I could be wrong but....

[wilde79 16]

I think unbalanced matches are one of, if not the biggest thing driving people away, and surely, one of the biggest things (other than cheating) making people think the game is infested with cheaters (there are probably too many but mostly the same cheaters just with new faces).

Now, I'm not "great" at the game, but I've been around a long time, long enough to at least sometimes be the one making someone else rage quit/hackusate. I personally can't recall the last time I logged on, played some matches and logged off happy. It is almost always that I log off to play something that is less anger inducing.

 

Now, I know there are plans on doing things about it, but at this point, I don't know how many people will be around to appreciate the new solution, without SOME sort of measures implemented ACTUALLY soon, instead of "just wait, we will solve it after the EU" I mean, that shit got old a LONG time ago.

 

I mean, its bad, real bad. How can anyone just leave it in a situation where we have Gold players, in bronze, and sometimes they even get to call for backup. I mean, I understand going gold in the bronze district is usually just because bronze players suck a lot more than silver players, and the threat is totally broken.

I understand segregation MAY do more harm than good. One of the biggest failures in fixing threat, IMHO, was when they added GREEN threat. If someone is worse than bronze, it really isn't of consequence to match making. Its not like the game is going to find X amount of green players to pit against a gold threat.  

If however, there was a threat ABOVE gold, that would make a world of difference, there is obviously a big difference between someone who goes "gold" from killing bronzes, and a player that is gold, and can 1 vs 4 a premade team of gold players, or any other number of things "pro" players do.

 

I apologize for making another thread about things that are already discussed often, but this was far more enjoyable than what was playing out while I was actually in the game earlier.

 

PS. I have no comment on whether or not Easy AntiCheat works, but its damn annoying that I have to turn off my systems RGB control, just to log on to APB and be dissappointed at the state of things.

[vsb 6174]

• adding more threat levels wont help matchmaking
• phasing
• green/bronze/silver/gold all have 10 individual levels behind the scenes
• dethreating is hard to prove
• individual instances are too small a pool for matchmaking
• threat distribution is static
• upthreating is easier than dethreating

 

hopefully one of these standard responses is related to the thread, because i didnt make it past the first sentence tbh

[UrsulaRex 20]

Unbalanced matches = nothing to do in this game.

[wilde79 16]

18 minutes ago, Glaciers said:

• adding more threat levels wont help matchmaking
• phasing
• green/bronze/silver/gold all have 10 individual levels behind the scenes
• dethreating is hard to prove
• individual instances are too small a pool for matchmaking
• threat distribution is static
• upthreating is easier than dethreating

 

hopefully one of these standard responses is related to the thread, because i didnt make it past the first sentence tbh

I strongly disagree with your first point.

Yes I am aware of the plan for phasing, however as I mentioned since you can't be bothered to read but feel the need to respond, the proposed solution is not going to happen very soon, if soon at all.

I'm also aware that the low population is one of the biggest issues with current match making working. The problem is, if its not fixed why would anyone come back, or try this as a new game?

 

Even after the engine upgrade, plenty of people wont bother coming back if the things that bother them the most, aren't fixed as well. Remember, losing isn't what makes most players angry, its feeling like they don't stand a chance that is the killer of hope.

[vsb 6174]

1 minute ago, wilde79 said:

I strongly disagree with your first point.

Yes I am aware of the plan for phasing, however as I mentioned since you can't be bothered to read but feel the need to respond, the proposed solution is not going to happen very soon, if soon at all.

I'm also aware that the low population is one of the biggest issues with current match making working. The problem is, if its not fixed why would anyone come back, or try this as a new game?

