LilyRain

The community wasn't in the wrong. A lot of changes weren't even close to being well thought out, completely out of place and others didn't even need to happen (e.g buffing OCA to oblivion and not a buff across the board, x2 heal Med Spray that lasted for over a year). When it comes to the community getting mad that their weapon got nerfed, we have a great example to look at. RFP and RFP-Fang. The weapon is beyond "nerfed", it is completely destroyed. Who's talking about RFP these days, really? It was long forgotten and most others would've been not forgotten but praised that they are a part of a decent balance state. A successful company should be able to tell what is reasonable and what isn't and the history of balance changes under LO's reign (discounting the Vehicle balancing because that one was actually good), doesn't really show much improvement. The good part about LO is that it is willing to revert bad changes, so once some do indeed happen, there is nothing wrong to demand going back to the previous state. It is actually the right thing to do.

That is absolutely true. However, LO is simply delaying EVERYTHING, even things that don't need to be, such as improving the game's balance for both current and potential new players by the time the engine is actually out. Whether on the current or new engine, stats are stats. Unlike some vehicle shenanigans (embrace the new Vegas physics), A STAR will kill in 6 shots under its drop off range and so on. There is no better time than now to at least come up with a plan for execution rather than start making one after the engine and new players flood in. There is no way LO would balance the game, improve new player experience, get a better tutorial out, etc before the new players realize the game is incomplete from the first week (realistically from the first day or two).

"sucessfull" ↑ That spelling says everything. Any 'successful' company would fire you day 1. Try to troll again when you actually know more about what happened throughout APB's history, have a basic grasp of what would work for it and better even learn how to troll properly. By the way, LO sold APB's IP to the Chinese because they wasted time with RIOT and thus.... money. It didn't look like RIOT's battle pass made that any less painful. Thanks for the memes Mr. 7 years of being a useless employee.

How much money did LO exactly earn from RIOT's 3-weapon-skin battle pass, can you enlighten us then? Joke of the Century right here.

Please, I get more by simply existing. If you have a valid point to say, now is the time. Even then, you can cry yourself to sleep with the knowledge that the APB community doesn't like your beloved battle pass garbage.

Of course, you can't even debunk a single thing I said so you resort to blaming emotions. Typical. As if your expertise had anything meaningful. Congratulations, you wasted 7 years of your life.

You know, if everyone was really good at their job, then the gaming market and the world as a whole would be a much better place. You clearly weren't good at yours and it shows. The first thing to do when analyzing anything is information gathering (a.k.a doing your homework), which you didn't do a great job at. If you were also that good then you wouldn't have jumped companies so often. So there is a lot of debate when it comes to anything you say, really. I am sorry but battle passes aren't a magical formula that brings players. If you were paying any attention, you would've seen that RIOT's battle pass was empty with nothing but 3 weapon skins which would've been rewarded traditionally for playing RIOT a certain # of times. If you were actually present then you would've realized that RIOT's battle pass wasn't the thing that spiked player counts as it literally had nothing to offer. Nobody asked for APB to get a battle pass nor a Battle Royale mode and the majority were against the idea https://forums.gamersfirst.com/topic/8317-apb-battle-pass/ https://www.reddit.com/r/APB/comments/bf5ani/full_riot_rundown/ LO did it anyways. We played the game mode for what it is then the majority of Players left within the first week, causing the game mode unable to even launch. Is this really your "expert" understanding of boosting player engagement? Don't be ridiculous. Yes and no as this still creates the need-to-play basis and emptiness of feeling that there is nothing more to do after these mini goals are met. What kind of mini goals would it have? These mini goals already exist in the form of contacts giving mini side missions for additional JTs (kill few people with a shotgun, be MVP, etc). What would it possibly have that isn't a joke, drive a car for 5,000 meters? And if so, Players would login to drive than actually press k to play, no thank you. A Battle Pass would also create additional severe problems such as time commitments. LO would need to continue updating the battle pass with items that make sense (mostly cosmetics). Such a task is costly and LO with its financial crisis, lawsuit loss and hoping to find a sponsor by the time the New Engine is out doesn't really put them in a good position to open that door. It will only cause them further losses as they have proven it literally takes them over a year to do something that can be done in the next week's maintenance (e.g. reverting the ridiculous Med Spray x2 heal rate). LO previously clearly stated that they will stop posting due dates because the community gave them ♣♦♠♥ for always being delayed, so LO figured it is better to keep going without promising a due date. Do you really thing they can meet a monthly or so due date of a new battle pass season? That would be a miracle. Overlevelling usually repeats prior rewards just to get extra copies from, which in APB's case would only be great if it was a JTs reward and even so, most existing players bought all they wanted to buy with JTs anyways. Problem is that most Players around have been here for a decade. They have already bought all they wanted to buy so unless LO actually adds new things, there won't be any more money flow, especially when LO is still generous enough at the moment to provide Premium for free (since COVID started). APB needs to PLAY BETTER and then afterwards to increase the Rank cap with new things to work towards, perhaps give meaning to standing earned at max Rank, not a battle pass that will only encourage timely rewards that would be unattainable once its period is gone. Leave that garbage to Battle Royale and Gacha games, that's the last thing APB needs.

