Lord Cashpoint

It was entirely unnecessary and entirely preventable - ever since shotguns received their big nerf back in 2013, Reloaded had slowly been buffing them, adding little things on slowly and slowly. They then turned around and proclaimed that the OCA could no longer compete with shotguns, as if it wasn't a problem of their own making. It would only get worse when in some of the earlier balance changes LO did, they mentioned how shotguns have difficulty fighting weapons like the OCA.

Once again the Test B changes are a classic case of "throw everything we have and hope it works". A 0.75 ttk is on the whole a pretty good idea, which along with the jump shooting nerf should be enough to bring the N-tec in line - the slower accuracy recover and reduced range (AND reduced health damage) seem like complete overkill. Remember the job here is to balance weapons, not ritualistically destroy guns completely. This is starting to become reminiscent of the old Obeya CR 762 and PMG changes from 2012 where G1 completely ruined weapons for a couple of months with their over eager nerfing. @MattScott once again I have to ask - is the Ursus going to receive any of this treatment? If these changes go ahead, it will kill faster, with less bullets than the regular N-tec, have more range and be better at jump shooting. You stated you don't like P2W weapons - well let's ensure there isn't a straight N-tec upgrade you can win by gambling for it!

I don't doubt it is coming - whether by the time it arrives it will mean anything will be a different matter. A huge amount of work has been put into it, and I'm sure that will show - but there will definitely be people disappointed by it, something which is inevitable for an update 6 years in the making.

The N-tec competes against marksman and pointman weapon in the sense that it's not a complete roll-over against those weapons. The issue with combat in APB is that the mid range weapons are on the whole less straight-forward to use than close or longer range weapons - the N-tec almost needs to be as robust as it is to stand a chance. This is not to say it's perfectly balanced, far from it - it certainly needs the jump shooting nerf, and probably a TTK increase (although nothing like what they've done in Test District B). It's just that the other mid range weapons tend to require a lot more effort to get the same results as the N-tec and other weapons (Such as OCA or Obeya). Perhaps that's a wider balance issue. That being said I don't know how any real balancing can take place whilst we have such unreliable hit registration in this game.

I think they still need to fix the standing animations for male characters carrying the pre-modded variants of the ATAC like the Bodyguard (Fairly sure male characters may be accidentally using the Watchman's animation for the Bodyguard, the former of which doesn't have a vertical hand-grip, but instead an enlarged barrel jacket, resulting in male characters have a horizontal hand position where they should have a vertical). What's odd is before they made it so the ATAC is held two handed while idle, male characters suffered from an incorrect running animation on all ATACs with a grip - this bug now exists on just the special pre-modded ones, whilst idle and running. Additionally male characters also hold the ATAC's grip fairly low down - but this is par for the course considering that many weapons such as the AMG result in broken wrists for female characters.

There's no doubt that the N-tec is the strongest non legendary assault rifle - but this is less of a statement of its power, and more one of the rest of the class' weaknesses. The N-tec is currently the only assault rifle which can compete against both the very capable weapons which border its ranges - such as the OCA and the Obeya CR 762. The N-tec, unlike a lot of other weapons in this game actually works - despite the weapon curve changes, it responds well to user handling and scales well with skill level. So many weapons in this game (especially Assault Rifles) are either one trick ponies or require high effort for little pay off. It's not the case that the N-tec will never need looking at (The jumpshooting accuracy nerf is well overdue), but I would have preferred that the most egregious weapon balance issues in the game be at least implemented in the live version first before deciding what a gun as crucial as the N-tec for game balance needed. 100% do the other assault rifles need to be brought in line with the N-tec to make the rifleman class more varied - but the answer does not lie in making them all mediocre. This looks like another case of just piling on loads of different nerfs at once instead of just settling on one and seeing how it went. I'd be almost tempted to say Test District B's changes are intentionally so half-baked to make the alternative Test A look better.

The N-TEC 5 has an over damage of 18 compared to the Ursus' 10, it's hardly a huge difference between the two.

