Salvick

Agreed. Going on topic, the thing is the gaming market seems to be targeting that sort of people specifically and even triggering these habits in young and not so young players, I think that's the issue here but also I think is a different discussion that should be brought up somewhere else than in a particular game's forum.

But we should legalize all sort of drugs, psychotropics, heroin, cocaine, lsd, etc. instead? I mean...we have addicted personalities or tendencies and addictive substances and practices. Though I totally agree with you but just wanted to point out this observation that arose from your comment.

I don't see why would you need wings, I can tell you can perfectly float in the air in that pic. Wait, are you telling me I've been doing it wrong all this time?

I'd say I'm a main Joker Carbine user but a total a fan of my Joker CR 5 and N-Tec 7 Ursus which I consider too op, so I totally agree with any sort of nerf they could apply to these guns, but I also agree that is not a priority when we have a gun like the OSCAR landing every single shot with almost no recoil at +60m and that needs to get fixed urgently. Regarding N-Tecs, I can beat any Obeya/Obir and even snipers with it most of the times which makes me say 'wtf' every time as same as I say 'wtf' when I get wounded so heavily from 90m by N-Tec users as well. I also found so op how I beat SMGs and other cqc weapons with it in many occasions. And yes, I measure these distances in many ways so I'm being very accurate with the mentioned ranges.

I'm sorry for you and I can imagine how stressing and sad it must be to go through this, but I'm just saying that doing what everyone else is not exactly a proper measure of what is actually right to do. I wasn't trying to confront with you and neither I'm making a judgement about you as a person.

I don't know, I've seen the same videos and streams tons of times since 2011/2012 and I never tried anything like that ever in my entire time playing this game...and I know what a macro is but neither tried such a thing not even 'for the lolz'.

I'd just laugh at you but I think some people just don't understand what they do. Your ban is properly applied imo and I'd thanks LO if they keep it that way...but since there are so, so many players using "turbo button for the lolz" and such stuff "only with x gun" or just "because other players uses it" that it wouldn't surprise me if you return. Also, I believe multiple accounts is some sort of an issue? Specially if you already got banned in any of these alt accs...

+1 for these ideas. Also I think that adding some PvE tasks for enfos could help. I've made a suggestion long time ago about how I imagine a money transport mission that requires the district to be populated to start in the first place and where the enforcers do pretty much the same the crims does when ram raiding but without breaking the shops and just retrieving gold, money, bags and safes to drop it at the bank and similar locations, the old forums are offline so I couldn't provide a link but I might consider creating a new post about it eventually.

Not sure why would someone give a thumbs down to your post after all the effort you made to be polite, clear and reasonable. I'll say it one more time, this game always lacked of proper ingame moderation and the first step to properly moderate imho is to have active and visible presence of the admins at all times and allowing them to also play the game as normal people with everyone else while knowing who they are as any normal multiplayer game used to be back in the days, and we could save ourselves from having to deal with all this sort of bs we have nowadays in most of the online gaming communities and specially in f2p ones.

It might be just me, but I believe corruption always need someone willing to avoid or break the law to begin with, so its a bit more than one single side issue imo. Anyways, I'd like to insist to me is more about the target audience than the product itself, and the video game industry has turned into this long time ago so I doubt the solution will come from any legislative changes any time soon. We as part of a gaming community could only ask to have better balanced chances to access the stuff we want, games used to reward the player by solely playing the game and unlocking content was the goal of playing it so probably decorative assets such as clothing and car body kits could remain as paid content while functional items should stay as part of the game progression unlocks and rewards along with some options to pay for a few of the top tier guns and such, that's what I consider an ideal scenario.

