Bronze district should be ashamed of itself, and why in god's name is LO doing nothing about it?

[xPanzerShrekx 9]

I feel this. I'm Rank 100 on my Criminal character and Silver threat. If I try to play Silver District, I'll be curbstomped by Golds. If I play Bronze, I get curbstomped by the same people! Sure, there will be some newbies and mid ranks like me sprinkled in, but these dethreaters are the majority. These dethreaters are killing the game, and no one bothers to do anything because "that's the way it is" and "just get good". Makes me livid.

[Ketog 1032]

I mean, matchmaking and threats have always been a problem with APB

 

It's true that the new player experience is truly awful, I've got friends that basically did the same thing a Cookypuss's friends, they join, they have fun, but when they're left alone, they realize how much of a disadvantage they have due to them playing mostly if not always, against experienced players.

 

The problem with APB is that i has a low population, and divided districts, making it harder for the matchmaking to make proper teams, especially when playing in group and friends.

I am fairly certain Matt is aware that this is one of the biggest problems of APB after the engine upgrade, an even bigger problem than weapon balance, as it affects everyone, and their opinion of the game.

 

His solution is district phasing, though,  matchmaking needs some huge tweaks as well.

[Fortune Runner 796]

15 minutes ago, Ketog said:

His solution is district phasing, though,  matchmaking needs some huge tweaks as well.

I've done a lot of thinking about this ever since Little Orbit took over

We have all said how segregating players would really hurt the playing from a small amount of players ,  but at the same time days like this are absurd.

 

The only thing that comes to mind is that certain people never belong in bronze and their k/d and win streaks will show this.

But how to go about working on this for a short term without hurting APB's already low player base is no easy task , that way we can fix it more permanently with phasing

i personally do not know what to do about this for a short term fix

[RCooper 182]

The problem is that thanks to golds there is no intermediate server in apb so people has to decide between getting rekt or rekt others

[yood 345]

Mattiew Scott say :   I'm not interested in legislating your space. 

[Ketog 1032]

25 minutes ago, Fortune Runner said:

I've done a lot of thinking about this ever since Little Orbit took over

We have all said how segregating players would really hurt the playing from a small amount of players ,  but at the same time days like this are absurd.

 

The only thing that comes to mind is that certain people never belong in bronze and their k/d and win streaks will show this.

But how to go about working on this for a short term without hurting APB's already low player base is no easy task , that way we can fix it more permanently with phasing

i personally do not know what to do about this for a short term fix

 

K/D is never a good way to judge a player's performence tho, if two esports player kill each other over and over they will have a KD of 1 , but it i's the same story if two new players face each other, even tho they have the same KD, they will have a huge difference in terms of skill.

[Acornie 490]

Dethreating is getting worse and worse on Jericho, assumedly because the lower pop is being used as an excuse more and more. 

 

But, since I already agree with what the original post said I'll just add that the mentality of alot of high skilled players feed this issue even more. I remember a conversation about a 4 man gold group in bronze going ham, crazy lopsided numbers and when I show the scoreboard to complain I get a response along the lines of 'I know them, they arent real golds/they aren't good enough for silver district' like wat? They are way out of league in bronze but you act like stomping everyone in bronze is better than them being in silver district? It's like half the pop has nowhere to go. And don't get me started on my experience of playing as a low rank gold in EU. Teamkilled every other match no matter how well I do. Having only two options is an issue

[TecH EU2 33]

Half of my time ingame I feel like a social worker.

 

Trying to educate players about all sorts of wrong just to see them turn up the troll volume a notch more. Especialy R255 players who should know better than to destroy their own playerbase.

 

In real life we have a billion dollar law system in place to keep society civil, in here nothing.

[TheMessiah 430]

6 hours ago, CookiePuss said:

tl;dr   APB has no place for new players because neither the player base nor LO will let them have one.

no sht sherlock..it sux when ur friends also gets it isn it..and no LO not gonna do sht about it cause theyr too busy making bad BR modes nobody wants

Edited July 14, 2019 by TheMessiah

[Similarities 226]

Can we just remove threat segregated districts all together? If there's no immediate fix in sight, then just don't give them the incentive to do it in the first place.

 

Unfortunately, this doesn't fix the problem of new players getting railed though. I don't know how we can fix that, and removing threat segregation won't help at all.

Edited July 14, 2019 by Similarities

[Eisena 86]

Hi.

I am a piece of shit.

[VanilleKeks 740]

De-threaters are the worst pest of this game. I have reported so many of them (in case you don't know, de-threating has been put as its own re portable offense a while ago). However the report system is just placebo anyway.

 

If it were me I would perma ban these people the first time I see them de-threat. I don't care about their reason, they are the scum of the game.  Stop whining and get good at the game. If your friends are bad at the game and can't hit gold, take a break until phasing is in, or get good together. Don't ruin it for the few new players we still get because your group can't be arsed to put in some effort. It's pathetic and eventually, you will get punished. 

 

Also, I hate it when someone says "I get stomped in silver district". So what? If it's not enjoyable for you to get stomped, why would it be for others in bronze? If you're going to be this selfish hypocrite, at least shut up and just do your thing. To have the audacity to whine about it, is absolutely disgusting.