Are you going to make any changes to the Ursus, or is it going to become even more of an upgrade on the regular N-tec? The Ursus has far better tap firing capabilities than the regular N-tec, especially as the latter suffers from spongey bloom caused by frankly absurd accuracy curve mechanics. If you implement Test District B's changes you may as well melt the N-tecs down into scrap metal, because that's all they'll be worth at that point. 0.85 TTK is insanely high for an assault rifle - especially one you've just reduced the range of, meaning you intend it to be used in close quarters combat. In fact, you may as well as scrap the Rifleman role at this point, because god forbid there's an assault rifle which is actually versatile. The fact that these changes are even being considered whilst the HVR remains at its silly damage is beyond belief. Test A I can somewhat understand - but reducing the range on both seems unnecessary. Jumping accuracy nerf is a fair enough change.

I'd presume the type of player who was purchasing Armas items beforehand will continue to do so, regardless of the options provided by the Joker Store. This incentive is more aimed at those F2P players who will never spend anything (or very little) on the game as a way to ensure they don't feel forgotten or to boost engagement.

Why is this not ideal? Waterfront may be the less popular action district, but there's no reason for the development team to start treating it like the red-headed step child. They were also designed to be top tier specialist contacts but that doesn't seem to matter.

Is the bomb finale still stacked against Enforcers? I remember that even if the Enforcers held the bomb until the last second, all the Crims had to do was ensure the bomb was armed as the timer ran out, regardless of how long it had been armed for. If so, that finale needs overtime more than anything.

@MattScott Thanks for the update on the name changes - When you state October 2nd, is there a specific time zone or just time in general when these names will become available?

These cases are pretty decent I guess - they avoided being too in your face. They're perhaps a little boring if I had to be honest, but that may be because I'm just so used to seeing those particular pieces of art work. It might be fun to see some more creative uses of APB's style and branding (Although I realise that it would have been very easy to create these) and make them look more like a proper phone case. You could for example have a repeating pattern type design using the Enforcer logo: But it's great to see Little Orbit being pro-active and getting APB's name out there.

If I could make two improvements to the Prestige system it would be: Make it so that in-mission bounties can't interact with players outside of the mission and vice versa. Make it so that the levels reset after every mission, and you should only become bounty if you are seriously dominating your opponents

Yeah, perhaps I should have been more clear - I'm sure RTW didn't make the maps for anything other than combat. I suppose I've never been overly impressed by it - although I like the variety the maps bring, there are still certain areas (Such as Financial's Highway or the edges of Waterfront) that even with a longer TTK still stand out as being particularly poor. None of the spawn systems the game has ever had has done much to help, often only exacerbating the issue. The maps may have been better suited to longer TTK, but it didn't stop the combat itself from being quite boring (From the brief amount of RTW gameplay I saw and played there were certain areas with so much cover that every gunfight took forever). I suppose if one aspect that lower TTK affects is that positioning becomes more important the faster you kill - as poor positioning will get you killed a lot faster than with the original TTK. As such I imagine the inadequacies of the map design become a lot sharper when you're very much relying on it. A dodgy hitbox on a wall, or a weirdly designed chokepoint may be overlooked if you're able to survive for longer under fire. I think a great deal would be helped by a much improved spawn system and a more consistent hit-reg on the server. As for vehicles I'm still annoyed that the solution to cars dying too easily to explosives was to buff vehicle health, and not nerf explosive damage. We now have situations where a Vegas can survive being fired at by 3 players and manage to get away in time.

