A concern about Phasing

[Hexerin 1142]

5 minutes ago, Glaciers said:

what part of “seamlessly” don’t you understand?

You greatly overestimate the universal interpretation of that word. It's extremely common to see people call sub-30 FPS gameplay "seamless" in many games.

[CookiePuss 5382]

16 minutes ago, Hexerin said:

Can you finally comment on this since it's been asked about repeatedly for the past year without response?

LO cant help it that you haven't been paying attention.

[PitterPatter 139]

I feel like phasing is a way to force us into our correct districts without actually forcing us to initially go into them which I'm fine with. If you force silvers to be in the same district as golds they're going to cry and rage quit. If you make them believe there is no silver/gold district and hide it under the term "phasing" then they are just going to whine about matchmaking which in turn would just lead to them being mocked for not trying to fight people better than them.

 

It would also eliminate the spamming of join district when it's full. I'm sure I'm not the only one to leave the game after giving up trying to get into a full district. Silvers that bully new players are going to hate phasing unless we get a population increase. Bronzies and golds are going to love it. 

[Hexerin 1142]

5 minutes ago, Signarly said:

I feel like phasing is a way to force us into our correct districts without actually forcing us to initially go into them which I'm fine with. If you force silvers to be in the same district as golds they're going to cry and rage quit. If you make them believe there is no silver/gold district and hide it under the term "phasing" then they are just going to whine about matchmaking which in turn would just lead to them being mocked for not trying to fight people better than them.

 

It would also eliminate the spamming of join district when it's full. I'm sure I'm not the only one to leave the game after giving up trying to get into a full district. Silvers that bully new players are going to hate phasing unless we get a population increase. Bronzies and golds are going to love it. 

Anyone who understands how the threat system works currently will easily determine what's actually going on with the new phasing system. We'll also quickly determine if the threat system itself has even been touched.

 

At the end of the day, I predict there will be little to no change to the dethreating issue because of phasing, it'll just get a lot more imprecise and you'll see people go on longer streaks to ensure they lost enough. With a community as tiny as ours, it's incredibly easy to gauge how far your threat has dropped based on who you get matched against, the visible threat is just a convenience.

 

The only actual solution to the issue is moderation, and the complete lack of action by Little Orbit over the past year speaks volumes on how that'll go.

 

Edited July 21, 2019 by Hexerin

[PitterPatter 139]

3 minutes ago, Hexerin said:

Anyone who understands how the threat system works currently will easily determine what's actually going on with the new phasing system. We'll also quickly determine if the threat system itself has even been touched.

 

At the end of the day, I predict there will be little to no change to the dethreating issue because of phasing, it'll just get a lot more imprecise and you'll see people go on longer streaks to ensure they lost enough. With a community as tiny as ours, it's incredibly easy to gauge how far your threat has dropped based on who you get matched against, the visible threat is just a convenience.

 

The only actual solution to the issue is moderation, and the complete lack of action by Little Orbit over the past year speaks volumes on how that'll go.

 

I mean you don't even need to ban dethreaters. If it gets that bad frequent dethreaters could be given a hidden static gold threat that doesnt change with their visible threat so they can dethreat all they want, but it won't matter. I know Matt doesnt like banning so this in my opinion is an ideal compromise.

 

There are a lot more creative ways to punish people than hand out bans. If they get banned they will just reroll. If they add something like this in and don't tell anyone the losers that dethreat won't have a clue why they're being matched against golds. There's so much opportunity to fix dethreating with phasing. You wouldn't be able to do something like that in a bronze district and get away with it.

[TheJellyGoo 343]

15 minutes ago, Hexerin said:

Anyone who understands how the threat system works currently will easily determine what's actually going on with the new phasing system. We'll also quickly determine if the threat system itself has even been touched.

 

At the end of the day, I predict there will be little to no change to the dethreating issue because of phasing, it'll just get a lot more imprecise and you'll see people go on longer streaks to ensure they lost enough. With a community as tiny as ours, it's incredibly easy to gauge how far your threat has dropped based on who you get matched against, the visible threat is just a convenience.

 

The only actual solution to the issue is moderation, and the complete lack of action by Little Orbit over the past year speaks volumes on how that'll go.

 

How? There won't be any more dethreating to silver threat to join bronze district then play the day as a gold in bronze since you will be phased right back towards your proper opposition?