 

Even after the engine upgrade, plenty of people wont bother coming back if the things that bother them the most, aren't fixed as well. Remember, losing isn't what makes most players angry, its feeling like they don't stand a chance that is the killer of hope.

ok i read your post, lets get into it

 

you can disagree all you like but another threat color (which would actually be another 10 threat levels) won't solve anything because poor matchmaking is a result of the small pool of 40v40 not the threat system - when the matchmaking can't find a balanced fight that highest threat player will still be shunted into a match with people far below his/her skill level

 

if anything another threat would likely make current issues worse, i'd be willing to bet a lot of money that a significant portion of players would simply rage quit rather than play a mission against a highest threat player

 

as for phasing, what else would you have orbit do? there is no other solution that deals with matchmaking, threat, and their exploitation all at the same time

 

putting resources into rewriting massive chunks of the current code in an attempt to mitigate these problems makes no sense imo, like trying to pave a dirt road next to the construction of a highway

[wilde79 16]

Hey, I'm not saying I think LO has a bad plan, I'm just saying by the time they implement it, there may not be anyone left to appreciate it.

 

Adding a higher threat IMHO would do some good, it would make more work for dethreaters, can you imagine? They would have to drop at least two threat levels to get into bronze, that would (should at least) take some serious time.

 

I feel like the game used to pit more low threat players against high threat players, and honestly thats pretty fair, at least I think so. The other day I had to 1 vs 3 some silvers, and really, I thought it would take a lot of effort, but I thought it would be more fair than using the option the game gave me to call backup on them. If the game consistently matched numbers vs skill, that would be at least a good temporary solution.

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

ADDING MORE THREAT LEVELS DOES NOT CHANGE THE UNDERLYING ELO/MMR RATING.

 

THREAT IS JUST A GRAPHICAL INDICATOR.

[vsb 6174]

1 minute ago, wilde79 said:

Hey, I'm not saying I think LO has a bad plan, I'm just saying by the time they implement it, there may not be anyone left to appreciate it.

 

Adding a higher threat IMHO would do some good, it would make more work for dethreaters, can you imagine? They would have to drop at least two threat levels to get into bronze, that would (should at least) take some serious time.

 

I feel like the game used to pit more low threat players against high threat players, and honestly thats pretty fair, at least I think so. The other day I had to 1 vs 3 some silvers, and really, I thought it would take a lot of effort, but I thought it would be more fair than using the option the game gave me to call backup on them. If the game consistently matched numbers vs skill, that would be at least a good temporary solution.

no dethreater is going to get that extra high threat no matter how much they win in bronze districts, both because dethreaters are generally bad at the game and because the threat system is set up to mitigate that very situation

 

skill vs numbers might be slightly more fair but in the end it generally just ends up with skill getting dozens of kills and winning anyway, so the outcome is the same

[Fortune Runner 796]

lately on Jericho it is the same golds in bronze who are gold as soon as they play until they log off hours later when they throw the last few matches to dethreat then log off.

these certain ones pull out every weapon that is op to a bronze fighting them , going all out as if it were golds against them instead of bronzes.

Since I play in bronze as well as silver I have seen how they truly play against other golds on equal ground and in their specific case should not ever be in bronze again.

if Little Orbit looks for this very scenario of who is there daily like how I mentioned they can find the culprits easier , but thats if they have the time and people to do so.

 

Hopefully soon phasing and the other matchmaking plans will be a thing for apb and help fix this which would stop it and not just treat the problem temporary like what i mentioned.

 

TL;Dr offered a possible action to find the dethreated golds  easier  , but phasing is much better in my opinion

[Pangolier 10]

Plot twist: dethreaters allways existed, they didnt get noticed because more people were playing and willing to win and dethreaters got their proper threat and they were free to pick whatever server they wanted.

 

Like i told a few years ago, i once started a new character to see how bad it was and i found very skilled silvers plumbing starters and bronzies.

It felt good outplaying them and telling them "i just started and im winning" or stuff like that heh.

[Jilleroo 349]

The whole threat system is so stupid anyway. The difference between a Gold 10 and a Gold 1 is literally the difference between a legend and someone just barely above silver, but there's no prestige to it. There's no REASON to aim for that pinnacle. This is purely my opinion, so take it as purely an opinion piece, but I have to agree with OP about something very specific; the feeling of unhappiness after an APB session and the reasoning to endure it.

