Lord Cashpoint

Piracy Purge. The first four stages are all 5 minutes, so by the time you've finished those you've probably already invested a fair amount of time into the mission. Then the attackers have to defend 3 or so targets for 10 minutes. This is then followed by another 10 minute stage. To make things worse it's a multiple heavy item scavenger finale, so you can bet that it will always run to the clock every time. It's such a drawn out mission. Many of the missions mentioned above have serious problems too. Creme de la Crime is a standard mission which turns into a complete mess on the final 5 stages. The Hidden Menace sometimes has some absurdly exposed objectives that you have to complete more than once, with an incredibly unbalanced final stage. The Fast and the Incarcerated is terrible for a multitude of reasons. I could probably write a sizeable thread about all the issues with mission balancing, and I hope at some point Little Orbit will give them a look over.

https://db.apbvault.net/items/FnMod_Weapon_Rifling3 I'm not entirely sure how it all works, but you can see that each type of modifier has a type. ACES mods are all type 0 (Like this) so I think that makes them defunct.

Most unique mods are dummy mods. https://db.apbvault.net/items/FnMod_Weapon_ExtendedBarrel https://db.apbvault.net/items/FnMod_Weapon_ShortBarrel As you can see the modifiers don't actually do anything. Besides, if ACES SMG has a short barrel mod and ACES Rifle has a long barrel mod, what is even the base model weapon if both are being modified in some way?

Yeah, the level increases fit the current progression: Starter contacts: 5 levels Normal contacts: 10 levels Boss contacts: 15 levels Specialist contacts: 20 levels Faction leader: 25 levels

By 0.01 seconds, which is hardly much of an advantage when the OCA gets far more bullets to play with.

Yeah it is the fastest killing weapon in the game. The N-FA 9's ttk is only 0.63, even SHAW with CJ3 can only reach 0.52, just to give you an idea of how fast that is.

While I support cross-district matchmaking, I do hope we won't see a future where every mission requires you to switch district. It would greatly diminish the feel of being in a real living world. The game should attempt to put the right players in the correct district for their threat at the outset.

I feel like the N-tec has been somewhat inconsistent ever since the weapon curves patch, it's like the crosshair doesn't reflect the accuracy.

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't this because the original concept for Joker Mystery Boxes was that each individual box would only be sold for a limited period of time? I remember Revoemag talking about this way back on Dopefish's Q&A stream (May have misremembered this). Because boxes were intended to be time limited, the chance of winning the weapon was higher.

Please tell me this designer isn't Qwentle. His last round of balance changes were an unmitigated disaster.

It fits with the current progression: Starter Contacts: 5 Levels Regular Contacts: 10 Levels Boss Contacts: 15 Levels Specialist Contacts: 20 Levels Final Contacts: 25 Levels I believe sites such as db.apbvault.net have all the in game lore emails available to read. I think APB's lore is actually fairly solid, despite of how little of it features in game.

They're called specialist because the old top contacts were faction leaders, and therefore there needed to be a term for them which didn't imply superiority. Additionally, each of the contact specialises roughly in one area or another. Aletta Cadagan and Gumball for example offer vehicle mods, whilst Devil Dog and Tip Toe focus more on weapons. The old developers stated a few times the reason they never released the fourth specialist contact was because they didn't have enough content to release with them. You don't need to see the spawn points to believe it. There are four specialist contacts per faction, and we have only got three of them, with two of them being in Financial. Therefore it makes sense that the final one belongs in Waterfront. You can actually see what the contacts look like in the starting screens. Lynette Casey appears on the beach with the other Prentiss Tigers, and Lucas Van Rooyen appears as the looming figure over the player in the Criminal night club. Did you also know that the rank symbols go all the way up to rank 300? The absolutely final contacts for APB could in fact be Mayor Jane Derren for Enforcers, and Luke Waskawi for Criminals, although we only have a character model for the former.

Interestingly enough, if you take an HVR and put HB2/HB3 on it you can test out what it would be like with a damage output of around 720-760. After seeing it been used with those mods myself, I still maintain that the crazy damage levels at close range is one of the key problems. The gun is not fun to play against when you can't push it after being hit by a single pistol shot.

Better information in game is key, I once saw a player claiming the Ursus was a 4-shot kill. Resources like APB:DB are invaluable for players to understand the strengths and limitations of weapons.

If we're talking about what needs buffing, I'd love to see some of the lesser used vehicles in the game get some love (Without their health being increased). Many cars need to be far heavier than they are right now (looking at you Moirai).

I don't think I have the issue, but for what it's worth I do know several people who do. What mode are you running your game on? Fullscreen, Windowed, Borderless windowed?