 

Edited July 21, 2019 by TheJellyGoo

[Hexerin 1142]

1 minute ago, Signarly said:

I mean you don't even need to ban dethreaters. If it gets that bad frequent dethreaters could be given a hidden static gold threat that doesnt change with their visible threat so they can dethreat all they want, but it won't matter. I know Matt doesnt like banning so this in my opinion is an ideal compromise.

 

There are a lot more creative ways to punish people than hand out bans. If they get banned they will just reroll. If they add something like this in and don't tell anyone the losers that dethreat won't have a clue why they're being matched against golds. There's so much opportunity to fix dethreating with phasing. You wouldn't be able to do something like that in a bronze district and get away with it.

Moderation does not mean outright banning. Notification, warning, and suspension are all things that can be done before a ban.

 

Most games give players multiple notifications. These are simply a GM/mod tossing a DM at the player to just tell them they've done something bad. Doesn't put a mark on their account, temporary/permanent or otherwise. It's like your boss calling you into the office to just have a quick chat about how you messed up, and giving pointers on how you can avoid in the future.

 

Warnings are usually handled in a group of three, two normal warnings and then a more serious final warning. These generally put marks on your account, although the permanence (whether temporary or permanent) varies from game to game. Modern games usually are only temporary, falling off after a period of time ranging from a month to a year.

 

Suspensions are essentially temporary bans. These generally give your account a permanent strike in most games. Accrue enough strikes, and then you get an actual permanent ban.

 

So yea. There's plenty of options, just a matter of Little Orbit actually taking action for a change.

 

1 minute ago, TheJellyGoo said:

How? There won't be any more dethreating to silver threat to join bronze district then play the day as a gold in bronze since you will be phased right back towards your proper opposition?

The dethreater will dethreat way down, play against lower skill opp until they start seeing actual golds in their matches where the cycle of dethreating repeats. If you understand how the threat system works, dethreating is an extremely fast process (especially in the current environment, where you only need to go down one tier).

[PitterPatter 139]

1 minute ago, TheJellyGoo said:

How? There won't be any more dethreating to silver threat to join bronze district then play the day as a gold in bronze since you will be phased right back towards your proper opposition?

 

The dethreat will last less time because wins will grant you more elo than you would get fighting bronzes, but if they are that determined to be trash they would continuously throw until their threat lowered again. They may get tired of it after awhile, but dont underestimate how stubborn and cheap dethreaters are.

[CookiePuss 5382]

If there's no visible threat, how will you know when to dethreat? 

[TehBlizzy 23]

...\APBGame\Logs\Current.log   after logging in to the character select

Underneath "hosting: Receive [LS2GC_CHARACTER_LIST]" there is "m_nAccountThreat x"

 

You now know your account threat level/color even if the UI is gone.

 

Mine is 4.

Edited July 21, 2019 by TehBlizzy

[CookiePuss 5382]

11 minutes ago, TehBlizzy said:

...\APBGame\Logs\Current.log   after logging in to the character select

Underneath "hosting: Receive [LS2GC_CHARACTER_LIST]" there is "m_nAccountThreat x"

 

You now know your account threat level/color even if the UI is gone.

 

Mine is 4.

Wise Blizzie is wise. 

[Fortune Runner 796]

4 hours ago, MattScott said:

Hi all,

 

Phasing is simply our term for seamlessly moving a player between two instances of the same type of district. It allows us to matchmake across instances and then aggregate each side together. In rare cases we may need to spin up a new instance which may be empty for a time till we add more players, but for the most part players will be moved to instances where other missions are taking place.

 

Phasing can sometimes be confused with Instancing, where players are moved to a unique unpopulated area to play just for their quest/mission/etc. We are NOT implementing Instancing.

 

Thanks,

Matt

while I agree with this at the same time instancing may be a better choice for certain times and things so please keep it on the table "just in case" and not dismiss it completely.

If a server has to many districts already (assuming we get a larger population of course)  that strains the server and networking , then an instance may be able to take the burden off temporarily

But as I said for certain circumstances and times when this would be more effective than phasing alone.

[vsb 6174]

4 hours ago, TehBlizzy said:

...\APBGame\Logs\Current.log   after logging in to the character select

Underneath "hosting: Receive [LS2GC_CHARACTER_LIST]" there is "m_nAccountThreat x"

 

You now know your account threat level/color even if the UI is gone.

 

Mine is 4.

toxic

 

:^)

[MattScott 15245]

8 hours ago, Hexerin said:

So how about the concern that this is going to foist constant load times on people due to constantly having to change into other districts? Can you finally comment on this since it's been asked about repeatedly for the past year without response?

