Salvick

Quote Hope this helps to clarify and continue to develop this conversation and sorry for the wall of text but you took a big effort to address each one of the items you were concerned about so I wanted to be as much detailed as I could. Regards! Thanks, glad to see some more clarification, and detail. Overall, I'd have to say the matchmaking, threat, and league/season ideas you've provided aren't bad. I'll look into what you were talking about with rewards. I can see how those could boost the game's popularity, as well as market it. (The Word of Mouth is very powerful) Thanks for providing a thorough reply! - I'd give you a like but I'm out of them for the day ._. Thank you for the exchange indeed, yes I meant "it won't reinforce the idea of P2W" and I did give you a like, lol. Looking further to see what else you and anyone else bring here.

I was wrong when bringing the idea of multipliers affecting also the standing points (xp) my mistake, league multipliers should impact only in cash, then Premium boosts the same it always did, both money and standing points, rewarding even better when there's this multiplier thingy in effect too. (Notice the sample grid I've made there is not such thing as XP values) Exactly this is what I've been saying would be the natural regulator of such rewarding system, top tier / maxed out character players will be used to the game longer enough to already have their rigs set up and even owning whatever they wanted to buy, while giving them some extra APB$ cash and JTickets would motivate them to move out from Fight Club and go play missions with other buddies and specially newcomers. Also I clarified in this same reply that standing points (XP) are out of the equation because that's something you only boost with premium, I agree. I never mentioned, but taking hours on record is key, I've been always wondering why when I roll a new character the game still thinks I should be paired with a totally new player.

