Bring Back Threat 15 Or Something Similar

[Spudinskes 41]

Threat 15 was a really cool way to highlight top players but was sadly removed by G1, as well as leaderboards. If you don't know what Threat 15 was, it was the maximum possible matchmaking rank achievable in the original APB. You would generally have to win 20+ missions in a row at threat 14 to achieve 15. When you got threat 15 you were treated with an awesome logo and you would appear on the map to all players with that logo, similar to P5 and N5 (but awesome looking). This resulted in awesome rivalries where teams of threat 15 Crim's and enforcers would deliberately join each other's districts to try and dethreat the other back to 14. Other times it was cool to have flocks of players come visit you.

 

I'm not sure why G1 removed it but this concept of awarding players with a special rank exists in so many successful games that involve PVP matchmaking. For example in CSGO there's global elite, in LoL there's Challenger, Gladiator in WoW, and in Overwatch there's top 500. All these have a special appearance to them that easily distinguishes the top players. They also require you to be in anywhere from .01% to .05% of the top players in the game.

 

Right now threat is pretty boring and makes it hard to distinguish a regular gold player from a, for example, top .05% player. Reintroducing the threat 15 mechanic in some way would be a good way to keep competitive players interested. Having a leaderboard that lists out all the threat 15 players (like Overwatch, LoL, and WoW) would also be a cool addition and could serve as a hit list for other players (massive ELO boost if they beat them).

Edited June 6, 2018 by Spudinskes