Thoughts On Bringing 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 crims 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, for example, a top .05% player. Reintroducing the threat 15 mechanic in some fashion would be a great 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).

 

 

What are your thoughts? Obviously there are things in APB that should be fixed like faction imbalance and griefing. But let's assume they will be fixed and just focus on the idea itself. Let's have a discussion going.

Edited June 6, 2018 by Spudinskes

[vsb 6171]

id argue that there should be a massive balancing pass through first - and not just weapons either - since having a "competitive" rank system encourages the win-at-any-cost mentality which encourages exploits and abusing broken mechanics

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

Stop asking change in threat systems that are nothing more than graphical. Just adjust the bell curve.

[Spudinskes 41]

1 minute ago, BXNNXD said:

id argue that there should be a massive balancing pass through first - and not just weapons either - since having a "competitive" rank system encourages the win-at-any-cost mentality which encourages exploits and abusing broken mechanics

Of course, first thing's first there needs to be a solution that prevents mission griefing from happening. Reporting is absolutely an inadequate solution as select teams may sometimes have clan mates log in (through a VPN) to alts to grief objectives and won't care if their alt account gets banned. Second is that missions really need to be rebalanced, somehow. Enforcer missions are harder since they have enforcer exclusive objectives like phone booths which are usually in the middle of the road. Meanwhile Crim's have some exclusive objectives are always in CQC. Third, crims are able to bribe crim contacts (pretty stupid btw, you should be bribing cops, not other criminals to lower notoreity) to reduce notereity down to 1 before every mission. Meanwhile enforcers can not bribe and are forced to either rejoin the district to reset or become P5 during the mission and be at a massive disadvantage.

[neophobia 216]

we have the same threat system running in the background but without announcements + grouped symbols (as colors)

as far as i know

 

i guess they didn't want to enforce egomaniacs as much anymore

it did lead to some fun things ingame but probably just led to more toxicity than... well... fun. which was probably what the game was intended for.

 

f2ps are probably also meant to appeal to more casual players since they are in higher numbers - and having people around who are just acting competetive might not be a too favourable thing to them.

 

personally, when just wanting to enjoy the game, hidden threats in open conflict were my way to go.

i do like playing csgo, dota and ow rankeds etc but that just doesnt feel right with apb.

 

clan rankings might be nice, since... i don't know, apb feels more like community kinda thing (...despite /d being as hostile as ever 90% of the time) but i don't see much room for narcism and egoboosting here.

 

oh yeah, and the abuse.

Edited June 6, 2018 by neophobia

[vsb 6171]

1 minute ago, Spudinskes said:

Of course, first thing's first there needs to be a solution that prevents mission griefing from happening. Reporting is absolutely an inadequate solution as select teams may sometimes have clan mates log in (through a VPN) to alts to grief objectives and won't care if their alt account gets banned. Second is that missions really need to be rebalanced, somehow. Enforcer missions are harder since they have enforcer exclusive objectives like phone booths which are usually in the middle of the road. Meanwhile Crim's have some exclusive objectives are always in CQC. Third, crims are able to bribe crim contacts (pretty stupid btw, you should be bribing cops, not other criminals to lower notoreity) to reduce notereity down to 1 before every mission. Meanwhile enforcers can not bribe and are forced to either rejoin the district to reset or become P5 during the mission and be at a massive disadvantage.

idk missions go both ways, theres several car stealing missions where enfs can just enter the vehicle without having to break in

 

but yeah, i just think that the sheer scale of things that should be fixed first make competitive threat kind of pointless

[Irton 1]

I SUPPORT

[Spudinskes 41]

Just now, BXNNXD said:

idk missions go both ways, theres several car stealing missions where enfs can just enter the vehicle without having to break in

 

but yeah, i just think that the sheer scale of things that should be fixed first make competitive threat kind of pointless

I'm not sure if you're agreeing of disagreeing with that first part.

 

Let's not disregard an idea simply because there is an obstacle. We shouldn't disregard world Peace simply because there are a lot of systemic issues across the globe, for example.

15 minutes ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

Stop asking change in threat systems that are nothing more than graphical. Just adjust the bell curve.

Why not appease both sides. Adjust the bell curve and reintroduce meaningful threat graphics.

[vsb 6171]

3 minutes ago, Spudinskes said:

I'm not sure if you're agreeing of disagreeing with that first part.