Excellent input, and I appreciate the effort you've put to point out each one of the items I've been bringing here. I'll be a bit brief because been already replying a few posts and I don't have much time right now but I don't want to delay my answers to you. Rating based on frequency playing: I see I haven't been enough with that point, my bad. What I mean is not a "threat/rating reset" but just some sort of "weekly or monthly league season" Like, you carry over your rating through weeks/months but the system restarts the ratings measurements while keeping everyone's ratings each week/month to ensure players are still active and ratings are consistent through time before it keeps giving away rewards and matching players who might not have a steady consistency and also to consider the amount of active players for further seasons. Although something likely already happens with the current system, what I'm trying to say is that if you have more sub-tiers between threat levels, each "league session" it settles down again to match players regarding their consistency and regularity playing the game. Let's say we have a niche of 80 players in gold, 50 silvers and 20 bronzies, which is a total of 150 players, then the next season there are only 60 goldies but 100 silvers and 80 bronzies because of new players joining which gives a total of 240 players, then there should be a factor to adjust the leagues in order to gran better quality match making, so regarding the amount of players available the next season could drop down or up a bunch of players who are in the border. I couldn't go further with this because I'm really not that much into this kind of math stuff tbh, must be more a matter of laziness I admit it, lol, but I think this serves the purpose of explaining it. Weapons role based match making: You are totally right with that. I just suggested this could be considered as a very small factor put only as a last weighing, I mean, once the server gather the players it needs for a match, when there are more players available than the needed for a determined mission, then it could bring that factor to choose between those available. It could be based on equipped weapons instead, but that way you can easily game the system since you usually switch your guns when the match starts. And there ^ I think I answer your question about what I mean when I say "game the system" I mean "fool the system", evade or circumvent its given mechanics. Rewards and Prizes: I'm aware of what you pointed out regarding this, what I mean with my proposition is more aimed to provide a stimulation for ranked matches, I'm quite against rewarding top tier players from over the lower rank and newcomers, since I think these needs motivation to get involved with the game and eventually get hooked, but also it is hard to retain a player that already experimented all the features of a game and might get bored than bringing new people who can be baited to join the game and would take months of experimentation if they feel attracted to discover everything the game can offer to them. Said this, and based also in your feedback along with what I'm already trying to bring with my suggestion, these rewards shouldn't be something that suffocates the already in place system and its rewards but should be some sort of accelerator that stimulates the current system. Its complicated for me to put this clear but let's do an analogy where the current rewards system you listed represents 100% of the available prizes we can get for free by just playing the game, then I think that anything we add to it by improving the match making with some sort of leagues mechanics, should boost these by a very small factor of 5% or maybe 10% in given rewards, either by boosting the time needed to unlock the stuff we have or by adding a new factor of interest as it might be the Joker Tickets, which is indeed a third kind of currency the players have to acquire items, and from a business perspective, the more options to get items you provide, the players will feel more comfortable against the stress it might cause having very limited ways to acquire valuable items, which also reinforces the perception of the game being P2W. Examples of leagues and rewards: Honestly, I was thinking of old games that no longer exist and mainly private hosted servers, where the ladders used to grant access to exclusive stuff, either visual enhancements or special weapons or vehicles and even titles / tags to show off, etc. but what made me think of all this, and some of you here might want to kill me for this, is an Android game that have been brutally criticized for its business practices and now is climbing to number #5 in revenues, can't do deeper research right now so I'm linking just this post where they explain a leagues system and I'll let you do the research yourself if you want. Only thing I can say, I stopped playing that game a while ago because of tankers de-ranking to destroy weaker players and since they started to implement a rewards system for climbing up the leagues, the game population boosted considerably and it really seems they addressed the issue quite well, yet they apply the most hardcore gambling tactics ever seen which I'm totally against. Although I have odd feelings about rewarding top tier players above the new comers and low rank because, as someone said, some people simply doesn't climb further in the ladders either by their own skill limitations or interest put on being competitive or because of other technical limitations, but I mentioned something about this already here in this reply earlier. Anyways, I think that having the Joker Tickets currency already implemented, Little Orbit have a chance there of exploit that in many different ways from a marketing perspective to introduce the players to the products they sell in the ARMAS market (which is its original purpose already) at the same time they can implement it in a way that stimulates the community in a much more positive way to fix the match making issues, because beyond how perfect a match making system can be, the human factor will be always determinant and there isn't much you can do to control the player's habits besides than stimulating positive behaviors and discouraging the bad ones. Regarding competitive gaming vs casual gaming: Should bring more information but can't recall old articles and information I've read in the past, so I'm just linking this article I found doing a extremely quick search in Google. I think it is important to note that, despite that younger players might be usually more compulsive with their purchasing habits, they also have more limitations, you called it yourself when saying "as a broke student" which is natural since you'll be getting your own earnings once you finish your career or whatever your plans are, so, considering the niche of players for any game is supposed to have its gross mass in players above 20 years and specially around +30 and more, these players are not only the ones who might be able to invest (note I don't like to use the word "spend") money freely at any time, also are players who despite the competitive spirit we all put on a multiplayer game we are also looking for the overall experience a game provides than just bragging about skills, and from a customer perspective, I had too many disappointments (ie. Ubisoft, EA Games and even Rockstar now) when purchasing a product I was not able to try which made me refrain of trusting them again in further releases. That's why I think it might be a good tactic for the company to simply slap some products in your face to let you try it and taste what it could be to own these items as part of your gaming experience. As long as there are good quality products, then there is no risk and the odds are that a huge amount of players will eventually buy something, specially if they feel it is right there to reach it by simply investing a few bucks in exchange for a long term / permanent satisfaction granted. About your last observations: Yes, I insist that threat shouldn't be visible because it only feeds the toxic aspects of elitism, but we must acknowledge our rating in order to know what rewards we would expect, just as you said. The sample grid I've made is also just an example and your current rating would be visible only for you but not for the outsiders unless they inspect your character stats as we actually do. The rewards such as leased ARMAS weapons or even leased Legendary guns should be as you said very, very limited, I do agree maybe 1 day, 2 or 3 as much, and also limited to a set of lower and mid tier ones, letting the top tier items be something out of discussion in this regards. About the rewards and prizes, these should be meant to: A) boost interest in the game and commitment with the match making process from the players who should focus only en exclusively in playing the game. And B) Let the players test and taste what they can get from the game if they eventually decide to invest real money but should never be a replacement that allow freebies to consistently access to paid items. Hope this helps to clarify and continue to develop this conversation and sorry for the wall of text but you took a big effort to address each one of the items you were concerned about so I wanted to be as much detailed as I could. Regards!