I've been buying Kinder Surprise for a whole year attempting to complete my collection of toys without success so I'm suing the company, lol. Jokes apart, before I state my opinion let me bring my experience, when OCA Nano was released I bought something around +200 boxes till I got it, then I stopped and barely bought any JMBoxes anymore except when I was doing other purchases and had some G1C change to spare. Since then I bought all the legendary guns I wanted for my collection from other players or earned them from special boxes from events or from these boxes I bought as I just described. So... ...while I could say that I "stopped" spending my money in looting boxes I've been still pushing the system to keep working by taking part of the in-game trading, that's why no one of us could say "I'm against" the existence of the looting boxes. Also, everything I got from these boxes I bought was worth in terms of G1C value since I ended up with a couple of years of premium, special items such as leased cars and weapons and royalty rewards, and I'm really pleased with what I got. What made me decide to stop buying anything was Tiggs...no, I'm joking, but it was because I decided to put a limit and decide how much money a game worth to me, I'm old fashioned and nostalgic so that's why I'd like to pay for a game just once and have it in my library for ever. But I understand that companies are making their business and is that business what granted me and everyone of us a lot of awesome titles and in-game content that we enjoy so I support companies selling in-game content besides how much it secretly annoys me. The thing is when the marketing teams take over and they attempt to apply business strategies that aim to certain targeted audience based solely in probabilities of free to paid conversion rates and average money spent. And that's the thing that ruins the experience for many people imo, but the new generations of gamers are already born with these mechanics in place so they are naturalizing these practices. I totally agree that someone should know exactly what is going to get for the money they spend but I also think that gambling is an individual decision that any adult should and could make, addicted or not, and what people decides to make with their money couldn't be an argument to discuss how to change laws, a business or game mechanics. Now, here I'm with what Matt said on his post: And after all this I think that only thing that a company might change is not the business model but probably the target audience, because I do agree with some people saying that many of us would like to just buy the stuff we want, and although the "whale" players are already profiled and their purchasing habits are way long established there is no data on what people is not buying and what makes them decide to not buy something. The conversion rates for free-to-play games used to be really low, (something between 2% to 5% of their player base) but along time the new generations are used to this methods of monetization and there's more and more people willing to take advantage of paid content and other services since almost every single game released is coming with some sort of system such as DLC, loot boxes or exclusive assets and gameplay buffs. The only solution I can imagine disregarding my ignorance in this matter is some times is a currency like the Joker Tickets being available for some purchases in the ARMAS market, that way freebies could access to paid content as a reward for populating the game while anyone who wants to pay cash will keep doing it. his could work with some sort of 1 item at once progression where you pick the item you want to get and you start playing to gather the needed currency, like a progression bar you have to fill up once you trigger it. This way also the company gets a lot of data about trends and items of interest, but also when the player is at half progression or more the game could pop-up segmented offers for them to buy the remaining currency they need to finally get what they are looking for and that's a great way to convert freebies to paid customers by making them feel they will pay 20 bucks for something that could be priced at 100. Whales will always be the main support for any small populated game, but occasional buyers could inflate the numbers as long as there's some attraction in the game for them to keep the population raising. TL:DR: There's no tl:dr so just sorry for tl:dr.

This sums up the whole thing I think. But I liked your whole post, almost heard a voice giving the speech while reading it, lol. In my opinion there are a lot of different kinds of jerks and good people, and there's where I still think the op has a point although couldn't address it accurately, but many people in APB has been in the edge of returning back the negativity. The main difference might be that in one hand you have the ones who react to that hostility when they fall in provocations while in the other are the ones who act like shit towards anyone around just for sport.

There was an occasion where an enforcer found our operation and he was so stunned that he just told us to keep going that he just want to see, we had a bunch of other civilian vans along with the clan ones and 2 guys on N5 as bodyguards blocking the entrance with dumptrucks. ...the good ol'times.

This is what I think too, or maybe something like a league system that is restarted every month while keeping earned ranks through seasons so it lets inactive and low perform ones fall off in the ladders while making average/high ranks go through a qualification process to match theirs skills with the renewed pool every time. And thank you for sharing your personal experience though. Going alone with such amount...that's your whole fault if you take that risk, I suggest you to get some friends next time. This is how we do it:

Agreed. But let me point this opinion I have, while the management of any game does not held any responsibility over online interactions between players I think this debate about mental health of online players could be helpful to bring some concerns that should lead any company to have at least some ethic values to assume part of the responsibility over social interactions in their games, because at the end, that's what lead any community to behave better or become toxic. I'm totally okay with the type of game APB is, it is all about rivalry between factions, but that belongs to the fictional scenario that the game brings and rivalry is just between characters, as long as you can always remember that the other player is also a person like you looking to have fun no one should get angry when get beaten. Said this, no one likes to lose, but the bad losers are the ones who only wants to destroy other people's experience because they need to overcompensate frustration. These are the toxic ones I think you are referring to, and the reason why I always turn off district chat when I'm playing and put on ignore the whole opposite team until the mission ends. Something in that direction should work, or at least 4vs4 I'd say, but I'm totally okay with how ram raid works and the risk of getting caught is what gives the adrenaline that makes playing that game funnier than just PvE farming.

Well, I just found this when googling: The American Psychiatric Association recently included Internet gaming disorder (IGD) as a potential diagnosis. It is defined as “persistent and recurrent use of the Internet to engage in games, often with other players, leading to clinically significant impairment or distress.” Source I guess doesn't match exactly with what the OP was pointing out, but neither am I taking sides here, I'm just saying.