Edited July 14, 2019 by VanilleKeks

[Lign 361]

Matt is a bit out of his mind when he’s talking about phasing system how he treats it. Yes, it’s a good idea, but what should we do while it’s not in the game, I doubt it will come next year, I’m not talking about the current year because it’s obvious it won’t come out in 2019.

 

It’s the same when people trust politicians who talk about time when everyone will have better life but at the same time they don’t know when it comes and all they say is just to wait

Edited July 14, 2019 by Lign

[Mitne 724]

Wow, you just discovered what everybody know for years, Cooky. (Not like I done this experiment 2 years ago - probably nothing changed for better.)

You are SCPT, talk to them. Because for years it falls deaf to ears of developers, each time I rise issue - they tend to ignore me.

And that's what I meant when I said that "community is responsible for death of this game".

Edited July 14, 2019 by Mitne

[Lign 361]

6 minutes ago, Mitne said:

they tend to ignore me.

They state there's no point to do something until the new engine comes out, at the very same time they're releasing the garbage event none asked for and focusing only on it on live servers. Feels hypocrite

Edited July 14, 2019 by Lign

[FakeBungo 248]

maybe its due to the game being literally unplayably laggy and cheaters being everywhere

[Bongskie 10]

i would personaly merge all districts and improve the finding opponents functions. The player base is to low to divide ppl into different districts.

[TackoGirl 130]

cool, that you as spct also criticize

 

which is also a pity if you have a silver player in the team as a golden player that the gold player always immediately go out of the mission instead of playing with them...

Edited July 14, 2019 by TackoGirl

[PepeHands 50]

I'm enjoying playing in bronze to stomp dethreaters and give some free kills/advices to new players. It's kind of tricky nowdays because most of the low ranks are just alts or rerolls.

I usually tell my team of randoms to let them win or at least equip Star but 99% of the time they will go with Ogre when needed.

[MrChan 337]

9 hours ago, CookiePuss said:

Bronze district should be ashamed of itself...

The first and most obvious thing I noticed was the VAST number of players who had absolutely no business in the beginner district. That's right, bronze is the beginner district. If you start playing APB, the only district where you can learn the game is bronze. And yet, every match was stocked with players who have hundreds if not thousands of hours in game just stomping on new players. Using all the r195+ mods, rocking legendaries, and just going fucking HAM on any noob they find. These are the players killing the game, the ones who have done more damage than hackers, and they should all be ashamed of themselves. Just like us, they know they don't belong there, but since there are apparently no consequences to doing so, I guess I cant really blame them solely.

 

 

Why in god's name is LO doing nothing about it?

Just as common as the player who has no business being in bronze seemed to be the dethreater. Nearly every single match I played had at least one player dethreating. Just getting one kill, and feeding their opp. Getting one kill and unequipping all weapons. Chatting in /d about dethreating.... admitting to it openly. Dethreating is not the exception in bronze district, but rather the rule. Players dethreat as if its a normal part of the game and for some reason Little Orbit does nothing about it. At this point we've had well over a thousand players apply for GM positions, and yet, you never see them online and even if you do, they don't even seem to have the authority to do anything about dethreaters... Not even a kick for players openly admitting to doing so.

 

This all occurred during roughly a 4 hour (FBW only to make it more fair) play session on this smurf account. I have to say I was appalled. I cant imagine there is any new player retention at this point. This has been an obvious problem for years now, long before LO took over, and yet to this day nothing is done about it. Its depressing really.

But Cookie, it's okay for players to dethreat so they can stomp on newbies learning the game. It builds character and makes them git gud. And threat is broken anyway, so intentionally breaking it further has no adverse consequences. And these people shouldn't be Gold anyway (cos I bet the majority of those vets your mates encountered would be Gold without intentional threat loss), so it's right and proper that they have artificially lowered their threat to balance it out.

 

/sarcasm  

 

It all comes down to one thing, imo. The majority of the player base do not actually want fair matchmaking. Fair matchmaking would mean a 50/50 win/loss rate for everyone over time. What people usually mean by "fair" matchmaking is matches where they're, at most, challenged a bit but will still win a lot more than they lose. But that's not actually possible is it? If you have one group of players winning 75% of their matches, someone else is losing 75% of their matches.

 

That's why when district lock happened, people dethreated.  "Why should I be made play against try hard Golds who stack N-TECs and run with mission items? They're able to foil my N-TEC tryhardism and item running tactics. UNFAIR!" Oh they dressed it up under nonsense like there not being enough players for matchmaking* or the good old "I shouldn't be Gold" excuse, but it ultimately came down to not wanting to have to face players who were as good as them. 

 

G1 blustered about dethreating for about a week, but ultimately did nothing. Since then, everyone knows it's been fair game for a player to drop threat, go into a district that's allegedly for the threat level below even the artificially low threat they now have, and stomp on players who don't properly understand the game mechanics just so they can win all the time. And when they're done, a few of them probably wander on here to complain the game is dying. Cos the fact that this shit isn't policed means they're in no way, shape or form culpable for doing it and any impact on the long term health of the game can be blamed on someone else.