Both of you @Ken2 and @VickyFox are right with your statements, this is a subjective thing that relies in our individual perception, and the diversity of opinions is what makes this forum a great place to share and exchange our thoughts. Regarding looting JMB by playing the game Vicky, and trying to put it from a business perspective, giving for free something you sell is a big "no no", so these "looting JMB" should be strictly limited, that's why I even think if it aims to provide freebies with a taste of what the premium ARMAS guns and Legendary guns are, those must be for a very short term lease. Check this reply I've posted earlier to have a clearer idea of my concept: Ken, there's a reply for you inside the spoiler at the bottom too, I still mess up the spoilers in the new forums. :S

The time for reports were months indeed, rofl. And yes, you are right, having a griefer around already screws you pretty much, but I'm saying that you still have to deal with it and there are a few ways that might help. I absolutely support your point to clarify, what I don't see viable is the concept of changing the collisions mechanics, neither do I want to, because it would remove the fun of going with your mammoth Seiyo Espacio/Nulander Pioneer ramming anything that comes in your way disregarding if we both are on a mission as it usually happens along with the fun there is in driving the dump truck along with some friends causing some serious mayhem around the city. I'm more leaned to think it fits the lore of San Paro, having more dangerous things to be concerned about when walking/driving around, even while on a mission. Plus, most of the times someone is griefing me I usually try to join the fun with them once I have a mission and I kindly tell them to please let me leave since I'm on a mission and they usually understand that. Now, ghosting to help your friends win a mission or screw someone else is an exception that must be handled by the admins, so I'd rather hold back a bit and see if the GMs presence ingame helps with this as I think it will.

Well, I think the contrary, while there have been a bunch of actions taken in the direction of "protecting" newbies, most of the stuff that have been done since ever was based on feedback provided by hardcore players since those are the ones who were part of the test servers, not trying to go against any of them, but just saying that the outcome of such decisions based on feedback from "only the best players" just exaggerated the already in place elitism the game itself has. I'm not talking about a conspiracy kind of elitism where a sect of players took control of the game management, I'm talking about that thin boundary between competitiveness and elitism that any game could have and, as you've said when you pointed out that you weren't used to the forums, the fact that a small group of players involved with the game can mislead the perception of the majority of people some times.

Totally, Citadel has plenty of Spanish players and Jericho have an even bigger Hispanic community since everyone from the Hispanic countries in the American continent plays in Jeri (a few are spread in Han tho) and that's a lot of countries.

I don't think this is even possible and if so neither do I think is something strictly necessary. In my 7 years playing the game I used to face a few of these a couple of times and there were two easy ways to sort them out: 1) Ignore them and don't let them notice what your objective is. 2) record them or take enough screenshots and send these to support, they actually temp-banned everyone who got reported for griefing with solid proof. I think might be hard to modify the game code for such purpose, although I might be wrong since I don't know, but putting the focus in something that we all can handle by ourselves by reporting such griefers and doing our best to avoid such kind of players works pretty well imo. And also Seiyo Espacio / Nulander Pioneer sales would go to drain if they implement such thing like that, lol.

No? I don't care much, but since the "de-threating" issue escalated so far that is totally out of control, we all know a huge portion of the habitue players have break the threat rating system. I include myself, I've been always against dethreating to the point that back in the days of these events where you could earn G1C and JMB by winning missions grouped with your clan mates I ended up disbanding half of my clan in its best times because my clannies were de-threating on purpose to farm the event and a few of us got stuck in gold districts without chance of participate in the event because no one wanted to play in gold districts with us. Don't you remember that messed up event? A horde of cheaters invaded gold districts and every player around was creating temporary clans just to farm the event. And before someone comes to say something about me if they saw me around ingame, yes I ended up dethreating myself too a feew times (which I regret since my threat is broken now), and it was in the worst times of the game when the old management demonstrated a lack of interest in helping anyone ingame, back then, since I returned to play after a quick break, I was willing to rebuild my clan and had a bunch of bronze and silver new players who really wanted to play with me and I really wanted to help them get introduced to the game but I would never pull them to gold instances at the state the game was in these times. I'd add that I learned from that experience, after playing so long in gold instances and finally switching to silver districts, I've found out the nicest people of this community was there, relaxed players having fun and being nice and kind to each other as I've never seen before in any gold instances...that confirms too that the amount of toxicity between the hardcore players is not only huge but also encouraged by such threat system. And the old game staff, both RTW and G1, always did their part from Sovereign issues to who knows which other clans nowadays, they encouraged elitism to the point that they even had that sort of "whitelisted" clans, and no one deny this.