 

Let's not disregard an idea simply because there is an obstacle. We shouldn't disregard world Peace simply because there are a lot of systemic issues across the globe, for example.

its just a pet peeve of mine when people point to faction imbalance, i like to point out that it exists on both sides

 

fair point, and i would like competitive threat and leaderboards back, dunno if i made that clear lol

[Spudinskes 41]

24 minutes ago, neophobia said:

we have the same threat system running in the background but without announcements + grouped symbols (as colors)

as far as i know

 

i guess they didn't want to enforce egomaniacs as much anymore

it did lead to some fun things ingame but probably just led to more toxicity than... well... fun. which was probably what the game was intended for.

 

f2ps are probably also meant to appeal to more casual players since they are in higher numbers - and having people around who are just acting competetive might not be a too favourable thing to them.

 

personally, when just wanting to enjoy the game, hidden threats in open conflict were my way to go.

i do like playing csgo rankeds and ow rankeds etc but that just doesnt feel right with apb.

 

clan rankings might be nice, since... i don't know, apb feels more like community kinda thing (...despite /d being as hostile as ever 90% of the time) but i don't see much room for narcism and egoboosting here.

A lot of games are designed to be fun, and one way a lot of players experience that fun is through competitive matchmaking. I don't think the developers of LoL, WoW, CSGO, and Overwatch designed a competitive matchmaking system if they knew a lot of players wouldn't enjoy that. Even if it introduces toxicity LO can take Blizzard's approach, who currently have a strict policy against it. People who are overly toxic get suspensions.

Edited June 6, 2018 by Spudinskes

[Spheri 66]

I liked it. "x has entered the district" made me feel good. 
However, there's a lot that needs to be fixed first. While we've all adapted to the NTEC-meta, or try to it does not mean it's balanced, and when introducing a threat system where a single loss can mean a dethreat, I'd rather not have it implemented yet. 
It's a neat feature though, I'd love to see it back one day. I thought more of adding a new threat above gold, so for example: Trainee / Green < Bronze < Silver < Gold < [new] here but we'll need more players for that, as it locks those high-ranked players out of the silver districts. This not only pleases the silvers, but will really tell who's a good gold, and who's a gold after a lucky streak of winning three missions in a row for example.
But first, balancing, and before that, BattlEye.

Edited June 6, 2018 by Spherii

[Scoreson 6]

I wasn't playing back then when threat had 15 levels, i only started when there were 10 and i really liked it, it always pushed me to improve and play better mission after mission.

When G1 changed from the old threat system to the current one i was really confused for a moment as i didn't read the patch notes and had no idea what was going on, when they first implemented it they made gold threat starting from gold 2/3 (or a little more) and a couple of patches later they lowered the gold threshold to around silver 7, that's why we have so many fake golds today that should actually be mid-low silvers.

This move always felt like a punch in the nuts, someone tries to improve themselves to get a higher rank just to later be put in a mediocre level that doesn't truly represent the actual skill rating. Meh... 

[ScarecrowXIII 27]

1 hour ago, Spudinskes said:

teams of threat 15 Crim's and enforcers would deliberately join each other's districts to try and dethreat the other back to 14.

This, I saw this part and immediately thought, "I want a rivalry like this"

[LaQuandra 91]

Pros and Cons to the old threat system. I like the fact that your threat will change often with your wins and losses. If you're on a roll you will threat up and play against good competition. If done well, you won't need to segregate the districts because matchmaking should find something for you in every district.

 

The negatives though is it will increase cheaper game play and encourage people to win at all costs (run with items, running after 1 kill in takeouts, etc). Also people can lose on purpose and "dethreat" faster to stomp lower threats and then just purposely lose against higher rank competition to go back to their "lower" threat. People will find a way to exploit it.  

 

I am not a big fan of the current system and segregation however.

 

If I had to choose between threats 1-15 and the current system I'll pick threats 1-15. 

 

If anything, get rid of the stupid scoring system or redo it completely. The winning team's score shouldn't be doubled or whatever because they won. Going 19-5 in a loss can produce the same "score" as someone going 4-8 in a win. While it's not completely uncommon, it's hard to be the "MVP" when you're on the losing side despite carrying your team or being the best player on the mission for both sides.