Very debatable. In the short-term, yes. What happens after a Player fully grinds a battlepass season in about a single week? He/She proceeds to grind a different game. This trend is similar in any game that has a battlepass system. Population counts spike at the start of a season to grind the new pass then goes down gradually. It creates the 'play on a need' basis rather than play the game for what it is. This won't help APB at all, it will make things worse. Again, RIOT was a good live-example. As soon as some people grinded the few weapon skins that RIOT offered, they NEVER played RIOT again and the game mode wasn't even able to start because there weren't enough players. APB does not need to go through this ever again. I have addressed the part of "to play more" but when it comes to spend more, still depends on how the battle pass is done. There are battle passes out there where if the Player FULLY plays a season, they will get the monetary equivalent to buy into the next season without actually paying for it. So dedicated Players only get to PAY ONCE provided they grind the first week or so of every season (which is easy to do). The reason why every game does it is because they want to jump on the new trend train, because they think that's what the current generation of Players like. Nothing more. See, here is the contradiction. If battle passes are indeed the reason to make someone play a game more, then it won't be really grindy at all as it will complete itself as the Player plays, yes?

I must say hard no to adding a battle pass. A battle pass can destroy a game's reputation and discourage people from playing it in numerous ways even if handled mostly right. It would require a miracle to work for APB, even more so considering APB tried it with RIOT and ended up being one of the emptiest battle passes in the history of online gaming.

I see. Yes, there would indeed be potential blessings to it. Perhaps also there won't be any need for people to /abandonmission or to restart the game because last stage is V.I.P or Creme De La Crime mission. Perhaps a new culture would surface where Players would simply talk to each other and let it all end before last stage. Yeah, it isn't really probable to win while Ranking up against seasoned players. They have all the experience, know all the spots, all the weapons, cars, muscle memories AND mods, while the Ranking up player is simply discovering them one at a time. I'm glad you made it all the way I agree to all these points but I'd also add increasing Contact Standing reward from non-opposed missions. Making it like 80% of Standing earned from playing an actual mission would make more Players willing to log in earlier before peak times & to stay a bit longer afterwards, ultimately making the game slightly more alive.

This alternative is both heaven and hell in 1. Upside: There will be no meaning to winning or losing, so players who want to play will simply play the game. Downside: A good number of Players whom aren't at max Rank will simply abuse this and instead of playing, they will make sure they lose early to better maximize their standing per hour. We will have a major problem similar to dethreating. Instead of dethreating, players will play a single stage or 2 before losing on purpose. It won't be pretty.

This is exactly the thing. Dethreaters didn't let children and new players play, that is why they are so delicious to farm. They deserve this for what they have done. APB would've been much more lively if they didn't set out to do what they did.