Exactly what I think, and there have been a huge elitism on this game since ever, which is in my personal opinion the reason why the previous staff got so intoxicated by a minority of players who got all the attention while the newcomers were totally lost every time they tried the game and even the proper introduction to the game and training curve of such players relied in each one of us who were trying to play the game and ended up mentoring and even baby-sitting a bunch of new players. On a side note, me myself been a noob (just evolved to an experienced noob tbh) and some veteran players helped me in such a way that was so kind and nice that inspired me and that way I've been with everyone else since then. However, regarding the idea of some sort of "low tier" JMBs, aka look boxes, I think there woudln't be any harm done if we get something such like that and the concept is to let everyone who gets involved with the game have a taste of what the ARMAS items are and what a JMB feels like when you open it. I'm bringing what I think is a *win win* solution for both, the players willing to have more fair and competitive game and the company looking for new ways to attract free players to invest some money in the products the company sell. Its from a business perspective that I focus this proposition of adding prizes and rewards just for playing, and this also helps a lot to mitigate the "P2W" perception that a F2P game always gives. Exactly, but yet having some options would help sometimes, although I'm not sure how that could work in APB and I'm not bringing this particular matter into discussion and my suggestion would be just an addition to the existing mechanics. Regarding elitism, there might be few complains/threads about it, but if you would be more involved with the forums you could find out this is also a big issue in this game since ever, specially because it is the main product this game sells: the ability to stand out of the crowd either by buying exclusive vanity items or having unique versions of the available guns, which basically means you can pay to "be better than anyone" in many different meanings, plus the core player base, the oldest veterans (not all of them) and the hardcore players have been always screaming loud about anything they disagreed with the old staff giving the terrible impression that they were the ones leading the game development and forcing decisions to the game management.

I think I forgot to address this in the op, but yes, also that, threat shouldn't be visible at all. You want to brag about your stats? Then you can show a screenshot or streaming, but having it as a conditionality for anyone playing the game? It doesn't helps grow the population and discourages the casual players while also causes a huge stigma and leads to the terrible toxicity you can see these days when everybody who barely hit gold starts calling names on everyone else who isn't actually gold. Wouldn't call it "protecting" but yes, this is pretty much the issue. Indeed imo when they did this it was because they were actually protecting a minority of players who are actually the average gold ones and being the ones who are around forums and streamings more often they convinced the old game management that the game should be like they think should be, leaving the rest of the players totally out from giving any opinion since, if they are still struggling to understand the game and improve, how could they be even worried about coming to the forums and give an opinion? Specially when they might feel they "don't understand the game yet" since they are not gold. That's an excellent input, thank you for bringing this, I totally agree and this is how it is in reality, but you still need to have incentives for them to improve, if you can't improve further it shouldn't be a matter of a problem, you could still get rewarded and still try to see if you ever climb up a little be in the rankings. Please, check the suggestion I'm bringing regarding all this discussion to see what I'm talking about when I talk about a rewards system with prizes for climbing up the rankings, you'll see is not like that I'm proposing to give relevant prizes only for the best players and enforce the "noobs" to get better or get lost. I'm talking about a decent incentive for players focused mainly in the newcomers, who are the ones that are more often afraid of climbing up to silver/gold threat because they know there are players that actually stomp them so hard that they finally quit playing the game at all. This is indeed the reason why everyone who barely played the game less than a year or a couple of months thinks the game is pay2win, because the high rank golds usually also have the knowledge of the game and its weapons so most of the times they have permanent "premium" guns or just the leased ones from Joker Tickets and less skilled players, aka newcomers, thinks they can't beat those players because they are using paid weapons, while it is just matter of map awareness and team work, you can see this happening when a lone-wolf max rank gold or two gets teamed against a pre-made team of 3 or 4 silvers and bronzies and if they learned how to protect a spot they could easily win over those that were supposed to be the "most skilled" players in that given match. I'm holding a bunch of permanent ARMAS guns in my locker along with a dozen of legendary weapons too and I always stick to the stock Joker Carbine switching sometimes to Obeya or N-Tec, rendering my other guns pretty useless tbh.

Why, no. Usually you are able to do a name chance once then you have to pay to do it again. I think there might be technical reasons why this is resource-consuming for the company, either because of technical reasons or administrative, I don't know, but I do know that when you create items such as symbols, cars or clothes, and even your guns are labeled with your character name, and I'm not sure how it is stored but I think email attachments, marketplace auctions, locker items and friends list for naming just a few, are a bunch of things that might get messed up with massive name changing. Though sometimes I see people I feel I'd gift them a name change ffs, lol.

Some drugs cause memory loss, but I can't remember which ones and where I read that... ...should test these again and see though?

