sweetLemonade

The prevalence of a small subset of users using a 1,475s TTK gun is an indicator of the other guns being terrible, not an issue with that particular gun. But it's futile to discuss this, as the game designer is clearly not interested in any input from other users.

This AMA was another case of rinse & repeat. It's the same substance as the previous 2 AMA's. Matt should change his middle-name into "It's on our todo list", "It's low on priority" or "We'll look into it" Matt "On our todo list" Scott. Fits great for a "vibe coder" like him The vague date of Q4 2026 for UE5 (the assumption was that they move all resources into building a UE5 version of APB) is also the most ridiculous claim I've seen someone throw. Making a game as complex as APB in a year with the small team-size of LO? Lies upon lies... 3 new legendary weapons and EMP grenades planned for the Legends patch, while the other +70 unique guns in this game are a unbalanced mess & both maps suffer from severely game-breaking spots.

Out of all the terrible weapons which have barely any usefulness in this game, the Oblivion, once again, is an issue to the game designer... I'm baffled by this decision making.

"Too good at all ranges" A gun of 1,475s (1,325s with CJ3) TTK gun is "too good at all ranges"? Are you kidding me?.... 44/54 primary guns in this game have a better TTK than the Oblivion. Ridiculous "balancing" attempts... "Unintended behavior" Yet the gun had had same stats since Aug 20, 2015 (release of the Revelations Pack) It's ridiculous how this game is being dumbed down further & further. Instead of fixing guns which are present in the game (74 unique guns right now), we have 3 more guns coming in... Not only that, good guns are being nerfed unnecessarily due to the cries of people with low mechanical skill.... Irrational thought pattern and vision for this game from the game designer. With the logic that was applied to this patch, you might as well nerf the .45 AP (since you like touching guns which aren't a problem in the first place) I don't want to even comment the SMG "balance pass", it's like someone has decided to randomly change values only for the sake of changing them. Oh, the supposed EMP grenades coming to the new contacts patch will also be a even bigger nail in the coffin to balancing

I have to give praise where praise is due, this is a great patch. In fact, this patch is far greater in quality of life compared to previous patches. Finally, after years of being broken, the sliding bug is (allegedly) fixed. Let's hope it doesn't have any hidden repercussions for the player and that the "fix" works for any frame rate you throw the game at. This game is finally ready for +500Hz displays. Maybe even +1000Hz ready if on 9800x3d (I recall seeing a streamer get these frame rates), which would be a rarity in today's market. This alone is a feature worth marketing the game with, the ability to attain large frame rates, making it ready for "low" persistence gaming. (Note: Before anyone comes and says this is redundant, unnecessary or the worst one "overkill", persistence is the #1 graphical fidelity upgrade to any game. Our eyes are able to see >4000FPS @ >4000Hz in terms of refresh rate) Now that this sliding bug is out of the way, implementing a proper frametime limiter (akin to Special-K) and/or fixing crosshair representation to be applicable to above 10m should be looked at. Or, akin to Trackmania, implement the ability to sync CPU & GPU pipelines & have the ability to toggle between 1,2,3 frames ahead. Perhaps even some UI changes, such as: • Creating a keybind setting for the notification ping system. It gets tiresome to open the map, find the location you're at and estimate the location you want to ping to your group or team. Think of OW, CS or Apex "pings". • Fixing the inaccurate/misleading UI descriptions of weapon statistics by changing the representation from bars to fixed, numerical values. • I believe the game UI is also not ready for larger resolutions (1080p, 1440p or larger), perhaps taking a look at that could be desirable. I'd also like to see a return of the old /fps_detail menu, removing the nasty scaleform UI we have which is detrimental to performance

Spot on! The management's incompetence has lead to the community's distrust in any of their implementations.

You've just described a gameplay mechanic which requires intrinsic knowledge of the game (positioning of car, knowing what angles are appropriate etc.) That is a tool in the arsenal of a good player. It only raises the skill ceiling. You're free to direct those questions to Matt Scott, who has uttered the words that "APB is a competitive game" in the last 2 AMA's. I think that your skill level is questionable, considering the hyperbole in your statements. Based on what data do you exclaim that "the game is full of cheaters"? The game currently has a population of ~300 players. Out of those players, anecdotally, the amount of times I've faced a blatant cheater can be counted on the fingers of one hand. As for "closets", I think they're a even smaller minority in this 300 pop game. Most of the "closet" accusations are usually worse players baselessly attacking better players for outplaying them.