 

When I started playing this game ages ago, I went from Trainee to Gold and have never been silver. Ever since those days, I was put up against the most brutal of adversaries and I have never attempted to dethreat. I always strive to be at least above average in games I play, but in APB... There is no reason to really care.

 

If I could change a few things, they would be namely the first 2:

1. Reveal people's actual ranks and standing and use a better system than 4 colors to display their prowess.
2. Incentivize actually wanting to become "great" in this game, make it feel rewarding to actually give a crap about how good you do and never give up in sometimes brutal missions.
3. Increase district population caps and remove the segregation entirely; with the use of phasing you can keep that "living world feel", but the server won't die from the strain. It's so hard to balance a match (and give decent queue times) if the viable opposition pool is a measly 40 people. Also a problem how Enforcers are almost always on offense unless there's at least 10% more Enforcers to Criminals as Enforcers are typically the ones waiting for opp.
4. Leaderboards; we need 'em. I'm not saying right away, but I would love some actual leaderboards for personal standing as well as clan statistics.
5. This is kind of a 3b, but make clans actually matter. Clans should get rewarded if they win scrims against other clans in structured matches with half-points.

#'s 2, 3, and 4 can come later as they would be more tedious to code and would require proper phasing and instancing.

 

I'm more of a lurker on this forum and play the game fairly leisurely, but that doesn't stop me from kicking patootie in-game and I fancy myself a fairly strong player who gets matched up against some very, VERY strong opposition DAILY. Some recognition for holding ourselves to this ideal is entirely justified and my opponents deserve it, they're seriously amazing. I know there's mission balancing issues (among other things), but this is something that seriously needs to be addressed.

 

Now I want to emphasize that this is purely just my opinion and I'm not coming at this from an angle to "connive" for some goodies, but rewarding players for superb sportsmanship and excellence as a concept goes beyond just video games. If you want to succeed, you have to apply yourself to be better and never give up. There's people in this community who deserve this recognition more than me and it's not right to not broadcast these achievements so others can attempt to wrest that mantle for themselves.

Edited July 30, 2019 by Evagelyne
Spelling mistakes.

[TheMessiah 430]

 

Quote

Hi all,

 

This thread has gone long enough without a response from LO, so here is where I stand on this.

1) We are working on getting more GMs in-game to help

But this is not an effective solution. Just like drivers who slow down when a cop is around, they always speed back up as soon as he's gone.

 

2) LO is not ignoring this issue

Every solution we have discussed or seen discussed on the forums takes development resources and will compete directly with releasing the Engine Upgrade. I'm not opposed to spending dev time to fix dethreating. But from what I can see, all the ideas thrown around would take a couple weeks of dev time and players would find new work arounds in a couple days, which doesn't seem like time well spent.

 

3) Dethreating is an issue but its the symptom of larger problems

IMO, we need real change in the architecture of how players are matched. The only lasting solution that I can see is to launch 3.5, merge all the worlds, and finish implementing cross-district phasing, so that we can match players across all districts / regions. This will move all 8 players to the "best" district based on best ping and best tick time.

 

In this scenario players will simply choose the district type based on where their friends are, so they can mess around till a match starts. 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.

 

From there we can work on ways to improve the algorithm and incentive all players to reach Gold rather than dethreat to Bronze.

 

Thanks,
Matt

 

In other words new matchmaking - after 3.5 and they not gonna move a finger before dat

[Havana 216]

9 hours ago, wilde79 said:

Hey, I'm not saying I think LO has a bad plan, I'm just saying by the time they implement it, there may not be anyone left to appreciate it.

 

Adding a higher threat IMHO would do some good, it would make more work for dethreaters, can you imagine? They would have to drop at least two threat levels to get into bronze, that would (should at least) take some serious time.

 

I feel like the game used to pit more low threat players against high threat players, and honestly thats pretty fair, at least I think so. The other day I had to 1 vs 3 some silvers, and really, I thought it would take a lot of effort, but I thought it would be more fair than using the option the game gave me to call backup on them. If the game consistently matched numbers vs skill, that would be at least a good temporary solution.