I'm glad someone took his time to list up a few things that I actually agree doesn't contribute at all with the spirit of what the online gaming was meant to be on its origins, although I wouldn't go as far as to list up a psychological pathology unless there is a valid research and a professional opinion to back it up, though I still agree that this game as same as many, many other games and internet social networks can lead to toxicity and unacceptable behaviors, but I think the problem lays when the social interaction is a key feature and there's poor moderation from the game management over player's interactions. Said this, my belief is that if the medical community around the world raises awareness regarding mental health issues in online gaming, specially in stages of personality development, then there should start to be stronger parameters and probably laws for game companies to get their content approved by the authorities. There's some stuff already going on regarding the gambling pathology on underage gamers that is being researched with solid data about their behaviors and how companies target them to ensure huge profits triggering these behaviors on people that matches the profile and, although I'm not saying APB is doing this, specially under LO management where everything seems to aim to a healthy environment for everyone, what this researching also pointed out is that some of the main factors that helps to develop what is now known as "Internet Gaming Disorder" are loneliness, competition, self esteem issues and many others such like these in the path of developing a social capital to be prepared to interact in the real world within and after school. Internet interaction also implies some sort of depersonalization since we can't always know exactly who are the others behind the screen, who is developing and providing the information we access, and at the same time this allow us to selectively show what we would like to let others know about us while hiding what we think the others wouldn't approve from our personality or life style. Everything you listed is accurate in terms of producing rivalry and competitiveness between players, how we react to that depends in our personal education and life experiences, and I dare to say this is how this game was designed in the first place. The former CEO Björn Book-Larsson said this on his own words: "APB produces rage between players, that's how it works", he didn't mean he support this but was saying he was aware of what this game can produce when playing it. I agree that the PvE mechanics could provide a more enjoyable experience if witnessing is reworked or such, I do agree that visible threat was never necessary, specially when the system is absolutely inaccurate and manipulable (maybe some league system and an option to turn it on and off could work better), and I agree that some missions does not match with the map design in many cases but... TL:DR: ...I strongly believe that everything that might be an issue regarding players interaction is a matter of in-game moderation, not through support with the delay it implies, not through invisible admins and moderators that could give the feeling that they are not there and not through forums and district chat blaming and flaming other players, but with simple and proper active presence of the admins in game, showing up and interacting with everyone and encouraging the best behaviors between players which will eventually push everyone else to do their best to fit with the community if what they want is to be likely popular or avoid being marginal elements of the community. Quite much this is how it is on the internet, but I want to point out that online games weren't like this before, back in the days an online game was a place to gather and share good fun with others and even the admins and mods were an active and visible part of the community helping everyone while encouraging others to behave gently towards everyone else and making us feel safe from cheaters and griefers who could attempt to destroy the gaming experience. I also think that the anonymity in the web is the main factor leading people to misbehave but my opinion is that the rest of the community vouching for a better environment needs to be actively backed by the game authorities, either in-game moderators or the company representatives, through the game rules and terms of service.

I believe its strongest feature is the quick equip time, bear that in mind and think of any primary weapon or setup that could benefit from it. I remember using it with any mid/long range gun to ensure more accuracy if I get ambushed at close range while moving through alleys and such so it is ideal for Asylum in example, and a great finisher if you run out of ammo.

I've been wondering for a while if a clan names wipe could take place any time soon so this is great news. Thanks Matt and team.

+1 Thanks for pointing it.

My bad, you're right. I was mistaking Sao Paulo with somewhere else in Bahía, that's why my confusion. Thanks for clarifying it. @Caio Sparkz just forget what I said @Uhtdred is right. So both, Rio and Sao Paulo are similar locations in regards of latency.

Yes it does, if the song in your library is properly licensed last.fm will search for the same song and stream it to the other players if available, only if your song is not available then it would search for a similar song based on metadata of your file, same happens if it is not licensed in your end. Edit: Since this is from 2010 quite sure last.fm technology got some slight improvements or probably it just got its own library updated through time, it used to work great. Also it is accurate to say it "will not play exactly the same track you have" while what it actually does is playing the same track but in the version available on their library.

I'd say Rio rather than Sao Paulo to allow players from Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Perú and Bolivia get better ping, Sao Paulo data centers gives almost the same ping as U.S. around there.

last.fm was someting that no one cared when was removed, but I'm quite sure a bunch of us around are wondering why we can't stream our personal music library when we are listening music in our cars and at the Dj turntables in Social District. imo it was one of the most immersive features the game used to have when I barely started playing tbh.

Great news, looks like I'll return to play this game, but best thing is that if I move to Europe I'll still be able to use my main characters and all my stuff which was my biggest concern. Anyways, will our inbox attachments survive to this or there is some risk to lose all these items and specially the symbols many of us hold in our mail inbox?