 

A potential solution a couple of years ago was hiding threat and enforcing district auto-join, but I'm not sure we have the player base to do that anymore. (Although I'd still like to try it) All that can happen now is for LO to go and police dethreating. Aggressively. But I bet they can't. As in literally do not have the necessary tools and data.

 

*Do NOT give me "Buhhh there weren't enough players to play against!!!" because I was there at the time, I know it's bollocks. There were plenty of Golds about on Obeya for match making, but loads of them didn't want to play each other and dethreated and forced G1 to back down. The only valid excuse was cross-threat groups, but I'd bet my house that accounted for a minority of the unhappiness.

Edited July 14, 2019 by MrChan

[Bishada8800 22]

9 hours ago, CookiePuss said:

That's right, bronze is the beginner district

GREEN is the beginner / low threat district where you find beginners and bronze players.

Bronze is the MEDIUM threat district where high bronze, mostly silvers and the occasional low golds fight it out.

Silver is the high threat district where you can find all elite gold clan players, regular gold players and some high silvers.

 

(Gold is almost always empty - it is only used for racing, ram raiding and pre-arranged match-ups)

 

 

9 hours ago, CookiePuss said:

These are the players killing the game, the ones who have done more damage than hackers,

Agreed. Dethreating should be a banishable offense. It hurt the game more than cheaters.

 

 

9 hours ago, CookiePuss said:

Nearly every single match I played 

To be fair, you are a gold player in a bronze district. Adding to the problem. SPCT at that.

 

 

9 hours ago, Darkzero3802 said:

This has been going on for years

 

9 hours ago, Rolpack said:

arent you 5 years late to the party? its been like this since forever

 

8 hours ago, NotTheEnforcer said:

This has been I problem since before I even started playing APB

Agreed. But it is not too late to change. Just because its been this way for a long time does not make it right.

 

 

8 hours ago, CookiePuss said:

if you ever play in bronze district and you aren't new, you are a piece of shit. 

To be fair, there are a lot of random low to medium silver threat PuG players (even with hundreds of hours or high ranked in-game characters) that are simply not ready to fight teamed up elite gold players that coordinate with voip. 

 

 

 

They need to rename the districts and change default districts to make it more obvious for new players where they should play:

 

* Current Green District = Rename to "Low Threat" (make it default for current bronze players)

* Current Bronze District = Rename to "Medium Threat" (make it default for current silver players)

* Current Silver District = Rename to "High Threat"(make it default for current gold players)

* Current Gold District = Delete

 

OR

 

* Current Green District = Delete

* Current Bronze District = Prevent silver from joining

* Current Silver District  =  Prevent gold players from joining

* Current Gold District = Only mission district for gold players

 

(the effect is identical, it is only the wrapping that changed)

 

 

To discourage dethreating they should use a mix of carrot on a stick and whip. 

 

Carrot on a stick:

Perhaps consider giving gold players some sort of advantage, such as faster XP and APB$ per mission or maybe 1 JT  per mission or whatever.

Whip:

At the very least make it harder / more time consuming to dethreat and disable "ready" ("K") if you become gold in medium threat district or if you become silver in a low threat district.

[Lato 188]

Nothing new. We all know this game needs to be fixed first before content..YET, there is riot

[TheMessiah 430]

thats how  LO "listen to the community":

[UnawarePolarBear 50]

On Jericho, people are having to de-threat just to play Financial :). Maybe when the population is fixed (if they'd just prioritize that ol' engine upgrade) it wouldn't be too bad.

[Sayori 311]

13 hours ago, CookiePuss said:

-snip

Oh, no, not this again. Are you really going to complain about silvers going to bronze district  because golds play in silver  and push them to bronze? Or what about people who want to play with friends who can't handle the tryhards  and cheaters(and tryhard cheaters) in silver districts? There are two options, dethreat and have fun with your friends or drag them in silver and make sure their playtime is miserable. Either way someone is going to get f.... so yeah, people will spare their friends. Shocking!

What about people on US who have to dethreat to play in bronze because silver is empty?

 

Now about your story, some things are just off.

Why would you even (supposedly) bring new people into this game in its current state? Friends, mind you!

You say it's full of vets but you claim you have played only with fbw to make it fair. Wait what? Weren't they all vets with hundreds and thousands of hours under their belt? Why do you need to make it fair? Didn't know you are such an owner  ; )

And why didn't you make a smurf account in first place to go play with fbw in first place and help them?

Oh, and I remember before you mentioned how you have made a smurf account to check out bronze, so you obviously knew what is going on already?

 

Seriously, how difficult could be to see what's the culprit of those problems? Threat system is garbage, population is low, no proper way to play with low threat friends. Hell, some people escape to bronze to get away with the cheatfests in silver.  Nobody is dethreating to pwn newbies(which dont even exist anyway).  Dethreating may suck but sure as hell they are not killing the game unlike cheaters.

 

Oh, and when I started I was getting obliterated everyday. Didn't quit...maybe this game is just not the cup of tea for your friends.

 

Edited July 14, 2019 by Sayori