I feel ya, but Goldies don't  play in Gold now so they definitely aren't going  to join a Platinum District. 

[BrandonBranderson 672]

9 hours ago, wilde79 said:

Hey, I'm not saying I think LO has a bad plan, I'm just saying by the time they implement it, there may not be anyone left to appreciate it.

As much as I'd like to believe it would, adding a new threat level won't do any good unfortunately.  Dethreaters won't ever achieve the new threat because they'll still keep bouncing between gold and silver so that they can stay in bronze districts.  Don't take this the wrong way, but have you been paying attention to LO's posts lately?  Just recently they posted an update on the Engine Upgrade and said that they're finally done copying all ~1500 file packages, which I assume was the bulk of the work.  Now for the rest of the month they're going to be running commandlets to resolve conflicts and the focus of next month is going to be bug fixes until they put the upgrade up on OTW for everyone to test.  Tbh I don't know what part of that means because I'm no programmer, but the way Matt was talking about it really made it sound like it's going to be happening sooner than later.

[LewdLemming 27]

1 hour ago, Evagelyne said:

Increase district population caps and remove the segregation entirely; with the use of phasing you can keep that "living world feel", but the server won't die from the strain. It's so hard to balance a match (and give decent queue times) if the viable opposition pool is a measly 40 people. Also a problem how Enforcers are almost always on offense unless there's at least 10% more Enforcers to Criminals as Enforcers are typically the ones waiting for opp.

They tried increasing the server cap years ago, (back around 2011-2013) and had to drop it back down to 40 as it caused massive lag issues.  As in worse than everyone was already experiencing.  

 

The lag issues back then were one of the big reasons I stopped playing the game back then.  I've only just started playing again with a buddy, and thankfully the lag isn't too much of an issue any more.

 

The matchmaking is still horrid, but I understand the low population is part of why it is so messed up.  My buddy and I (2 high level silvers) were matched up against a Trainee last night.  We whispered him to try to get him to call backup, but we don't think he could figure it out.    We were on a Bronze (Financial) server because it was the only one that had any population.  Seems Waterfront is almost always empty now.

[Fortune Runner 796]

23 hours ago, wilde79 said:

Hey, I'm not saying I think LO has a bad plan, I'm just saying by the time they implement it, there may not be anyone left to appreciate it.

 

Adding a higher threat IMHO would do some good, it would make more work for dethreaters, can you imagine? They would have to drop at least two threat levels to get into bronze, that would (should at least) take some serious time.

 

I feel like the game used to pit more low threat players against high threat players, and honestly thats pretty fair, at least I think so. The other day I had to 1 vs 3 some silvers, and really, I thought it would take a lot of effort, but I thought it would be more fair than using the option the game gave me to call backup on them. If the game consistently matched numbers vs skill, that would be at least a good temporary solution.

1 we have been here for years and  when Little Orbit bought out APB we had 2k on

 

2 spreading out the population would only make things worse not better.

 

3 back then we had more people to do so , and not as many golds in bronze as lately

12 hours ago, LewdLemming said:

They tried increasing the server cap years ago, (back around 2011-2013) and had to drop it back down to 40 as it caused massive lag issues.  As in worse than everyone was already experiencing.  

did they downgrade the servers as well?

[Jilleroo 349]

15 hours ago, LewdLemming said:

They tried increasing the server cap years ago, (back around 2011-2013) and had to drop it back down to 40 as it caused massive lag issues.  As in worse than everyone was already experiencing.  

 

The lag issues back then were one of the big reasons I stopped playing the game back then.  I've only just started playing again with a buddy, and thankfully the lag isn't too much of an issue any more.

Which is why I meant it needs to wait until there's proper server phasing and instancing implemented with 3.5.

 

The skill ceiling on the game is so massive that solid matchmaking is crucial, but you won't reach that ideal with a pool of 40 players to choose from.