sweetLemonade

The fact people still think that it's better to have lower TTK with bloom (which artificially lengthens ttk to ~1.1s, as you've mentioned) than just having high TTK with values set to ~1.1s without bloom baffles me to no end. It'll be the same TTK, it would just feel consistent instead of being a RNG based mess? smh... Hopefully someone will make a private server APB with proper balancing since LO doesn't seem to care anymore.

Calculate it by recording the footage and counting frame by frame (some players should have granular adjustments so you can see how many seconds it takes. I can tell you a estimate, almost all TTK in this game is ~1s TTK if you want the best accuracy (waiting between shots) You can always spray and pray, get lucky and kill faster, because bloom is a skill based mechanic and totally not random.

Then what would? What changes would see the game prosper again? What would bring people back? I've seen many people quote anti-cheat being their main issue with this game, but, every F2P online game has had this issue for quite a while now. Only Valorant is successful combating this to some extent. Yes, I do agree we should get EAC back (a proper version of it at the very least), but this will not make veterans return and players from other shooter games come. APB at it's core has always been casual, the devs have always agreed and stated so. But, the community has been desperately trying to make the game competitive while the game never was, nor did the devs care about the competitive crowd (even though they kept the game alive and are keeping the game alive to some extent even right now) So, why not listen to both crowds and fulfill the needs of both? A two birds with one stone type of scenario. People are looking for concrete, skill-based changes that reward their aim traning and tracking across multiple games, not waiting for the game to HOPEFULLY hit the shot (no, artificially lengthening TTK by adding bloom is not a skillful mechanic, it's RNG to help people who cannot aim) With a proper TTK and no bloom (and some slight recoil), the game would feel more responsive and fluid. It would feel rewarding when you win a aim duel, not praying RNG plays a favour in your fight. Not only will this help out older players, this will also be helpful to new players if they invest the time and grind to become better. The game will feel rewarding to play, you get a sense that if you put in the effort and brain power, you can out-aim/outplay a more skillful opponent. Not only that, I think adding movement mechanics in form of walljumping and rolling/sliding would make the game much more fluid as well, as the game is very static sometimes with it's stale movement. (tho this will never happen but w/e, one can believe) APB's main thing for years has been it's customization. Why keep it at that? Why wouldn't one introduce something gameplay related which would make the game unique? You can only pull the wool over their eyes for a short while with new content in form of new guns, cars and contacts (mods etc.), the game needs a re-approach in the way it's played from the ground up. QoL changes which have been requested for years (Dopefish has a huge QoL list in the suggestion forums, the old forums were also full of good input but sadly they've been shut down) and input from veterans which have poured countless of hours in suggestions should be more valued and not shunned away. Proper matchmaking (differentiating casual and competitive, like it shouldve been in the first place), a pinging system, a PROPER tutorial, car handling and stats getting tweaked to finally make them feel unique and making them more fun to play, implementing all 3 fight club maps, increasing TTK to ~1s along with removing bloom (and the dreadful bloom mechanics they've added the past few years) while adding some slight manageable recoil, changing shotguns and snipers to 3STK. In fact, if all of these changes are too drastic to implement in live, why not just make a OTW with some of these changes and give it a chance? Interaction with the community is necessary for proper thrival of the game, which they seemingly are unwilling to do the past few months as they're in a financial crisis and have no direction in how APB should be played and what should be done to make this game good But, sadly, they seem to not care, as their blogpost has indirectly stated that they're abandoning the game with the engine upgrade being abandoned. The game cannot stay on this engine iteration and all veteran players know this and have known this for ages, especially if one has been closely following dev comments in regards to the artificial engine limitations in some aspects of the game, such as the inability to have 3 fight club maps running at the same time, car speed limit, Kismet tanking performance (no info on complete Scaleform implementation ^_^) etc.

It has been a month since the roadmap blogpost and we've yet to get any word back as to what's happening in the background and when/what the next update will be. You announce live is gonna get updated instead of a full engine overhaul (a fatally flawed move), yet deliver silence afterwards. If you hype something up to be good, at least deliver it to ride on the train.