Good point. We still have these different rules set instances such as Open Conflict, alas we could have separated non-ranked instances. Yet, the game is vastly considered quite competitive since it is a PvP MMO while you can play it casually or just decide to stay in a lower tier rank if that's a concern. Indeed, casual/average players will gravity naturally to the tier they belong. That's also why I think as same as Kewlin said that threat rating shouldn't be visible. In one of the articles linked in the OP you can read what the old staff used to say about giving players some ability to "set a match", which I think is something to be considered too, sadly, when we had the ability to just kick a player from the mission, this was abused and every time a silver/bronze/green was dropped into a team of goldies, specially pre-made groups, they usually were insta-kicked by the team leader. I still think there should be some options they could think of to provide the players with some abilities to set what kind of matches they'd expect to get, without letting this be mandatory meaning that if there are no chances of get the match they want the game would simply put them on any other available match. But this is something that only works for a solid highly populated community, otherwise the game falls into an eternal cycle of people playing the same game mode once and once like it usually happens.

Regarding this, I forgot to clarify in the OP that also I think threat/rating should not be visible at all, or taking the example of CS:GO competitive match-making, you only get to see your opp's rank after the match has ended. About exclusive content for top players, I think I didn't expressed it clearly, but my idea is to provide rewards for everybody as an incentive for lower threat players to climb up in look for better rewards. Then you could simply put some sort of limit in the amount of rewards you get every day while also I think this would happen naturally once you are maxing out your character's progression because the items you could get as "mission reward" or "league progression prizes" etc. shouldn't be much better than what you finally get once you are involved with the game, unlocked basically everything from NPCs and bought ARMAS items, I think being on top, regarding character progression, along with a consistent high threat rating, would be an inherent regulation of this system since these rewards would turn redundant. In that regard, maybe special multipliers in the APB$ cash rewards or some extra Joker Tickets would be something worthy to keep grinding for. Also, my suggestion lacks of some details such as the scale of the rewards because I don't think I would be aware of what the business model of the company is in order to create a proper scale, but based in other games, there isn't such a huge difference within the rewards you get in the different stages of a league, depending if it is a currency or items, usually they set the biggest price as something that represents like ~20% or 25% of a decent paid item you could get and then from bottom to top you get the smallest rewards as private/bronze/rookie which then increases by a small factor of 5% or 10% till it hits the max reward. A rough example I could think of to graphic what I'm saying: Threat&Tier Multiplier JTickets JMB Chances Rate JMB possible items JMB Leased Legendary Weapon Green I 1 0 to 5 0% No Green II 1 5 to 10 0.5% 3 days stock weapons / 500 to 1000 APB$ / 10 to 50 JTickets No Green III 1 10 to 15 1% 3 days stock weapons / 500 to 1000 APB$ / 10 to 50 JTickets No Bronze I 1.05 10 to 15 2% 5 days stock weapons / 1000 to 2500 APB$ / 30 to 70 JTickets 5 days low tier secondary Bronze II 1.10 15 to 20 3% 5 days stock weapons / 1000 to 2500 APB$ / 30 to 70 JTickets 5 days low tier secondary Bronze III 1.15 20 to 25 4% 7 days stock weapons / 15000 to 3000 APB$ / 40 to 80 JTickets 5 days low tier secondary Silver I 1.20 20 to 25 5% 7 days stock or low tier armas weapons / 1500 to 3000 APB$ / 40 to 80 JTickets 10 days low tier primary Silver II 1.25 25 to 30 6.5% 7 days stock or low tier armas weapons / 1500 to 3000 APB$ / 40 to 80 JTickets 10 days low tier primary Silver III 1.30 30 to 40 7% 10 days stock or low tier armas weapons / 3000 to 5000 APB$ / 50 to 90 JTickets 10 days low tier primary Gold I 1.40 35 to 45 7.5% 10 days stock or med tier armas weapons / 3000 to 5000 APB$ / 60 to 100 JTickets 10 days med tier primary Gold II 1.50 45 to 50 8.5% 10 days stock or med tier armas weapons / 3000 to 5000 APB$ / 60 to 100 JTickets 10 days med tier primary Gold III 1.60 50 to 60 9% 15 days stock or med tier armas weapons / 4000 to 6000 APB$ / 70 to 100 JTickets 10 days med tier primary This shouldn't be considered as part of the suggestion but is just a sketch of what I think would be a system of scales to set the prizes the players can access on each league/threat rank. Also there should be a one time only reward for hitting a higher threat level, such as a fixed amount of APB$ cash but unable to get the same reward again if you go back to a lower threat level and then rank up again. Of course looking at the example I'm giving this kind of stuff implies a whole adjust in the overall economy and specially in the Joker Tickets items pricing, but despite that I think this serves its purpose of just provide an example.