[vsb 6171]

1 minute ago, LaQuandra said:

Pros and Cons to the old threat system. I like the fact that your threat will change often with your wins and losses. If you're on a roll you will threat up and play against good competition. If done well, you won't need to segregate the districts because matchmaking should find something for you in every district.

 

The negatives though is it will increase cheaper game play and encourage people to win at all costs (run with items, running after 1 kill in takeouts, etc). Also people can lose on purpose and "dethreat" faster to stomp lower threats and then just purposely lose against higher rank competition to go back to their "lower" threat. People will find a way to exploit it.  

 

I am not a big fan of the current system and segregation however.

 

If I had to choose between threats 1-15 and the current system I'll pick threats 1-15. 

 

If anything, get rid of the stupid scoring system or redo it completely. The winning team's score shouldn't be doubled or whatever because they won. Going 19-5 in a loss can produce the same "score" as someone going 4-8 in a win. While it's not completely uncommon, it's hard to be the "MVP" when you're on the losing side despite carrying your team or being the best player on the mission for both sides.

you are aware the old system and the current system are nearly identical, the only change would be a visual one

 

what you are describing is closer to the rtw threat system which iirc based threat off of your last 100 matches or so

[weissraider 21]

I agree 100% with OP. There is nothing more to add.

Edited June 6, 2018 by weissraider

[LaQuandra 91]

2 hours ago, BXNNXD said:

you are aware the old system and the current system are nearly identical, the only change would be a visual one

 

what you are describing is closer to the rtw threat system which iirc based threat off of your last 100 matches or so

 

The current system is 1-10. RTW was 1-15. OP is talking about the original threat system. The current system you go from Gold level, to silver, to bronze, to green. Over 30 different levels (40 if there is green 1-10?). 

 

Of course any threat system will be comparable. We can have 100 different levels and could still "group" them into a "bronze (1-33), silver (34-66), and gold (67-100)" category. I feel going back to the 15 levels will make it easier for matchmaking for the fact people will fluctuate more based on how they are playing that particular day and who they are grouped with. Right now the threat levels seem fairly static and restrictive when it comes to district population and matchmaking.  

 

Can and would the 1-15 threat levels be exploitable? Of course, but I am not sure how you can prevent that except doing away with matchmaking in general and going more of an open conflict system.

 

In RTW APB I don't recall people losing on purpose. We were all grouped in the same districts and got matches without having to stand around forever (after they moved to the ready up system). Of course they had leader boards so people cared a little bit more. While leader boards create a whole other issue, why not leader boards for the current players in the district. Who currently logged into distinct has the most kills, which team has the longest winning streak, etc? Once they log off/leave district they are removed from the board.

[CookiePuss 5379]

I guess the good news is Matt said that the current threat system needs to be reworked and possibly scapped altogether. 

Should be fun!

[vsb 6171]

17 minutes ago, LaQuandra said:

 

The current system is 1-10. RTW was 1-15. OP is talking about the original threat system. The current system you go from Gold level, to silver, to bronze, to green. Over 30 different levels (40 if there is green 1-10?). 

 

Of course any threat system will be comparable. We can have 100 different levels and could still "group" them into a "bronze (1-33), silver (34-66), and gold (67-100)" category. I feel going back to the 15 levels will make it easier for matchmaking for the fact people will fluctuate more based on how they are playing that particular day and who they are grouped with. Right now the threat levels seem fairly static and restrictive when it comes to district population and matchmaking.  

 

Can and would the 1-15 threat levels be exploitable? Of course, but I am not sure how you can prevent that except doing away with matchmaking in general and going more of an open conflict system.

 

In RTW APB I don't recall people losing on purpose. We were all grouped in the same districts and got matches without having to stand around forever (after they moved to the ready up system). Of course they had leader boards so people cared a little bit more. While leader boards create a whole other issue, why not leader boards for the current players in the district. Who currently logged into distinct has the most kills, which team has the longest winning streak, etc? Once they log off/leave district they are removed from the board.

ah yeah i kind skimmed the op after i saw the old threat level symbols 

 

idk if it will ever come back tho, mattscott did say he wanted threat to be more gradual and harder to change, not easier

[SLICKIEM 118]

Something like this is a good idea, maybe not re-implementing this exact idea, though. As is stands there IS a bit too much skill variation in the silver and gold threats. One guy which hasn't been silver in a year straight might still get molly whopped by a top gold. Whereas with more varied threats like this suggestion, that top gold would be far outranking the other guy and can visibly be seen as better. It might also help to distinguish hackers - A rank 40 with max threat in a system like this would send warning flags all over.