So, why would one write out the 2022 roadmap post (which is full of half-assed arguements as to why upgrading live is better than a full engine overhaul, fundamentally flawed if one remotely knows the history of this game) when you're not gonna implement these changes immediately cause the game is dying? Can anyone from LO fill us in? You state it's much easier then you don't deliver it (and from what I've gathered from the blog post, its already done?) Excuse me? Can you stop giving us false promises? Be honest that you don't have a vision on what this game is supposed to be and how it's supposed to be played. You clearly need help, involve the passionate community members in the reconstruction of this game and it's people.

^ perfectly said, I'd rather see drastic balancing changes (and a working AC lmao) and new content while we wait for a game that doesn't run on kismet+scaleform and on UE2.5 (and that's unable to have more than 2 FC maps, 2 district maps and social running at the same time....) But, they clearly aren't keen on giving us anything, they're just beating a dead horse now

So, we went from "we have to make the engine upgrade to fix the game" to "we're gonna upgrade the live game with X features to maintain it" So the graphical downgrade is postponed (game looks patootie to begin with anyways due to the changes G1 did in the early days of the game) and back-end stuff is being changed. Excuse me? What took so long? What exactly will these new things bring us? What benefits will the end user get? Will it fix the broken weapons, cars, missions, stutters, awful designer bugs and all the arbitrary and anti new player limits this game has? Will we have all 3 fight club maps running simulatenously? Will we have new content in form of new maps, vehicles, clothing etc? New tutorial? I don't even wanna delve into the anti-cheat issues this game has, as this is a concern in all f2p games that aren't Valorant. A major shake up is needed for this game to get remotely any players back and it's needed now. Again, the devs show us time and time again that they have no end-goal how their game should be and how it should be played.

I think it's pretty simple you lack the vision on what this change would bring to anyone who has remotely any gameplay awareness. It will only increase the skill ceiling of the weapon, not lower it. Let me picture it for you, have you ever had someone corner peek you with a weapon? Perhaps crouch behind a wall and crouch spammed you? Hitboxes around objects are wonky and this is the only way you can get around them. You can just shut them down with this each and every time without questioning if RNG played in your favour or not. It is not a matter of aim or not aim.

You gotta keep in mind that Little Orbit is essentially the core dev team that has been working on this game for so long, just with a new front-end so to say, which as you've said, seem to be incapable of realizing that they're not helping the game by keeping it in this borked state of gameplay. Little Orbit is doing the same thing G1 did back in the days, just be a megaphone for someone that the engine upgrade is the holy saviour of APB. I'd disagree with the "very old" statement though. CS:GO is old as well yet is still played in masses. People stay for gameplay and content (the latter being provided by the EU, but the latter can't keep the crowd hooked if the former isn't satisfied to the max) The griefing aspect is sadly something I cannot see being preventable without the engine upgrade hitting live (or rather, they won't bother) Also, a correction, the engine currently is running on UE2.5, the devs are upgrading to UE3.5 I think some people seem to not realize that the reason the game is so anti-new player is because the gameplay & current content doesn't favour new players in any way, along with only veterans being the majority of this game's population (similar situation with Quake and arena shooters) And, as you've said, sadly, they seem to be unwilling to change anything, to mix things up, to involve the community that wants the best for this game in any way, shape or form. The devs' vision of the game seemingly doesn't coincide with our vision for the game.

no confirmed staff number was thrown out as far as im aware, still not a excuse for their current state. they can always open-source the game and/or ask for help from community members willing to lend a hand in their favourite game.

key words, how can he know if something is right when he doesn't play the game (admitted so himself)? i could see him just letting a dev take care of it... probably the same dev that clearly failed to deliver for +10 years now in regards to gameplay balancing. ...a dev that even decided to make emp grenades to "counter car gameplay" in a properly functioning structure,, we'd have the community do gameplay playtests every month/week so constructive feedback can be given as to how the game can be a better product (perhaps even hire some people to do some work for them in regards to the tutorial) so that the wait for the engine upgrade will feel shorter apb won't magically become new and improved after the engine upgrade, which seemingly the dev team wants us to think?... either that or they're planning some kind of mega-giga engine update launch patch that addresses a ton of issues at once (obv not the case but hey, wishful thinking)

Matt is not the only dev and I'm very sure he's not in charge in anything related to balancing.