I was under the impression that Obeya is already fairly popular. The weapon has a very forgiving damage drop off, ludicrous over damage per shot (HB3 doesn't even add another shot to kill), as well as the ability to fire at almost maximum fire rate without a particularly onerous accuracy penalty. It's an incredibly strong weapon - only the monster which remains the HVR is able to realistically keep it in check at the very long ranges. OBIR is not as widely used just because in general it's less forgiving when it comes to missing shots (and because the Obeya is typically the better choice). I may be biased when it comes to the N-tec, but if you were to nerf it before looking at other very powerful weapons (Such as HVR) you'd further accelerate the polarisation of combat ranges in this game, where people elect to either go for the very close range weapons, or the very long range weapons, as those two categories seem to be the only reliable options. I have a hard time believing that the maps were designed with any sort of combat specifically in mind - there are certainly areas where a longer TTK would make far more sense, but there are also parts of the map where along TTK would make gun fights overly drawn out affairs. In any case the intended design is probably redundant anyway - I couldn't see the original RTW design team knowing that vehicle heavy gameplay would become a sort of norm, otherwise they may have made more areas inaccessible to vehicles. Additionally, mission design often forces you into one of two situations: The objective is in an enclosed area where the maximum combat range is scarcely above 15m - playing very aggressive with close range weapons are required The objective can be seen for miles around in at least 3 different directions - taking long range weapons will be a priority (but even still close range weapons are useful for rushing the defenders) All of these issues are probably way beyond what Little Orbit should be focusing on right now - I'm glad to see the OCA/RFP combo being tackled in one go, as it was perhaps one of the most painful set-ups to play against. I just wish with the RFP they wouldn't go down that classic route of not being happy to just nerf a weapon, instead adding a new upside to it for no reason.

You could begin to replace/supplement the current way missions works - i.e. waiting for a text box to pop up on screen and tell what mission you've received. Instead both Enforcers and Crims could (if they didn't wish to wait for a mission to start) go to a location on the map and perform some activity which would begin an unopposed mission. Certain locations could trigger different missions, some more difficult to complete (Having more stages, or more limited time limits) but could have better payouts. I suppose you would have people intentionally trying to get easy missions, but that is something you can already do in game by pledging to low rank contacts. Perhaps even you would get a good reward for completing a risky mission unopposed - but other teams would be given the chance to stop you (I believe RTW had a system somewhat like this, where you could accept or decline opposition)

If we were to make a "Yellow mod" I'd probably just remove ammo altogether - as we already have two field supplier modifications available. I've never really liked how the Ammo consumable allowed you to ignore the downside of not running the Field Supplier mod - especially as it was a tactic that only higher rank players were able to use. I wonder how useful Satchels will be once those EMP grenades come out, they're already limited to planned demolition of Car Spawners and protecting yourself from aggressive vehicle players.

@MattScott Can I ask what the rationale behind making those new contacts not top tier was? I understand the desire to not block off the content from lower rank players, but I feel like this will mess up the contact progression massively. It's clear that there were meant to be 4 "specialist" contacts at the end of the progression, and we already got 3 of them so far - why disrupt it now?

Appreciate the update Matt! Will you be able to buy the skins account bound at a later date, or will they be character bound only?

For me one of the visual improvements I'd love to see the most is some effort put into distinguishing buildings from each other. Currently many buildings will have signs high up on their exteriors, which will denote certain things such as being a Pool Club or a City Community Centre, but nothing about what the player can see at the ground level make any effort to clarify what buildings are. It's very obvious in call outs, as there are very few recognisable buildings beyond the community named ones "Island" "German Fortress" etc.

The community's a lot smaller these days, and there's less reason to try and impress with very technically impressive outfits. Additionally, a lot of players have been here for almost a decade - I think the enthusiasm has worn off, especially with the lack of new clothing pieces.

I appreciate that - I presumed that's what he meant, I just wanted an absolute confirmation.

@MattScott Will this feature be removed from Action Districts? I know you allude to it in your post, but just to get a concrete answer.

I don't really feel like RIOT is much of a BR game. It's an APB game mode at heart, and in many respects still plays like APB. I don't think it's going to capture any audience that weren't already drawn to APB. It's a neat mode for sure, and has a lot more polish and effort than the various Anarchy configurations we saw over the years (Which I suppose were all just proto-RIOT modes in a way). Ultimately though, it's probably a lot less interesting than just standard Action Districts, which is where APB really shines. I can't see the mode sustaining a decent population for very long unless the game as a whole sees a load of players returning - at best it can hope to hold Fight Club numbers, but right now it's competing with Action and Fight Club for player numbers and frankly I don't think it's got the appeal to do so. It's still much the same as the rest of the game: Dense and difficult to get into if you're completely new to the game. If you're skilled and do well in mission districts, you're going to perform well in RIOT as well, and I don't think someone experienced in other BR games would have any advantage here whatsoever.