Lord Cashpoint

I've always thought APB should have had the option of a low buy in price which came with a number of perks (Perhaps permanent weapon purchasing or being able to lease Armas weapons for in game cash). Probably a bit late to implement that now however.

I thought they shifted the Criminal contacts in Waterfront due to the glitch of not being able to be witnessed in that corner of the map. They've also moved contacts like Violet Prentiss around for some reason or another - at least Devil Dog was amusing to see in new perches.

I'd be extremely surprised if they were not Lynette Casey and Lucas Van Rooyen. We need the second pair of end game contacts for Waterfront, they've been missing for half a decade now. And maybe a boy can dream about the final final contacts which would take us to the level 300 cap. They could also fix the wonky progression, as currently Tiptoe (A BloodRose) unlocks Gumball (A G-King) and Devil Dog (A Prentiss Tiger) unlocks Aletta (A Praetorian).

The customisation was part of an idea that APB would be more than just a PVP shooter - it would almost be an MMO with PvE and PvP elements but also have a strong social element to the game. I wouldn't be so harsh on G1 - most of the initial staff that worked on APB when they took over were remaining RTW devs, and without them the game wouldn't exist as we know it. It's not as if RTW's monetisation strategy was any better.

What exactly did RTW ever intend this game to be? From what I remember of developer comments there was very little direction in APB's initial development - it was supposed to be a mainly PvE game at the start! So instead of focusing on one core gameplay aspect they tried to do them all, spent a load of money and did so on a Frankenstein game engine whilst simultaneously incorrectly predicting the future course of PC hardware development. RTW essentially had no vision beyond "Make an online GTA"

I never thought this kind of issue was to rear its ugly head in APB's community again. I have no doubt that the vast majority of the players listed (as well as any future SPCT members) will do a fine job of providing feedback - many of them have played this game for far longer than I have, and I know they will come up with some great ideas and suggestions. Nor do I think MattScott was necessarily making the wrong decision with his method to choose these members; when you've only been familiar with the game for less than a year there are far worse people to pick for these types of programmes than those already shown. However I guess what's just a bit unsettling to me is that feeling that I've seen these concerns from the wider player-base before, that certain members of the community receive preferential treatment (Again not that the current SPCT team don't deserve the roles they're in). I suppose for me it's the lack of transparency of these processes, that the decision making is done all behind closed doors in private messages and such, that there's nowhere to go to simply apply for these types of positions, and instead it's based on somewhat arbitrary requirements - I could very well be wrong, but I'm struggling to overcome the feeling. Of course this isn't me bemoaning that I wasn't picked for something like SPCT - but when I don't even receive a response to some of the applications I have emailed in the past, it does make me less invested in the game as a whole.

This is something I've thought about. By the time APB reaches UE3.5 it will be around a decade old - how long will it take to push it through to the next iteration? I feel like APB as a whole will never achieve the popularity that in my opinion it deserves without it being given a clean start and a fresh look. I'm truly appreciative of Little Orbit just for believing in this project as it's certainly not something I thought I would ever see, but I would also love to know if there will ever be a day where APB could be a franchise and not just a game.

The amount of thought that went into the original post is pretty impressive. I'm not really going to comment on your suggestions just yet but I will ask if you think SMGs need better balancing if we are to ever fix shotguns? The OCA is still at its stupid low ttk which it was given to help combat shotguns.

The event would have been far better if you could have done up to 3 activities per day. Would keep people playing for a decent amount of time (Players wouldn't grind to finish and then abandon immediately) but also allows people to not be entirely helpless if they miss a few days. Additionally some of the activities are somewhat counter-productive, or rely on a fair bit of chance.

I feel as if the bounty system would be far more fair if the P/N levels reset at the start of each mission - it doesn't really make sense for you to be at risk of becoming bounty just because you did well in the previous mission. I'd also like to see it become much harder to become bounty - as well as it providing far better rewards. But if you're not going to remove the system entirely you should definitely make it so that bounty players can only fight against players in their mission. If you are going to remove it perhaps consider turning P/N into a kind of incentive to keep doing well in missions, a bit like Overwatch's on fire system.