A small gesture in form of QoL updates that we've been spamming patch threads for would yield much better results than the "FOCUSING ALL TASKS ON ENGINE UPGRADE" automated response we've been getting the past year, while them doing weapon balancing in ways no one asked for? There's no vision whatsoever on how this game is supposed to play from anyone it seems, nor does anyone other than the community bother talking about it. Is Qwentle still hindering this game since 2012? Has the SPCT put in some bad word about the community and LO/G1 devs just decided to refuse cooperating with us and SPCT? Questions over questions.... I don't understand, it is very simple why everyone is upset, the core gameplay of this game is still flawed to death after numerious years of suggestions due to some dev just REFUSING to realise his vision of APB is flawed.

the fact the majority is disagreeing is very concerning, kinda tells u what type of players comment on the forums nowadays....

Until they remove R195 restrictions and make consumables a permanent mod They're clearly able to buff and nerf uncalled weapons a week later and nerf med spray, don't see why they can't implement these normal changes.

Great patch notes.... we've totally asked for the same rehashed event for 7 years now... Are you ever gonna tackle all the easy QoL changes we've been suggesting now? The suggestion forums are booming with them, along with patch threads getting spammed by us as well....

-Remove the R195 limit on mods that have it (or make it restricted R85) -Make low-yields a grenade role unlock instead of contact unlock (also give nerf the count u get from 3 to 2) -Give people who earned the respective lvl 16 weapon role the ability to purchase (free) 3 slot character permanent weapon. -Buff crouch movement speed and make consumables a permanent modification. -Remove car spawner and remote detonator, make CA3 default regen and rename CA2 to Clotting Agent (remove CA1) and adjust other mods accordingly -Make all cars be able to hit the max speed of the game before it starts crashing (or whatever the arbitrary limit is that you've set) -Buff OBIR/DMR/HVR/Scout first shot accuracy, as per my forum suggestion. Hopefully we'll see some QoL changes for the game this year without rehashing old events from former years

Can't wait for the Halloween patch, where you'll include all the changes we've advocated in the past few patch threads... Or perhaps Xmas patch?.... If the med spray change is anything to go by.

-Remove the R195 limit on mods that have it (or make it restricted R85) -Make low-yield & bricks s a grenade role unlock instead of contact unlock -Give people who earned the respective lvl 16 weapon role the ability to purchase (free) 3 slot character permanent weapon -Buff crouch movement speed and make consumables a permanent modification. -Remove car spawner and remote detonator, make CA3 default regen and rename CA2 to Clotting Agent (remove CA1) and adjust other green mods accordingly -Make all cars be able to hit the max speed of the game before it starts crashing (or whatever the arbitrary limit is that you've set) -Buff Scout/OBIR/HVR standing accuracy to 100% (as per the thread in the suggestion forums) oh, and less rng/bloom and higher ttk, pls LO))

Will we get APB updated to work with Linux Proton implementation? The toggle is in the hands of the developers, supposedly.

No, the Scout does not have 100% accuracy with Hunting Sight or any other mod. Neither do the OBIR or HVR (which IMO both should have, they never had it) This is literally the main reason I've posted this suggestion. They've nerfed all levels of hunting sight on the Scout back when they nerfed jumpshooting. I'm vouching for either bringing the accuracy of HS back or applying it to base stat of all scout variants (with hunting sight only affecting the FoV on the scout) and buffing OBIR & normal HVR to 100% accuracy (preferably regardless of HS, as I find it ridiculous that a mod, i.e. hunting sight, alters RNG instead of FoV only)