Frankly, these two changes have to be highlighted, as they are the most important change in this patch GFAC is just another privacy concern, like other kernel-level access AC software, hence I will avoid writing about it (pros vs cons of such software decision can be found elsewhere) 1) Who came up with the splendid idea to add a 1.7 second delay in a fast-paced game, which is predominantly played in the 0.7s TTK range? This change has the ability to single-handedly kill any serious endeavours in this game for any future player base, regardless of how much you scale down the timer. Considering this game is now considered a competitive title (as per Matt's words from the AMA), how is this change supporting such crowd in any sense? It's like Valve removing bunny hopping or Apex removing tapstrafing, you only alienate any veteran players and any future, competitive players which you plan on receiving after EGS launch. I assume there are numerious edge cases which weren't convered, so one has to invest even more time in ironing them out. Time, which can be better spent on much more important QoL changes. Ironic that in the last 2 AMA's, most better QoL suggestions were scrubbed off as "negative work", while this "change" was pushed... a change which clearly has more downsides than upsides. The sheer man-power which was invested in this "fix" should've been invested in much more important changes, such as fixing the atrocious >120 FPS sliding bug and the complete lack of a working frametime limiter solution, ideally based on Waitable Timers. The game has absolutely horrendous 1% and 0.1% lows... Or, even better, allowing the user to place a ping around the area of a player without opening up the large map and finding the location of your character and then marking it. Absolutely mindboggling change. 2) Why is such a huge change, related to weapon accuracy, scrubbed off and trivialized under the term "a issue"? Can you elaborate on what exactly has changed? It's clearly not miniscule, if it seemingly affected all guns.

A small reminder that kernel-level anti-cheat solutions will not solve the problem this game has. The only solution to cheating is in-game moderation to take care off the blatants & separating casuals from competitive crowd with a separate queue (a pledgable contact or a separate, empty district for competitive matches) The separate queue will also take care of griefing indirectly as well, as you can separate entire teams in empty districts. Limiting the queue to 3vs3 and 4vs4 seems adequate. The low population of ~300 players makes in-game moderation a simple task. If someone tries to pull the "oh it's a long-term solution" excuse... I fail to understand how implementing GFAC in this version of the game is a good long-term solution. The developers have already shown interest in rebuilding the game in UE5, meaning such large endeavours are... frankly ridiculous if you ask me. This video is a obligatory watch: Instead of the wasted effort on GFAC (a fatal, user security & privacy issue, as well as a system performance hog), it would've been more appropriate to fix the >120fps sliding bug, implementing a waitable timer frametime limiter and doing something worthwhile to gameplay mechanics (district layout balancing, mission balancing, eliminating RNG from weapons, implementing anti-griefing solutions such as the one mentioned above etc.) or the UI (allowing for 3 FC's, fixing misleading crosshair representation, using explicit & numeric values for weapon statistics in-game, making a proper tutorial, notification pinging system with binds instead of opening up map, VOIP...) I wouldn't be surprised if, with the GFAC implementation, you've also indirectly removed any potential W7 users from this game. Yes, W7 is still a viable option for games employing the D3D9 graphics API, such as APB, as Microsoft has crippled D3D9 on W10 due to their "borderless" attempts. Or you could always upgrade the graphics API to D3D12 or employ DXVK

They can say whatever they want, the intent is very clear. They're trying to make a battle pass, with visible tier list for people to "grind for". In a game which isn't even close to being competitive in the slightest and was clearly steered towards a casual mindset for more than a decade. In a game which has a myriad of larger concerns, choosing leaderboards as "#1 priority" is not the right approach at all. They (seemingly) haven't used the RTW code, at least judging from the look of the UI. It seems that they've scrapped the idea of using Kismet or Scaleform completely. GhosT's suggestion is spot on, they should've stuck to increasing the amount of JT obtained from in-game contact dailies. Also, very concerning to see that the dev team of LO has admitted to using ""vibe coding"" (relying on LLM's nonsense for the game's code) for their AC solution...

I'm expecting them to completely forego Linux altogether, akin to other publishers... In-house solutions from a small company such as Little Orbit sounds troublesome. Even Valve & RIOT have difficulties with their in-house solutions, where they have a larger dev team & larger resources. What assurement can we have that LO won't abuse their system akin to the previous rogue GM? I fail to understand how they'll circumvent the most common modern cheating method, which bypasses quite a few larger AC solutions...

This entire thread can be summed up with this image: The game shouldn't be balanced according to the wishes of users who do not have the willpower to learn the nits & grits of it, nor understand basic concepts of what makes up a shooter game.

The last AMA has left anyone having a glimmer of hope for this game with disappointing message. Every single question in regards to UI changes or some dramatic QoL changes (UX, music, clothing) was scrubbed off with the following words: "Negative work" They've also hinted & talked about some plans ("internal tests") of remaking APB in UE5.... this should tell you enough about the current state of the game... A game where almost all complaints which have been plaguing this game for a decade can be solved in a span of a month... relegated to another cycle of wait. A funny "warning" they've made once they've mentioned their UE5 build "internal tests and R&D" was mentioned on Discord was: "We don't want to create another Engine Upgrade scenario" Which they did, in fact, do. The mere action of shrugging off all major issues of this game under the pretense of "Negative work" & then mentioning how they're doing "internal tests on UE5" is doing the exact opposite of what they're supposedly "trying to avoid"

All these rage-induced ad hominem attempts at LilyRain, while he just quotes basic numbers from APBDB which the other party doesn't seem to understand? It's bizarre to read some of these comments. Funnily enough, the comments somewhat emphasize how much of a issue mixing the casual & competitive crowd together in a single basket was detrimental to the game.

I would personally group the FR0G 'Thumbnail' in the discussion too, but I agree with your points. The 2nd paragraph is a great observation too. To derail this topic a bit, since I find it nonsensical to talk about the ".45 AP being OP" when it clearly isn't, what would you do with the game's balancing if you were given access to edit anything you want? I find these types of discussions more fun, since singling out 1 gun is impossible as they're all heavily-related.