I have commented multiple times on this, and the SPCT have also revealed that general loading times in the Engine Upgrade are already drastically faster (even without Phasing).

4 hours ago, Fortune Runner said:

while I agree with this at the same time instancing may be a better choice for certain times and things so please keep it on the table "just in case" and not dismiss it completely.

If a server has to many districts already (assuming we get a larger population of course)  that strains the server and networking , then an instance may be able to take the burden off temporarily

But as I said for certain circumstances and times when this would be more effective than phasing alone.

The Phasing implementation will spin up new server instances for each type of district when we need them. However, these wont be unique, empty districts just for 1 mission like what you see on WoW. That is only necessary for PvE situations.

7 hours ago, Hexerin said:

Anyone who understands how the threat system works currently will easily determine what's actually going on with the new phasing system. We'll also quickly determine if the threat system itself has even been touched.

We are also looking at changes to how threat (or matchmaking calculations) are done to help prevent dethreating. For obvious reasons I am not ready to comment on this yet, but we will be scrubbing all visible indicators of threat from the game, so players wont have as much information to abuse.

[vsb 6174]

10 minutes ago, MattScott said:

but we will be scrubbing all visible indicators of threat from the game

im pretty curious how this will stack with the "competitiveness" that we've been told was an important factor going forward with apb - it seems kind of hard to be competitive without any rankings, unless there's plans for separate casual/competitive queue options?

[Guest]

Remove the Notoriety and Prestige System plz. 

[Hexerin 1142]

2 hours ago, MattScott said:

I have commented multiple times on this, and the SPCT have also revealed that general loading times in the Engine Upgrade are already drastically faster (even without Phasing).

Don't believe I ever saw that mentioned in any of the blogs, but good to know regardless.

 

That being said, there being load times is kinda bad. The whole reason that our current mission system feels as good as it does (let's just set the balance issues aside...) is because of the simple fact that when a mission pops, you just hit nitro and go. This new system is going to be a wait for load, wait to spawn in, run down to the garage to get your car, migrate your way out onto the street, and then finally hit nitro and go. Sure, maybe it'll eventually balance out and the system won't have to phase you over to another district instance every match, but the period before that is going to be brutal.

 

Unless you've got a method by which the phasing will remember our position and state so that we load into the new district exactly where we were as if we never phased... in which case nevermind there's probably not much to be concerned about.

 

2 hours ago, MattScott said:

We are also looking at changes to how threat (or matchmaking calculations) are done to help prevent dethreating. For obvious reasons I am not ready to comment on this yet, but we will be scrubbing all visible indicators of threat from the game, so players wont have as much information to abuse.

 

Aside from just outright forcing a person's threat to be a certain level, you aren't going to be able to stop dethreaters from dethreating. They do it because they want easy matches and farmable opp, and any changes you make will (eventually) be figured out just like they always are every time the system's been changed in the past. The only solution to dethreating is moderation, and the only way for that to make a real impact is if you make it very clear through observable action that people are actually being moderated.

 

Unfortunately, you've committed to a path that prevents you from accomplishing this. You refuse to make actions publicly known, and also refuse to take any action in the first place until after you've got all these new features added (engine upgrade, phasing, matchmaking, threat, etc). This is why every dethreater in the game sees you as a joke, and laughs anytime anyone brings up the possibility that you will ever actually do anything about the problem. They blatantly dethreat, because they know they don't have to hide it.

 

That blatancy also makes it significantly easier to accomplish, too. Which in turn makes them have to care less about going ham on farming the lower skill segment of what little remains of the playerbase... which in turn causes new players to just instantly drop the game, and tell all their friends about how shit the game is.

 

I've literally witnessed both players on my team and players in my opp drop the game. It's so obvious I can almost see the actual player at their computer just letting out a sigh that they wasted their time on another F2P game download just to have to drop it. This happens all the time, and honestly I'm starting to get tired of seeing it knowing how simple and easy it would be for it to just be fixed in one fell swoop over a period of a few days (maybe a week).

 

There's more than enough total players currently to have people be ushered into their respective districts. Even on Jericho. There's always an almost full silver district and a full bronze district at all hours of the day, and even during those deadest hours in the early morning there's usually enough players mixed between a silver and bronze district pair that you could fill one district up. Hell, during the day sometimes there's two full bronze districts, although that's more of a weekend thing.