-Remove the R195 limit on mods that have it (or make it restricted R85) -Make low-yields a grenade role unlock instead of contact unlock (also give nerf the count u get from 3 to 2) -Give people who earned the respective lvl 16 weapon role the ability to purchase (free) 3 slot character permanent weapon -Buff crouch movement speed and make consumables a permanent modification. -Remove car spawner and remote detonator, make CA3 default regen and rename CA2 to Clotting Agent (remove CA1) and adjust other mods accordingly -Make all cars be able to hit the max speed of the game before it starts crashing (or whatever the arbitrary limit is that you've set) All of these suggestions were from the Suggestions forum, which you seem to just not care about apparently (even though Matt stated they are) Why are these subtle and seemingly very easy, but good QoL changes not being implemented? What's wrong? Can we get a comment on what's wrong with them and what's hindering you from implementing them? The old forums have been deleted sadly otherwise I would've quoted more of these QoL changes that have been suggested from the community for years now. (Dopefish, Ketog, Esther, LUST and many more amazing dedicated people which would love seeing this game prosper a lot) Oh, make scout/hvr/obir accurate (as per my recent suggestion thread) and pls lengthen ttk to ~stabba ccg ttk already with less rng/bloom altogether

I don't quite understand your point. Snipers are supposed to be 100% accurate no matter what range, spread shouldn't decide if I hit or not. The 1 pixel hitbox thing you mention is exactly why I'd love seeing this change back. I'd rather trade speed of shot vs accuracy any time of the day (as in, replace CJ3 on Scout for HS1 or just make it a default stat for the weapons mentioned above and let Hunting Sight dictate FoV only) I've been destroyed so many times by the scout just deciding not to reg at +70m combat because of spread/rng whatever you wanna call it. You aim at the centre of the enemy anyways, no matter if 100% accurate or not, I don't understand this counterarguement... No one mentioned CSGO and their spray patterns and their headshots?.... You're derailing this thread unnecessarily...

Is it possible that we get some monthly/weekly OTW instance where we, the community, playtest certain weapon balancing suggestions (or in general gameplay suggestions) and then give feedback on whether it is good or bad? Perhaps a high ttk with low bloom(less rng) test to begin with? RTW stats for testing? All character mods added to base character stats (with only consumables being a permanent mod, brown mod, ca1 being default heal and CA2/CA3 being renamed and added as green mod option)? Perhaps testing out 100% accurate first shot on all guns and how it would play out? Test out different car stats? Test out map changes? All of this would result in the Engine Upgrade wait to feel less painful and more fun! Engaging in the development and prosperity of this game would be a fun way to earn joker tickets too! But before that, we'd love getting a full list of weapon/car/character stats and what each stat does (or confirming if APBDB stats are reliable) so we can suggest changes accordingly (increase/decrease health damage etc. etc.) Would be a nice way to ship out updates before entering live (and a fun way to make things fresh and not gimp live gameplay with crazy patches) and a way to attract older players back.

This change may seem trivial, but it would make such a huge impact in how the Scout, OBIR and HVR perform (for the better!!) Could we get scout 100% accurate (as shown on the picture to the left) instead of this inaccurate crosshair we have (as shown on the right) regardless of hunting sight or not? Even when walking while zoomed in? Or at least have it be 100% with any hunting sight which would fulfill the current role the mod has in the game (reducing RNG)? Oh, and add OBIR, HVR and DMR into the mix too. Though I'd rather see it be regardless of hunting sight in it on stock guns, as it would make the game much more beginner friendly and benefit those who aim for their shots, but whatever the devs decide on as long as It's incorporated i'll be glad. In fact, as seen here, the Scout with Hunting Sight (no matter which one, in this particular video it was hunting sight 1) used to exhibit this behaviour (even when jumping, bring back jumpshot perhaps?) while stood up and even moving while scoped in too! I think this is even more accurate than current live crouching modifier Scout/OBIR/HVR (the last one never even had 100% accuracy no matter which hunting sight mod, be it crouched or not!!!) LO, pls fix)) perhaps add the RSA & ACT44 into the mix? perhaps make every gun have it's first bullet be accurate? i'll be glad if even this suggested QoL change above makes it into live