Thanks for the post MattScott. Something you didn't quite touch on although I'm sure you've thought about is how the game calculates threat. By which I mean - how does the game determine how well you did in a mission? Very early on in APB: Reloaded threat was determined by winning a mission - this had a huge range of issues, such as losing threat for being called in as backup at the last second or losing large amounts of threat for being one kill down in a deathmatch when the timer ran out. A scoring system was introduced which supposedly would help better determine who had done the best during missions. This has definitely helped but it also has a few problems as well, namely how score is calculated. Medals often award disproportionate amounts of points for what are sometimes trivial actions (You get more points for killing someone with a grenade after you have died than if you were still alive when the grenade went off for example). Attackers can sometimes rack up to around 5 kills worth of points before the defenders have even had a chance to arrive. Running someone over in a car is apparently worth double the amount of points that just shooting them. The list goes on. Additionally - the game is probably too quick to up-threat people. I've seen missions where a silver has progressed to gold simply for being the only member of the enemy team to get a kill. Finally threat will always be difficult to determine when missions in APB can be so frustratingly random and unfair. I'm not expecting Little Orbit to undertake a revamp of the mission system right away (this is a huge task), but it doesn't seem fair to down threat a player because his mission asked him to drop a heavy item in the dock area of Waterfront. Or because they had to complete 3 objectives within 5 minutes (China Blues). The new score system was meant to take the sting out of losing - but it still awards points to the victorious players and often if you have a terrible attack objective you are going to die a lot more. Fixing missions will require not only looking at the objectives and timers in missions - but also the map design itself (Looking at you, both fortresses which border the skatepark in financial).

When Little Orbit first announced they were looking into changing mods which had no downside I was quite excited - it could have brought more variety to the game. However, no matter how much I tried to look on the bright side of the Improved Rifling changes, I can't help but notice that my inventory is now full of unused Improved Riflings - stripped off various different weapons, from N-tec to Obeya to OBIR. I know you have a number of designers who know the game quite well - but please just look at Heavy Barrel. Any mod which increases your TTK is likely to be dumpstered by the community at large - it's far too much of a risk. (A side note, please think about changing Heavy Barrel - maybe changing it to reduce max bloom instead of bloom per shot). The only weapon in my opinion which benefited from the Improved Rifling changes was the N-tec 7 "Ursus" which became almost like a fully automatic Obeya. What's even worse is that so much work was put into buffing weapons such as the Misery and Cobra, and then you effectively nullified a mod which worked greatly to their benefit. I appreciate that the preset weapons were looked into - and that you tried to think of a solution to fix them. I hope the sheer number of presets you were dealing with emphasised how difficult it can be to balance a mod around different weapon types. Additionally I hope you also saw that other mods also can work without a downside in many circumstances - CJ3 on an Obeya CR 762 has almost downside at all, previously it had only been counterbalanced out by the choice of using IR3. I'm not sure in the future if you will ever consider having different mod downsides for different weapons - it may be the only way of balancing it fairly. As others have said it will probably be worth looking into the RFP 'Fang'. After the Improved Rifling changes most switched back to the regular version of the secondary, but I can see it being re-equipped once again. Please consider toning this secondary down, as it's far too versatile a weapon. Additionally some people above me have mentioned the OBIR as perhaps a difficult weapon to handle with the changes being reverted - perhaps look into its over damage (Two bursts deals 990 damage), as it allows the weapon to reach far out beyond its normal range.

I'd be interested to see how good HB would be if instead of reducing bloom per shot it instead reduced max bloom. Currently there's a lot of presets with HB3 on them that don't make a lot of sense (such as the SHAW).

Has anyone noticed an improvement in Hitreg? I can't say I can tell the difference.

I think a big problem for the LMGs is that they often require to be crouching to have at least half-way decent accuracy which is a fine balancing mechanic on paper but a lot of areas in APB are littered with waist high cover. This means there's whole sections of the map where LMGs simply can't be used very effectively. I'd love to see LMGs be more accurate when standing but receive a buff to recoil control when crouching.

Piracy Purge: Four stages that have a time limit of 5 minutes followed by two stages that have a ten minute time limit (the final being a 3 item heavy item scavenger which means it usually goes to full time). Such an excruciatingly long mission.

I'm super happy to see this blog Little Orbit - but I would love to hear a bit more clarification on this point. How much of an improvement can we expect to hitreg? Is it a very minor fix?

Surely the answer is to just make item-hold items incapable of being placed inside vehicles? Or if it is possible to make it so that any vehicle with an item-hold item inside becomes immobile (So that teams in Overtime have a chance). This doesn't fix players car surfing with item-hold items I suppose, unless there was a way to prevent certain items from being car surfed with.

Agreed. Test A N-tec with the jump shooting nerf from B is probably the best solution overall. Please don't go with Test B's accuracy; we desperately do not need more RNG in this game. Also a moment of silence for the ATAC 'Patroller', it's going to end up with less range and a slower fire rate the way these balance changes are going.

But your math is wrong because some clothing pieces are obviously worth more than others. Such as when comparing arm braces to chest piece or helmet. In APB, a cigarette costs the same as a combat helmet. I understand what you mean, but even looking into the individual prices of clothing pieces there is little consistency on that front. It's very clear for those who remember back to their original releases that G1 based prices on how much people were asking for it. Hence why a radio backpack costs way more than a hoodie. Overall it's not like each item costs anything to make (beyond the initial development costs of course), so all the pricing is arbitrary, but I don't see why it can't be at least a bit more consistent.

