Lord Cashpoint

I think the decline of player numbers may be something of a correction here - at the start of this year APB was more or less following the trajectory it has been for years now, which is a gradual decline of player numbers: As you can see, roughly around the time the pandemic starts APB gets a fairly large boost in player numbers, which begins to wear off by June. As more people leave their houses and return to work, I think it's understandable that APB should see a more drastic drop in numbers, as the trend corrects itself to where it was before. The same effect can be observed in early 2018, when Little Orbit purchased the game: As you can see, there's a large bump when players return to the game to see what this new company is all about, followed by a sharp decline back to the standard numbers once it's clear that the game is still very much the same. Now obviously Little Orbit does have an effect on player numbers, and their decisions do make a difference, but they can only do so much with the game's dwindling population. They're clearly focusing on the EU, which is the game's best chance to inject itself with some much needed hype to draw players back and try and (realistically) delay the game's inevitable end.

Yes I have noticed this too, by the way the original ratio for large missions was 23 to 8. I'm unsure if this is intentional or not, but it does mean that VIP missions with larger player counts ends very quickly (And seemingly almost in the defender's favour). If anything the reduced lives harms the attackers - as they technically have less lives per VIP life (Something like 2.4 vs 2.8). Attackers ideally more lives in VIP missions, and even then it may not be enough.

I think I may have found the issue here.

People were using the Pioneer/Espacio before G1 buffed their health all those years ago, I have absolutely no doubt they will continue to be used heavily.

I always saw them as half decent idea, poor execution. If they do the mission balancing right, mobile cover might not be needed any longer. Larger missions would be fine if the game knew to scale missions up automatically (In the same way it will add more lives to deathmatch and VIP missions should additional players join). The main issue for large missions is that the more players in the match, the harder it is to attack, as wiping the enemy team becomes impossible. If for example, the game added a second objective and only one had to be completed (Like Counterstrike I think?) when the number of players per team exceeded 4, you could get around this issue.

I genuinely never believed we'd see car and mission re-balancing happen prior to the Engine Upgrade. I'll be very interested to see how this affects regular missions, especially in regard to item size and objective location (All eyes on The Hidden Menace and especially Piracy Purge) The vehicle re-balancing is interesting, as the Pioneer/Espacio nerf is a reversal of a previous G1 patch to make cars more survivable against weapons like OSMAWs. Hopefully this patch paves the way for more long needed re-balancing efforts which I won't put here to avoid sparking arguments (But mostly around spawns). I hope LO goes further and looks at other tweaks to the mission system, such as introducing a delay before the final stage to allow everyone to spawn in.

G1C is the best route, as you will get it account bound. Don't forget you also get JMBs as a reward for spending X amount of G1C too. You're better off specifically targeting a legendary you're actually interested in than leaving it to fate, as there are a fair number of legendaries which are not particularly interesting or fun to use.

Whilst Spotter certainly needed a nerf, I'd rather they go down the route of making tracking icons not update in real time (This would apply to Deathmatch finale HUD elements too). If icons updated every 3 seconds then you'd still know when an enemy is roughly located, but as the spotted person you'd still have agency to do something. In a way it would be similar to how the minimap icons used to work, where after firing your position would update if you moved. Also APB desperately needs a ping system, it would likely help out random teams a bit. Currently if you're not in voice chat, the only way to quickly alert team-mates is with a very clunky map ping system.

Bear in mind since the 35% discount was removed G1C prices were dropped by roughly 20% and many Armas prices were changed (usually lowered). Overall you should now end up paying less most of the time - same reason why we don't see many large sales happening on Armas any more.

Don't be like me and pretend that the crashing is so infrequent you can play around it, I'd recommend getting the APB Advanced Launcher and just lowering the settings that way - I haven't had a crash so far. It is very annoying to not be able to play at the highest settings, but unfortunately until the new engine is released, there will not be much we can do.

Currently on APB:

Technically by purchasing the gun enough times you are buying it permanently, you just had a chance to obtain it permanently before then. Given that it costs 50,000 JT to guarantee purchase, I don't think having it available for straight purchase would have made much of a difference.

I think perhaps the best distinction that can be made will be that Joker Tickets = Character bound items, G1C = Account bound items. It's true the distinction will get blurrier, especially for new players who will need to think about 3 currencies at once. Perhaps the best way to think about it may be that JT are just F2P G1C? I guess it remains to be seen how it will all play out.