I don't think raising the player cap per district is necessarily a solution which you can keep applying until the problem solves itself. Even now in 40 v 40 districts there are still issues with areas becoming clogged up with multiple missions happening simultaneously. You get certain stress points around the map such as central gas stations where people tend to congregate and can lead to heavy congestion in the area. There's also the issue of people sitting in car spawner spots, as well as bounties from other missions attacking you. If you increase the player count too high, I can only see these problems becoming worse. I think honestly matchmaking could be solved via cross-district solutions, but I'm not sure it's such a good idea, given that for every mission you could potentially have to load into a new district every time. This creates a whole host of other issues of where the two teams will be placed when they spawn, or what district they would be placed in. It would also destroy a sense of actually existing within APB's game world, replacing it with maps like any other game. Perhaps the real solution lies in getting the right people to the right district beforehand. Maybe re-work districts so you're less able to choose where you can go, and let the game guide you to a district with players more of your skill level.

I would not rely on such an assumption. You can test in game right now if you have any valentines boxes lying around. I am fairly confident weapon pick ups do not replace your equipped weapons. Also I'm fairly sure pick up weapons don't disappear unless they have been lying on the ground for a long time, or a player drops it after holding it for a long time. They literally are pick ups that you can use and drop whenever you feel like.

If I remember correctly, weapon pickups don't occupy a weapon slot, you just equip them on top of your existing weapons. Which means a player can drop his sniper rifle that he picked up and then equip his own gun without having to pick it off the floor. It also means you can't pick up items or swap to a secondary with a pick-up weapon equipped. You essentially carry 3 weapons. This may have changed but I'm fairly sure that's how it worked. While the gameplay introduced might be more dynamic, I think that part of the experience of playing APB is that you somewhat have to plan ahead. So if you want to snipe people from a roof-top you need to get up there with a sniper equipped or switch when you get up there. All of these things take time, and since in-game time is often so limited this means you have to make decisions. Similarly if I take out the enemy sniper, I shouldn't expect the next guy behind to pick up the gun and be faced with the same problem. I understand what you are getting at, but I think in a game like CSGO where you don't have the opportunity to simply switch weapon on the fly, weapon pick ups make more sense. In APB where switching weapons is a designed mechanic, I think weapon pick ups erode part of the game uniqueness.

I really can't argue against the pick up mechanic enough. I felt it was a terrible addition to the game and I was relieved when it was removed. The main problem is, as others have mentioned is that it allows players to carry more than one primary at a time, which is a really big problem for balance. If you choose to use a weapon like the OSMAW, that should come with certain advantages and drawbacks. Allowing people to pick up other weapons really messes with this concept. This is without even mentioning players having two copies of the same weapon, allowing them to have effectively double magazine capacity. As Spudinskes mentioned it also allows players to effectively take up advantageous positions with weapons that can't do it normally. You can use an SMG to storm a building, reach the top and immediately switch to a sniper. One of the most egregious problems with the pick-up system I found was if you killed a high value enemy such as a sniper, their team-mate could just immediately pick up their weapon. It was incredibly frustrating. It's already bad enough we can't see what secondary weapons or grenades an enemy player has equipped. It's even worse with the weapon pick-up mechanic, because then you're effectively blind to what gun a player might be using. APB isn't exactly a game that prioritises being able to identify a weapon on sight, especially given that weapon mods are mostly invisible. Part of the core gameplay of APB is that you pick a single weapon which defines your role, and everyone can see what role you have picked (This is somewhat similar to how in a Battlefield game, players can see what weapons an enemy is using based on their class) If you want to change your weapon you have to make a sacrifice in some way. I would concede that weapon pick ups might be suited to districts such as Fight Club, where there are so many players that these problems don't really exist.

Was this not immediately following the end of the Gold Rush and the subsquent disaster that was gold segregation? I always wondered how closely linked the two events were.

It doesn't help the UI is very slow to load and update. What would be SUPER helpful would be a running search bar meaning if you wanted to equip a scoped N-tec, you could start typing scoped and it would appear (Alongside other weapons with "Scoped" in the name).

I made a thread on the old forums about turning the gigantic Breakwater Galleria building into an in-game representation of Armas. Imagine it: one floor covered in weapon racks, one showing off armas vehicles, one floor being a clothes shop showing off all the Armas gear. Best of all, walking up to a specific item and pressing 'F' would take you straight to the Armas page. Would definitely incentivise people to hang out there, and allow people to physically see the items they are purchasing.

What would be the effective difference to the current system? All the golds would still be in the same district and still be facing each other. Threat is already split into invisible sub-divisions.

I don't think we have the population currently to support an extra threat level. If you made a "platinum" threat you'd just end up with a small cadre of players trapped in their own districts.