Most packs will come with a "Clothes + Weapon" variant. The issue is that the pricing is all over the place when it comes to clothing packs. Allow me to demonstrate (All prices are with premium discount): These are the impact forearm pads, they cost 49 g1c to purchase. This is the Impact Bonus Pack. It contains 6 pieces of clothing including the aforementioned impact forearm pads. By the above pricing, that clothing by itself should cost 294 g1c. However the pack also comes with a 30 day ATAC "Watchman", which can be bought for 399 g1c. It also includes a unique ATAC skin, which we could generously price as 319 g1c (Same price as a standard character bound weapon skin). In total this pack should technically cost 1,012 g1c. It actually costs 1,679 g1c. If you repeat the same process with this Fashionable Flat Cap: You get a supposed total of 937 g1c (Unfortunately you can't rent a silenced CPMB-45, so I used the 30 day price of the regular CPMB-45 which may I add is more expensive than the silenced PMG on Armas, additionally this pack does not include a weapon skin). The pack actually sells for 2,079 g1c. I think it was long known that G1 was inflating clothing pack prices by inserting 30 day weapons as well as adding in random pieces of clothing (The Punk Pack is a great example of this, everyone was clamouring for backpacks and goggles, and they bumped the price up by including torn t-shirts and jeans). This irregularity can be extended to just the clothing packs in general: Tactical Pack: 11 pieces of clothing for 959 g1c. Punk Pack: 5 pieces of clothing for 2,079 g1c. Heavy Duty Pack: 7 pieces of clothing for 1,679 g1c. I think honestly the clothing pack prices for many of the packs are a bit exorbitant. I would kill to see an account bound upgrade for clothing packs in a similar fashion to how they did it with weapons (Those who paid more for character bound clothing packs get a free upgrade to account bound, although I will admit this might be a step too far for LO to take)

It's interesting how the individual items can be sold for 99g1c but a pack with 5 or 6 items will be sold for over 1000g1c.

I still don't understand why after implementing the Improved Rifling changes we're now seeing a range nerf to assault rifles? They're supposed to be mid-range weapons and yet we're taking their drop off range down from 50m, the exact mid-point in APB? At the same time as also buffing rifle range, it just seems so unnecessary.

Plenty of character mods such as Car Surfer and Valzipram Tablets have no downsides at all (along with pretty much every Orange character mod). Clotting Agent 3's advantages are so strong that its downsides are almost entirely discountable. By making CA2 the default, you're helping CA3 not be so much of a must pick - as players will not feel as disadvantaged for choosing alternate green mods. You could make CA3 the default value, arguably we are almost asking for the same idea here - which is that the current regeneration is poorly suited to APB and is holding back the other green mods. I'd still maintain having CA2 as the default mod, to allow for future green mods which can be balanced off against Clotting Agent (and because I would like under R195 players to not feel too disadvantaged). But that's just a pipe dream at the moment. Pretty much. Sorry CA1 users. I suppose we could come to a compromise, and have various levels of the default regeneration to include the current CA1.

CA3 takes way too long to recover full HP. I don't use a green mod. The only one worth having is flack jacket, but it limits your grenade capacity, so it's still a downgrade for those who don't have low-yields. It is true that CA3 full health regeneration time is quite long - I myself use CA2, but in most situations you simply aren't taking high amounts of damage, and CA3 excels at healing small amounts of damage. Additionally, if you do say take 990 damage from a Concussion grenade let's say, CA3 will allow you to survive being hit by a following pistol shot shortly afterwards, whereas the default regeneration will leave you on 10 health for 8 seconds, which is a pretty perilous situation to be in. There's no use in having a shorter full health regeneration time overall if you're not alive to benefit from it. This argument is entirely fair, but I feel as if the default regeneration just doesn't fit APB's gameplay at all. It is fairly noticeable when you're fighting LTL weapons - once you've been tagged, you're left vulnerable for a long time. I like that you have mentioned the gap between new and experienced players - Not having Clotting Agent is a serious problem for new players, as often they don't understand how long they have to be in cover before they will start regenerating health - and it may lead to them being overly cautious (as they have to be with the default regeneration). I think the default regeneration should be limited to CA2 for two main reasons: The presence of the ever-popular Clotting Agent 3 acts as a balance counterweight against the other mods such as Flak Jacket and Fragile, which are only available to high ranked players - Although the mods do have their own downsides already, I feel as if you should have to sacrifice CA3 to use them, but with CA2 as the default regeneration, that sacrifice won't be so extreme. While your mod ideas are a neat concept, I can't imagine people will use them over CA3 any more than people do right now. By keeping CA3 as its own mod with CA2 as default, hopefully green mod variety will increase. Overall, I've always thought about the Green character mod balance, and how it was an unspoken rule that people just accepted. I'd like to see more Green mods in the future (albeit very carefully considered ones, as playing around with player health is a dangerous game)