No, let the dethreaters be feasted upon.

Santa Claus is real.

Yes, what you explain seems to be a bit higher than natural. Sounds like a bandwidth based exploit. He must be throttling down his upload speeds on purpose to induce such laggy effects (some people do that sadly). It could also be that he is sharing his low-bandwidth internet with someone in the house who uploads videos. But it is also very likely that the nodes between him and the server aren't really great. Sadly getting into and out of cars in the normal way is latency dependent. It'll take a second to even start the animation. This is another advantage those with low latencies have in this server-sided environment. The backward grenade is a trick that is triggered with help of assigning that look backwards key (by default, it has no assigned key). Streamer Darleenko does this often, he can tell you accurately how to do it.

In APB, that type of teleporty movement is not just common but in fact the norm because of something called server tick rate (refresh rate for servers, meaning how often the server updates and shows you changes in people's inputs/movements). APB's server tickrate is around 30hz, which is about half of what other games use. For example, games like Counter Strike and PUBG run at 60hz, Valorant runs at a very modern 128hz. Another reason is latency. Even if there is no lag, there will always be latency. The effects of latency and server tickrate to update player movements will stack, ultimately showing you teleporty behaviour. This effect is especially more noticeable with semi-automatic weapons such as pistols, because most players either hold left-shift or have auto-sprint config between shots. So the server will show them quickly accelerating as it interpolates movements between those refresh ticks. About the cars, there is a trick that players want fixed because it is game breaking. If you park your car in such a way that the door is very close to a wall, another car, etc. You'll simply teleport inside the car because there is no room to physically open the door. The entire animation will be skipped and you can simply drive away instantly or just enter the car to heal off. If you see this, this is just the game, it is not a cheat.

Truth be told, most Hackusators end up providing false-proof just to try and get someone banned. Literally all the videos/clips I see that claim aimbotting show the user legit missing shots, it just got to a pathetic point honestly. But regardless, proof is proof. If Hackers are indeed abundant, you're welcome to show proof. -------------------------------------------------------------- Let me give you a solid piece of advice. With the exception of macro-users (which aren't hard to beat because of the game's rules and that they suck to begin with), real Cheaters are so rare you'd actually be lucky to get the chance of making them hate you through killing them (better yet arrest them, yes, it is possible. #LTLMasterRace). Once per year you'd get that singular person (no name and shame, sorry) who legit speedhacks around the map but other than that, not much really. INSTEAD, focus on yourself: 1- You MUST be able to tell distances in meters to something without an indicator with an error of +/- 5 meters MAX (you may use your own vehicle, last-stage VIP/team_death_match head indicator or anything to help but you MUST be able to tell distances without an indicator sooner or later. This is vital, sorry. Please practice this promptly). 2- Refer to APBDB to learn the weapons by heart FIRST, you'll get to see what is possible and what isn't and at what distance (APB is a game of distances with a lot of nonsense after all). Trust me, you'll be surprised (e.g DMR sniper actually doing more damage and killing with 2 shots instead of 3 at 88+ meters, because it appears to shoot some sort of rocket-powered bullets). 3- Check if you have packet loss through the chat-command /fps. It doesn't matter if you play well when the server won't receive your commands because of a bad connection (this happened at a certain district in Eu for a decent number of people, all other districts were fine). Make it a habit as connecting to a game IS NOT ENOUGH, you'll never know when your connection will fail you through instability. 4- Adjust your mouse and make sure your mouse-surface is smooth (trust me, you'd be fighting with your own mouse rather than your opponent, which is simply horrible). 5- After getting killed, Press O to open up the options and fine tune your mouse sensitivity as needed. Don't relax on copying a streamer's settings, fine tune them slightly to suit YOUR arm and mouse weight. 6- Know what to expect at whatever ping you have and play accordingly. If you have 180ms ping and playing against someone who mastered the game with 20ms ping, you COULD force them into playing at YOUR pace, else you're fighting an uphill battle that won't be easily winnable if you rely on switching primary/secondary weapons (yes, weapon switching must be approved by the server just like driving, so it is ping reliant). So don't get excited about the natural advantage they have. This is simply today's technology. Instead, be proud they struggled and got rekt against someone with high ping that can't switch as fast, it means you got gud. 7- Disable mouse acceleration and apply mouse fix, it'll help you better build mouse muscle memory. Mouse acceleration is not only active by default but it is also pure garbage. Some games bypass this but you better apply it yourself everywhere and get it over with once and for all. Another tip: APB doesn't give a flying ♣♦♠♥ if you win/lose especially if you are at Max Rank since getting more standing then and there is utterly meaningless. Leaderboards are simply fight club stages that also show nothing of value and get wiped clean next week. Any match that you play gets wiped when you press k and start the next mission. The game gives zero damns and therefore neither should you. You're better off trying to play the best possible at the given situation rather than focus on what cannot be changed to be a better player overall, for BOTH APB and any other game out there. Even the best players die here and there, it is PvP and dying is part of the game. If you can't stand dying, don't play. Instead, learn from your deaths. Don't tbag anyone unless tbagged upon first (yes, tbagging is considered an act of war), don't rage-DM anyone, don't say ♣♦♠♥. Simply Arrest/kill and be on your way, that is the ultimate way to live and also happens to be the best way to piss off the macroers/trash players who actually do all of that to see you rage (yes, that is their objective, just to piss off people. Don't play into it like a spoiled fool). Don't be a crybaby, play the No U card whenever possible. Don't give them the attention they seek. Thank me later.

