AgentWatson

I think if a person wants to abandon a mission they'll find methods to do so even if it means exiting the game. The idea isn't to entice people to abandon missions but to at least let them know the option is there and negate causing further frustration with the game.

I think the actual strategy is to give cheat coders so much whiplash from the amount of back and forth between anti-cheating methods that they eventually give up on coding new cheats for APB that probably makes them a few hundred a year.

I think the first step would be making it so it's a little more intuitive for new players. It seems pretty silly, that a player has to navigate a bunch of menus to find the command to abandon a mission. There should be a hotkey presented to the player instead perhaps in the top left hand corner.

On the US it's rare you find games altogether due to the segmented player based between varying levels of threat levels. Secondly, it depends on the examples you use, if we're not including ranked games in other FPS games then there is very little skill based matchmaking found in games like Apex Legends, CS;GO, Tarkov, PUBG etc. Casual games most likely represent the the majority of the playerbase even in APB's late stage due to returning players who've not played in some time and people who just play on and off occasionally because they like APB. During my peak hours it's extremely hard to find games on US West an issue that would be remediated if there wasn't a threat system. Anything that would attempt to supplement the issue of horrible matchmaking just wouldn't work due to the extremely small population of APB. I know Matt means well, but a tonne of us Australian/NZ players have been shafted due to the new focus on improving matchmaking when the issue I've always had with matchmaking in APB is that I could never find people to play with on Han when it was still around and it continually remains a point of contention on US West now. As the APB community dwindles further it's more important in my mind that they find issues that 1)Hammer down fringe cases where high level players have disproportionate advantages over low level ones and 2) That people are able to find games without an inordinate amount of downtime between games.

Perhaps controversial but I think at least this late into APB's life I just don't see the point of threat anymore. A lot of recent FPS games just don't use skilled based matchmaking and I think it's pretty antiquated. APB has a slowly dwindling population and if I'm some new person coming into the game the thing that deters me from the game isn't going to be toxicity or elitism of certain players because those elements exist within any game it's that when I go searching for a game and I don't get matched up with anyone. Why would a new person care about a system in a game anyway like threat? People have become fixated on the threat system and any new people that join will fall right into the same trap better to remove it now and reduce the amount of impact it'll have on any new players that'll join due to the Engine Update. Little Orbit should also be looking into elements in the game that might give higher level players an advantage over lower level players, the vehicle changes are a good one, don't remove meaningful progression from the game but don't give cheap power to high level players either. At least that's my take on the current state of APB.

These changes to vehicles are really good. I'd like them to go a bit further with the changes though, some have obviously been left out here. Cisco should go from 980->1050 Charge Sentinel Should go from 1050->1250 Dolton Broadwing should go to from 1150->1250 Dolton Fresno should go from 1450->1350 Maybe there is some other vehicle I'm missing?

I think it's interesting that a lot of people thought that a gun like the Colby Commander were performing sub optimally. I mean it compares like the Colby RSA just with a very situational and niche mod on it. So are people trying to say that the issue with the Colby Commander is that the mod is sub optimal or that the Colby RSA is sub optimal? I find I'm quite in line with the consensus it seems on most of the votes people submitted, maybe I'm alone on the VBR huntress though? I feel it's sub optimal. Other strong opinions seem to be on the Ursus, no surprises there though and the Volcano. I'm guessing people just feel as though Ursus should've followed along with the balance changes made to the N-TEC5 I can't recall people ever really having a strong opinion about it before the balance changes and the Volcano is just straight up annoying, I own one but used it once or twice. Out of principle I'd never use anything I wouldn't wanna be on the opposite side of.

This makes a lot of sense to me, not sure why everyone is always against balancing the current vehicles in the game? Personally I'd like to see car mods completely disappear and instead replace it with car customization instead that includes customizing much of the functionality of the car. Defer a lot of those car customization modifications to contacts and have unique mods for each car so there isn't a meta for modifications but each one gives their own flavor. I would understand peoples apprehension to my suggestion here given that adjusting vehicles on the fly is such a popular thing mid battles and for chase missions. However that system pretty much defeats the purpose of having the availability to much of the cars in the game, people will most often only choose 3-4 cars with rare exceptions so it's just those 3-4 cars with mods varying very little. I want a system instead where on a given mission you should have to think about changing the car you want for the missions entirely. Right now speed and acceleration seem to be the meta with durability trailing perhaps 3rd in preference for a lot of people when it comes to characteristics people find desirable in a car, I think a more in-depth car customization will make cars quirky and fun again.

I literally said this already. You could perhaps proofread a little before commenting.

They could but they won't, it's not inconceivable but I reckon this move was entirely based on financial reasons to get APB 3.5 through the door (finally) that move may also have duality to it but we will not know until a later date I assume that they'll sell off their extended portfolio of titles to Unit as well in time or some subsidiary under Unit. Working on 4.0 might come with some significant financial overruns meaning the project would be stuck in constant development cycle if they didn't have the capital to invest there in the first place. This quote makes me believe they honestly shelved the project not because it was technically complex but the capital they would've had to invest to fulfill it would be so financially prohibitive that they gave up on it entirely. I don't know why Unit targeted APB reloaded IP in general but what I believe is they needed at least something with some brand recognition to sell to a mostly Asian market. They just saw that Little Orbit was sinking and saw an opportunity to acquire some brand with some recognition in the market.