Thank you for sharing your knowledge about this because I've met the game just in the official G1 release and not before. Basically what you are pointing out is the reason why I brought this suggestion, giving incentives instead of punishments usually works better since it is attractive as well for potential players who might join instead of discouraging the current ones from playing. Also that screenshots clearly says there is already something L.O. could put an eye on in case they want to consider anything such like this without the need of start coding these features from scratch. Excellent input @Dopefish

I do agree with some of what you say, but I think that's on a different topic regarding cheaters and such. I'm focusing this suggestion in the idea of bringing more people to play the game and give incentives. I'm not talking about rewarding the higher rank players, indeed these prizes and rewards would not only be limited, but also would become redundant once you gather a bunch and even more redundant once you get used to buy stuff from Armas and upgrade your rig yourself by your own means. In the meanwhile I think this as an effective solution to get people back on track with the competitive spirit of the game and the chance of getting rewarded above the current expectations is aimed to get lower rank players motivated to climb up the ranks ladder, and I quote you yourself too: ^This is what I aim to with this ideas I had. When people have something to grind for, they put a bigger effort than just posing around with a gold badge looking to be "the best player" and also there are lot of factors that discourage lower threat players from trying to play when they get nothing more than the frustration of a bad match making and a little reward for trying while at the same time, the experienced players know they'll get the same reward for playing against easier/less skilled players than if they try hard against the top ones. That's why so many people, specially average and newcomers, are skipping a mission every time they get matched against those who already stomped them earlier, but if you give everyone something worthy to fight for they stop skipping missions and ruining the game for everyone else. I might don't know about a lot of games, but I can tell for a few I saw where this problem of people tanking/de-ranking to get matched against weaker/less-skilled players was a big problem, they stopped doing it when there was implemented a league system where the higher tier you play the better the chances of getting good prizes are. Also the most important thing of introducing leased Armas weapons as an ingame prize along with some special JMB (with basic prizes maybe or very, very low chances of getting a relevant prize) is a good marketing strategy to introduce freebies to the market where they could eventually decide to invest some money. It is from a business perspective that I see it this way. I understand from a gamer perspective a bunch of players (including myself) might feel this goes against the elitism feeling this game brings when someone can buy all the stuff they want to show-off while plebs shouldn't have access to exclusive stuff for free, but from my perspective, every improvement that can provide other players with a better experience is a chance to make the population grow bigger and make the game last longer along with the attractiveness to potential customers spending money in the things they want to have. APB is a very attractive game for a huge niche of average/casual gamers out there that have been trying to join but left because of toxic competitiveness but if the casual players and freebies get the chance to taste what they could get if they decide to buy something then the chances of having more people spending money on stuff are increased considerably at the same time the "product" (players to play with and against) refines and offers a better quality game since you ensure that the customer's investment will worth the fun they'll get if we have decent amount of players to get matched with more diversity of skills and equipment in the streets.

Totally agreed, for the note, last threat system update was in April 2014 as you can see in the blog post I linked in the op. Regarding the current categories, the spectrum is too small for such a big game, there need to be, either sub-tiers within the current threats or more ranks. In the suggestion I made in the other section I talk about this and I'm proposing some sort of rewarding system to encourage people to try their best for climbing up ranks as a motivation. This is mainly aimed to casual players and newcomers, who are basically the potential customers the company needs to hook up with the game but you all know that when we bring new people to the game, they usually ask how to get this or that weapon or car and such and when they start considering buying system, before they jump the fence they first taste the bad experience of getting stomped by experienced players and they think that is because the game is p2w. If freebies can get easier ways to taste the paid content, and if they could feel that there's even a free way to get these items then the game grows in both ways, more customers buying stuff, and more freebies grinding for items which become basically "the product" that customers are implicitly buying when looking for players to play against and try their new toys they bought. Exactly what I'm pointing out. Check my other thread I linked here where I'm suggesting exactly this. And guys leave your vote in both, this one and the suggestion thread too please! Thanks for dropping by though.

Thanks for voting everybody. remember to check the linked suggestion too.