 

That being said, those bronze districts are consistently half full of dethreated golds. With the other half being a mixture of silver and bronze, and the occasional unicorn (green).

 

Green districts will never fill, don't even know why you keep the server bogged down with holding them active. However, if you were to moderate dethreating, those dethreaters would repopulate to silver. Then, the highest true golds will migrate back to gold district, because they know that if there's enough people listed in them, that other competitive players (be it gold, silver, or otherwise) will join them for true hardcore matches with (generally) consistent teammates that are actually putting their all into their matches.

 

This leaves bronze districts populated with bronzes, and the casual silvers who aren't worried about winning and more care about the social gunplay. With bronze districts no longer populated by dethreaters that spend all day farming new players, we might even see player retention rise for a change...

 

Probably shouldn't have, but had to get it off my chest. Again.

[Acornie 490]

Man this is really timely coincidence, I was planning on writing up a message about this to send Mr. Scott but the replies here answered all my questions so I needn't bother him

 

Well I do have one thing to mention:

2 hours ago, MattScott said:

We will be scrubbing all visible indicators of threat from the game

Please tell me there will still be the rank symbols visible, by names and such, and these won't be 'scrubbed' along with the threat colours, it's a waste to not even have ranks show up like how the consoles are

[TheJellyGoo 343]

6 hours ago, MattScott said:

[...]

For obvious reasons I am not ready to comment on this yet, but we will be scrubbing all visible indicators of threat from the game, so players wont have as much information to abuse.

Just for clarification, a week ago you wrote this in a post

Quote

No spamming a district with 79 players to get the last spot. No visible threat segmentation. Once a match is ready, they all get moved. That way we can have golds fighting golds alongside bronze fighting bronze in the same district. The new phasing also allows us to spin up more servers dynamically, so we can add more Waterfront or Financial servers based on demand.

Did you only use the terms golds/bronzes for visualization here because I understood it as no visible threat for districts but still a visible indicator for each player.

Are you really planning to remove every indicator of elo from this pvp game?

 

[thelinux 51]

Phasing != Instancing. Phasing is one of the features that is significantly overdue to be added, especially since the population is lower than ever. 

 

Personally, I think it is intolerable not to be able to play a game because there's just enough population to fill one instance of each district, and the rest of the players try to spam-join those instances.

And currently, this is the case pretty much every day.

 

In case the population grows, there could even be added separate instances for solo players and such that are in a group (like in Fortnite, for example). That's another feature that I find to be necessary in a game like APB.

[Seedy 324]

17 hours ago, MattScott said:

Hi all,

 

Phasing is simply our term for seamlessly moving a player between two instances of the same type of district. It allows us to matchmake across instances and then aggregate each side together. In rare cases we may need to spin up a new instance which may be empty for a time till we add more players, but for the most part players will be moved to instances where other missions are taking place.

 

Phasing can sometimes be confused with Instancing, where players are moved to a unique unpopulated area to play just for their quest/mission/etc. We are NOT implementing Instancing.

 

Thanks,

Matt

cool cheers for the answer. Can you close this thread now ? I think the question is answered.

 

cheers

[Salubrious 18]

Thread is now closed, Answer sort has been found.

Thank you.

[MattScott 15245]

15 hours ago, TheJellyGoo said:

Just for clarification, a week ago you wrote this in a post

Did you only use the terms golds/bronzes for visualization here because I understood it as no visible threat for districts but still a visible indicator for each player.

Are you really planning to remove every indicator of elo from this pvp game?

 

Yes. I was only indicating "golds" and "bronzes" as a way to describe their skill. 
The plan is to try and remove the information used by dethreaters to game the system.

We have another idea in progress to indicate ELO.

 

19 hours ago, Hexerin said:

That being said, there being load times is kinda bad. The whole reason that our current mission system feels as good as it does (let's just set the balance issues aside...) is because of the simple fact that when a mission pops, you just hit nitro and go. This new system is going to be a wait for load, wait to spawn in, run down to the garage to get your car, migrate your way out onto the street, and then finally hit nitro and go. Sure, maybe it'll eventually balance out and the system won't have to phase you over to another district instance every match, but the period before that is going to be brutal.

The whole point of Phasing is to avoid any loading. There may be a transition screen while server-side objects are resynced, but there is no loading of assets on the client, since those are already in memory. Our matchmaking logic chooses a server that is more appropriate for your skill level, and then from there, you shouldn't need to phase at all.