like we're all supposed to forget about it because it was 73 years ago.

Because some people are so obsessed with "triggering the libs" that they'd probably fork their own eyeballs out and set them on fire if they thought it would offend one of those SJWs. This isn't meant as a dig at the OP, btw, since he appears to be doing them as an order rather than for his own gratification, but I do wonder about his customers. I also wonder about the people defending it as innocent WW2 roleplay or just a military uniform fetish in this community. In a game populated by people who actually act like adults, I'd actually accept it. But in this immature playground covered in its occupants proverbial excrement? Come on guys, how naive are you? It's APB, people just want the Nazi uniform to be edgy and try and piss people off, and anything else is giant fib.

One would assume the OP knows this and is trying to be ironic and / or funny. But with this being the APB forums, we can't be sure and it is possible they actually mean it. If we're being serious, the idea is quite obviously absolutely terrible.

OP, what about Bronzes and Greens?

Except no one who ever made a Swastika in APB intended it as a religious symbol and we all should know that given the 'quality' of the community here. Not to mention that you can't really credibly claim it's just a religious symbol if it's presented in a white circle on a red armband, on an SS uniform. Come on, use your brain, mate.

On the pure legality end of things (Nazi iconography being illegal in Germany), they probably are allowed. Personally, I'd ban Nazi-era German military uniforms too because it amounts to someone flaunting Nazi iconography but trying to be smart-arsed about it so they can bypass the swastika rule and not get caught, but it's not up to me.

The N-HVR in this game right now is utter nonsense. This isn't a case of "git gud MrChan you big noob", this is a case of I took it out for a couple of rounds in FC during the week, having not used it at all in months, and was instantly lethal at all ranges. That should not be possible in this game. As mentioned by a couple of people, it's too easy to go from having your secondary out to pulling off an accurate shot, or at least an accurate enough shot, with the N-HVR. That effectively bypasses the mobility limitation of the weapon. That limitation needs to be put back in. Increasing the equip time, (possibly disable 3PS on it) and increasing the time it takes to zoom in and for the accuracy to reset after moving might do it. I'd say try that for the time being, and then after a couple of months look at whether the damage needs to be examined.

Keyboard & Mouse, I assume.

But anyone with any modicum of common sense knows none of those things are on the table and aren't going to be. Why are gamers obsessed with considering themselves persecuted? Because we're not. We really aren't, like.

Car Spawner and Car Surfer were not in the game at launch. They were put in at least a couple of years after launch.