Unit still holds IP rights to APB reloaded this means that any future ventures are completely off the table for Little Orbit when it's regarding APB reloaded. I'm talking specifically of course about "APB2" which is the engine update to 4.0. So it's 3.5 and that's it and then if the game doesn't pick up and let's be honest 3.5 is going to show substantially less improvements than 4.0 ever would so I can foresee that APB reloaded at this point is doomed to die. Consequently anything that immediately comes after APB reloaded may be APB reloaded in name but it'll probably be heavily pandered to an Asian market changing the tone and aspects of the game making it unconventional to what we're currently playing. I honestly expected they'd get to 3.5 but I was pretty skeptical about ever getting to 4.0, just too much of a stretch and at least now there is some vindication for my concerns. So whatever 3.5 turns out to be whether it's bad or good, enjoy it while it lasts.

I had asked for this earlier Matt didn't seem too keen on the point. I think the topic has really soured on ray-tracing right now simply because of NVIDIA. It shouldn't be that way because what NVIDIA are doing is using their fixed function RT cores on their GPU to utilize DXR instructions coupled with their denoiser which is accelerated by their tensor cores. This is just the method NVIDIA will go with ray-tracing, AMD and Intel will soon follow thereafter, the industry is heading that way. Matt did say there would be an eventual shift to UE4. Which just recently got instructions that can be utilized by developers to make it easy for them to implement ray-tracing into their games. I agree reflections would be the best application of ray-tracing in the case of APB just because it could also add slightly more complexity to the combat.

Partner is not analogous with labrat it's analogous toward mutual beneficiary. Because DICE teaming up with NVIDIA here to deliver this technology is going to benefit DICE in the long run. You're only thinking about it in simple terms. It's about adding technologies specifically, DLSS or NAS, or Ray-tracing. path-tracing that add longevity to the game well into the future. BFV will still perhaps be relevant in another 2-3 years and even further out when people are still playing BFV they'll be able to utilize the new cards of that day to provide them a playable experience with ray-tracing included. The whole reason we can appreciate games like Crysis is because there was a lot of forward thinking design choices that slaughtered the hardware of that day, but we're appreciate of the ability to play Crysis. NVIDIA have changed the game when it comes to how computation of effects works on their cards, thanks to the ingenious use of tensor on the die. Tensor can be used in conjunction with CUDA but overall the tensor stack on NVIDIA's cards is open source you can design your own effects to utilize the tensor stack on a card that supports it. More importantly, we've not even gotten to UE 3.5 yet, by the time I imagine UE 4 is here NVIDIA will coming up on their next lineup of cards and I'm going to make the prediction that raytracing will become playable in 2 years from now. NVIDIA have been playing with chiplets on their PCB, using their new connection interface called NVSwitch on the PCB to connect multiple die spaces. They'll do this to increase the amount of silicon on the die dedicated for tensor stacks like ray-tracing but have a seperate die purely for tessellation. NVIDIA have published a white paper about this technology and their implementation of chiplets. If APB is going to remain relevant for another 10 years then I don't see any issue in implementing raytracing into the game. No one is forcing anyone to use it, it's a alternative feature you can toggle on or off in BFV.

Obviously I can't speak for console players as a PC player if it's really that vital for Vivox to be working. But personally I don't think I'm too bothered by the issue of Vivox not working, if I want to communicate with someone on PC as other people have highlighted already in this thread we're spoiled on choices exclusively on PC and I also don't think fixing Vivox is either going to attract people back to the game. I don't wanna press so much on you and your development team Matt but 3.5 UE is pretty much vital right now to maintaining not only the active fanbase but attracting new players and older players back to the game, I've sort of fallen in and out of interest of this game in the last few months because even though you've hustled and done a lot with the mess you've been given, weapon balance and new anti-cheat aren't going to be enough to attract new people. Game balance only matters to people who actively play the game and it's the same with the abundance of cheaters. Vivox is just another one of those issues that exist in the game and does nothing to revitalize the game by adding it back. It's a distraction of talent and I hope you don't consider pouring man hours into more needless distractions.

They're not ignoring tickets though, it's people like you who send in tickets about every little thing that pretty much congest the whole system. Seriously how many tickets have you sent in now...? Because as I recall the last time I called you out on it I remember seeing a little over a dozen tickets you've filed. I've filed 1 ticket in the entire time I've been apart of this community and I've probably gone through just as much harrassment, vulgar language as someone like you but I don't really seem to have as many issues with the support as you do. Maybe you need to stop being so hyper-sensitive and just play the damn game like everyone else at this point. What you'd define by "care" is completely subjective. I don't really care if there are GM's in-game I never wanted their presence before and It's not something highly desirable now, I just want them to plan more events ones that preferably give us rare items for completing them, have more sales etc. Asking that a small studio like LO is going to hire a full-time moderation team is just expecting and demanding too much. There are other things on the itinerary which are more pressing right now, like making sure that the engine update goes through successful and integration with the console platforms also happens.