Soon™ But how soon can not be accurately answered as there is no solid ETA. LO wishes to dish out the New Engine first as it supposedly makes working with the game easier (I don't see how altering weapon stats would differ as they've already done that promptly, such as reverting that Improved Rifling 3's alternate downside of slowing down the rate of fire, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Lie or not, can't really MAKE them do what they don't want to or can't, irrespective of it having a high-chance of killing everything they have worked for [imagine wanting to delay the core aspect that is gameplay and expect things to fly because they won't. That is simply wishful thinking at its best]). They have made decent progress with the New Engine after back-tracing some issues and that's why they are a bit behind what they have previously let us experience (open beta tests). The C.E.O showed that they got collisions working again and are now working at the Financial District. Regarding weapons, they kept the door open saying Weapon Balancing is an ongoing and endless process (and it is) but expect minimal to no changes before the New Engine is out. However, whether they go back to pre-LO era, mainstream balancing into something that makes sense & easier to deal with or continue trying to make every weapon its own identity like chess-pieces and further pursue the impossibility of magically making that reasonably fair to everyone 'just because' (even though it kept failing for years) remains unanswered.

Indeed, gameplay is at the center of everything AND also happens to be parallel to the Engine Upgrade. If it takes 6 shots to kill with N-TEC or 0.7s to kill with OCA, then that will also be the case after the Engine Upgrade & delaying balancing in theory is simply foolish. However, giving them the benefit of the doubt that changing stats indeed takes more effort and time with the current setup then they should at least PLAN ahead and implement better gameplay solutions early with the new Engine. Things like the HVR-crosshair-size-damage shouldn't exist after the engine goes live. MattScott himself declared that the New Engine won't be enough, so there is a light of hope there. While LO has a roadmap to fix things like New Player Experience, matchmaking through phasing, etc, the concern is how fast they'll get these things done. Perhaps they are financially pressured and have no choice but to immediately go for sponsorships when the new engine goes live but I believe it is a mistake to put that as first priority, no matter how financially pressurized they may be. It is simply a recipe that will throw all their hard work into the bin.

I know how that feels, I LITERALLY just did that

Yeah, that too. :Sadge:

Indeed they don't. Remember that they sold APB's IP for extra funds. They wouldn't have done that if they had $

He DID get a helping hand.