I do agree, I know the logical move would be to restart it, but I still ask this because I'd like to know how would this impact in the community and if there is people who could be against this. Pretty much that's my main concern, but if you guys check the suggestion I made in the other section, I'm kinda addressing it although not directly based on this.

I know, that's why I bring this post and a link to the suggestion I made. I'd like to invite you to put your vote regarding if you think a total wipe out on current threat ratings is needed or you think it wont affect to future updates in this regards.

Many of us havel been around and kept in touch, so I look forward to see where this new era APB goes and be part of this wonderful group of people that inspired me a lot and gave me a bunch of good times will be icing the cake if everything goes well as it seems will be. Happy to see this post, the hype intensifies.

Hi guys, I was thinking about this topic although I'm not the kind of expert regarding this like a couple of players out there might be, but bringing my opinion and an idea I had wouldn't hurt. If there are upcoming changes regarding the current threat system and disctrics segregation, such as removing that hilarious badge above our heads that only thing it serves is to enrage newbies, confuse experienced players and let trolls fool the system by dethreating, rerolling on new accounts and spill insults on everyone else by attacking them for being silvers, fake golds, or whatever they want to blame about, then I'd like to start this thread to know if you think that a total rating/threat wipe is needed to ensure the quality of such update if a new match-making system is deployed. First of all, here are some reads about what has been done in the past in APB:R so we can base our discussion with acknowledgment of these previous updates to the rating (threat) system: March 2011: https://apbreloaded.gamersfirst.com/2011/03/missing-skill-ratings-and-thanks-to.html April 2014: https://apbreloaded.gamersfirst.com/2013/04/settling-score-version-11.html Once reading this and based also on personal experiences I came to this interrogation: Will the current threat ratings be wiped out once the necessary tweaks and changes are made or even if a new threat system is in place to start rating players from scratch? And would you agree with that if so or are you against such thing like this? Personally I hope it does, please check this suggestion I made if you want to contribute with the ideas I brought there and check the vote poll I opened there too:

Let's bring some concepts I want to share since I've been thinking of this ideas for a while already. The threat system as it is already have huge flaws that let the portion of the players in both ends of the rating spectrum out of having chances of decent match-making while also enabling every single player out there abuse this system in search of more advantageous matches in detriment of the overall gaming experience for everyone else, aka: dethreat. Here are some reads about what has been done in the past in APB so we can base our discussion with acknowledgment of these previous updates to the rating (threat) system: March 2011: https://apbreloaded.gamersfirst.com/2011/03/missing-skill-ratings-and-thanks-to.html April 2014: https://apbreloaded.gamersfirst.com/2013/04/settling-score-version-11.html I think of a few options that might work to improve matchmaking and ensure encouragement of players to play fair, be more competitive and get rewards accordingly to their effort and skills. Let's get into it: 1. Frequency-Playing-Based Rating. Let's say, as how the system currently works, that your rating is based in your last 50 matches. How is this affected if you were actually performing above the average but then you decide to skip objectives, avoid killing opponents and barely participating in a mission for a couple of days to game the system and get advantageous matches as result? Well, this is not new and it is basically how dethreating works and is being exploited, right? But in such cases, there is plenty of people performing decently who maybe doesn't play too often and stop playing for a couple of days/weeks or more and then they return and get matched against tough players when are still rusty and even worst, since there's a constant flow of new players joining and leaving the game the overall scale of ratings varies causing a need of rebalance threats on such players who might be returning after a while. Usually a player returning after a couple of weeks or months should have his rating measurements reset so maybe they should play at least 5 matches or something like that before the game sets back a proper rating for such player. Potential solution: Monthly (or weekly) Rating System: Every week or month the threat system is restarted in a way that, while keeping the current rating every player has reach folded back, it requires you to play at least 5 matches to determine if you stay in your current threat level or you need a calibration to go up or down your current rating for further match-making. During this neutral period your match-making is based exclusively in your win/lose ratio from the past 10 or 30 days or whatever these time periods are set, along with your K/D ratio from the same period so you fight against players with similar stats. Once you pass the 5 matches threshold it settles your rating and triggers the more complex system where your whole performance is considered to set your threat progression based on your completed tasks, assists, overall performance, such as K/D and W/L ratios, etc. so you start to earn the assigned rewards for your threat/league/rating. _____________________ 2. Weapon-Role-Based Match Making: What happens when a group of experienced snipers who maxed out that role are teamed up against a group of CQC expert players? We are assuming here they are all on the same level regarding the overall performance of each one for any given scenario, but for some specific situations, having no snipers in your side when the other team is holding positions in high spots surrounding an objective with <4mins to finish it makes for a CQC team fall in the need of a very tactical and well coordinated moving to clear the area and reach the target before the time runs out, otherwise, we get very short missions as a result disregarding if you are in the winning or the losing team. Potential solution: Favorite Weapon-Class-Based Match Making: Every time the server searches for players to get them in a match, it could do a quick check on their role ratings and apply this in a very small factor to attempt to at least balance the roles of each member of the team to ensure both sides could cover almost every situation. I know this is mostly impossible and even if it is possible it could be not very accurate given the fact that there are only 40 players of each faction which means you can have as much 10 pre-made teams of 4 players as much which doesn't leave much space for such diversity as the amount of roles we currently have that are a bunch, but at least if you have 2 or 3 free players ready for a mission to pick for a match, it could then add this last check to see which one of them might fit better and be more helpful to balance the teams regarding this. Why not? _____________________ 3. Rewards for going up on a League System instead of only four threat tiers: When it comes to a wide player base the spectrum of skill ratings is way too big to actually have an accurate method to pair every player in a balanced match without risking to have an amount of them in the same pool with players way above or way below their level when there are so few tiers to frame them. Also in this particular situations there's the point where players looking for more rewards will try to game the system or would end up not getting proper rewards accordingly to their effort or skills put on the game leading to discouraging the new players or casual ones since they'll be struggling to get cash and xp or either making the more skilled ones get very few motivation to put an effort on improve and rank up if they could be getting same or better earnings and easier wins by just getting matched with less experienced players. Potential solution: Monthly League Rankings and Rewards Accordingly: If we could have sub-tiers within the current threat levels we could have some sort of a league system where every player gets matched within other players of his same league/threat but subdividing the spectrum into maybe 3 or more tiers within each threat rank. I think there already is something like 10 invisible ranks on each threat? Let's say the weekly rating session starts and past week you ended up as Silver II, then you have to play 5 matches to settle it down and define if you'll stay as Silver II or maybe Silver I or III or even jump to Gold or Bronze depending if you are performing better or worst this time. Then there's a multiplier in your rewards based on the tier you are which means that if you put an effort to go up to higher tiers your rewards will be bigger and also maybe in addition to this you get the chance of having some other rewards such as a set of League JMB with a small factor for bigger rewards and less relevant prizes when you are in a lower threat/league and a higher factor for important rewards and more relevant prizes once you go up through treat levels. This is also a way to discourage dethreating and add more interest for the players who will fight the best they can to get such mentioned rewards. To clarify this, let's say Bronze, Silver, Gold threats grants you better prizes (aka: JMB or JTickets) while the internal tiers (ie. Silver I, II, II, and so on) increases the multiplier for your cash and XP rewards and a chance of getting also a few JTickets if you earn MVP or something like that. _____________________ Now, what I think many of us will agree is that showing up that threat badge above our name tags only thing it did was not only segregate the community, particularly by separating servers, but also increased the amount of toxicity between players and discouraged a lot of newcomers of keep playing because they usually got bullied by other players who just reached a higher tier than them but were facing very stressful matches against higher threat players before so they learned it the wrong way, that's why I think threat badges should've never been there in the first place. If you want to see your ratings, you should be able to check your stats privately and then if decide you want to share them or not is up to you. We could have some sort of ladders or weekly/monthly rankings for these who wants to take part in a separated competitive instance districts ruleset for that too where also prizes might be more interesting. I'm not sure if I'm being accurate with my proposition in regards of what might be actually possible to do and what might be already in the board for future plans but by bringing this suggestion here, although it is a bit sketchy, I just want to contribute with some ideas I had based as well in what I saw around some other games where prizes for reaching higher leagues are a motivation that worked to stop tankers from dethreating and ruining the game. In addition, I'm setting a poll to know what kind of rewards you'd like to have if we could get a Leagues System with prizes for going up the ladder. Waiting for your feedback guys, hope we have a good discussion about this. Regards, Sal.

This kind of threads, we don't need. I don't see the point and it looks more like a trolling thread while I was about to post a new thread regarding a question about threat, but had to come here and waste time with more toxicity toward players and their threat.