I do get the impression that LO will at some point add additional ways of earning JTs - they already added a low level passive income from missions itself. JTs have a great potential to be incentives for people to play the game. You could start introducing measures such as log-in rewards, or prizes for playing X number of missions per day. If they were being particularly smart they might replace the weirdly small cash rewards for levelling up a contact and replace it with JT rewards instead. This, especially for Free2Play players would incentivise them to play missions and level up contacts. Of course for the sake of the game's continued existence, people will also be tempted to purchase JTs using G1C as well (Although at that point surely it would be quicker to just buy the gun outright? I guess whatever brings the money in)

It's slightly different in that you obtain it not from regular JMBs, but instead from GM Powerboxes (Which have been available at various times). The FFA 5.56 R&D III is a rather strange case overall. It, along with the "Joker" variant of the OCSP almost belong to a separate class of legendaries.

Seriously though, moving to remove loot boxes from this game is a huge step!

They'll probably find a way to break car spawners

I'd be far happier to restrict ammo resupply (Would make bandolier an actually useful mod) if Mobile Spawn Unit wasn't so prevalent in the game. As it currently stands you need to be able to frequently re-supply grenades to take care of them.

I played APB for a decade and all I got was this t-shirt.

Thanks for clarifying. Might be a good idea to consider the Joker Weapon Skin for the winners - see here: http://old.apbdb.com/items/Unlock_WeaponSkin_Joker/ It was made specifically for people winning competitions in the Joker Store.

Hi @Sakebee Great to see we're finally having another community design contest for a contact - it's one of the few things I miss about G1's early days. Just to clarify is there any preference on what LO is looking for in terms of design? I don't quite have the old "Speedball" thread to hand currently, but I remember one of the criteria being that characters which used symbols to imitate depth on a piece of clothing (E.g. adding studs to a jacket when none is present on the original model) were generally discounted. Also - do you think the Joker weapon skin might be a good idea for a reward for this competition?

Maybe she's from accounting?

I don't understand why the SBSR series doesn't have full mobility - they clearly can't compete with other weapons in their categories, even without the penalty to movement speed, but it's very much the final nail in the coffin. Also the Harbinger for sure. A side-arm with an average idea behind it (Ability to fire aimed shots and fan the hammer) but the execution misses the mark entirely. I don't even know what to suggest to fix it, because I use it so rarely that I don't know where it even fits in to the game as a whole. Having looked at the stats for the Harbinger, the fact it has no over damage severely hampers it, along with its whopping 1 second long equip time (Which means its faster to equip certain machine guns that this side-arm).

Are these the quotes you are referring to? I can't say I disagree with Matt, new players to APB face a number of considerable hurdles towards being able to compete with long standing players, and the progression system is definitely one of them. When we think that some very useful mods such as High Burn Point Fuel or Valzipram are locked away at a fairly high level requirement (Especially for non premium players), there certainly is a case to be made that new players are at a significant disadvantage. This is especially true for weapon mods for example, where if you are a player with no friends in the game, you would need to either grind out the necessary role to then have the chance to buy the modification, or purchase it for an inflated price on the marketplace (Which may not be obvious to do in the first place). I believe Matt's thinking is probably more in line with the changes made to the Joker Store, which was essentially making a wider variety of weapons more accessible to more players. APB has always had an uncomfortable design when it comes to player progression as a result of its unfocused development. On the one hand, we like to believe that an experienced player on a new character would still be able to fight just as effectively, but on the other they also have the benefit of being able to send mods over from other characters and have the knowledge that shiny gold guns don't make you win. If we're not going to restrict matchmaking by character level, then we need to ensure that more players are on the same playing field. This is without going into the mess of the unfinished merging of player characters. By this I mean almost 10 years ago now they decided to make threat account bound instead of character bound, yet still we have very few account bound facilities (Such as symbol storage or shared bank accounts). I don't believe the kill requirements for the Chrome skin are going anywhere, but it's important for more experienced players of APB to not dismiss these ideas. You may say the game will crumble by changing progression, but how can we expect APB to survive without new players?

I think vehicle drop offs may be a little more enjoyable if the objectives were custom cars, rather than the stock civilian variants we see right now. Something like a Han Veo (Not the Coywolf variant) is a particularly vulnerable car (Which is why no one uses it when they have a choice). Maybe if they had some mods applied to them or a few tweaks to their stats it might make it less of a pain to drop off. Additionally if they had custom designs on them, it would make them feel more in-tune with the mission descriptions themselves. In terms of vehicle markers, perhaps they should only show up when someone is inside the vehicle? That might help to stop defending teams pre-damaging the car.