 

Edit: Making the max threat in this system function as Prestige/Notoriety 5 does now would balance out that mechanic as well, meaning you would never attain bounty status during a mission, only when threat is applied (at the end), and could make for some fun, protracted fights between missions quite rarely (which is how P/N5 should be in the first place)

Edited June 6, 2018 by SLICKIEM
Additional comment

[LaQuandra 91]

15 minutes ago, SLICKIEM said:

Something like this is a good idea, maybe not re-implementing this exact idea, though. As is stands there IS a bit too much skill variation in the silver and gold threats. One guy which hasn't been silver in a year straight might still get molly whopped by a top gold. Whereas with more varied threats like this suggestion, that top gold would be far outranking the other guy and can visibly be seen as better. It might also help to distinguish hackers - A rank 40 with max threat in a system like this would send warning flags all over.

 

Edit: Making the max threat in this system function as Prestige/Notoriety 5 does now would balance out that mechanic as well, meaning you would never attain bounty status during a mission, only when threat is applied (at the end), and could make for some fun, protracted fights between missions quite rarely (which is how P/N5 should be in the first place)

 

But max rank doesn't necessarily mean you have insane skill. People can be carried to max rank/gold status now. Winning missions requires team coordination as well. If you get a group of 4 skilled players with excellent teamwork it isn't hard for them to go 30-0 in missions against public groups. It would be unfair to flag them because they know how play the game and use teamwork. Team coordination in this game is really underestimated. 

[SLICKIEM 118]

1 minute ago, LaQuandra said:

 

But max rank doesn't necessarily mean you have insane skill. People can be carried to max rank/gold status now. Winning missions requires team coordination as well. If you get a group of 4 skilled players with excellent teamwork it isn't hard for them to go 30-0 in missions against public groups. It would be unfair to flag them because they know how play the game and use teamwork. Team coordination in this game is really underestimated. 

That example was in reference to if the suggested threat system was being used. A rank 40 with max threat in THAT system (as I said) is a lot more eyebrow-raising than a rank 40 being gold currently. Like I said, it would probably help to determine if a player was using assistance or not, and GM's could check their statistics and gameplay on-the-fly if they see a lowbie with like 14 - 15 threat rating. Or just around that threat in general at any level. You have to admit that it's much more useful than this dated 3-tier system.

[Nymphi-DoubleDee 37]

4 hours ago, Spudinskes said:

.~snip~

Threat levels are still there.

 

Just not visual.

 

Do you really want people to have another reason to kick other players, and throw matches?

[Spudinskes 41]

1 hour ago, Nymphi-DoubleDee said:

Threat levels are still there.

 

Just not visual.

 

Do you really want people to have another reason to kick other players, and throw matches?

The topic is specifically talking about visuals. I never said the threat levels weren't underneath, the topic makes no mention of that. I don't see how that assumption could be made from reading it.

 

You're thinking of abandoning ideas that may have consequences without thinking of ways to counteract those consequences.

 

You don't purposefully limit the growth of a small business simply because it takes more management and resources to grow the business. You create a structure and plan to nurture healthy growth of the business, like structured management, checks and balances, staying on top of operating costs, etc.

 

Don't drop an idea because there's some growing pains. Create solutions to overcome issues like "toxicity". For example Blizzard does a good job of combating trolls and throwers both in game and in Overwatch league by keeping players and professionals in line with meaningful consequences.

 

https://gamerant.com/overwatch-penalties-competitive-921/

https://dotesports.com/overwatch/news/overwatch-player-dafran-banned-15126

Edited June 7, 2018 by Spudinskes

[Spudinskes 41]

2 hours ago, LaQuandra said:

 

The current system is 1-10. RTW was 1-15. OP is talking about the original threat system. The current system you go from Gold level, to silver, to bronze, to green. Over 30 different levels (40 if there is green 1-10?). 

 

Of course any threat system will be comparable. We can have 100 different levels and could still "group" them into a "bronze (1-33), silver (34-66), and gold (67-100)" category. I feel going back to the 15 levels will make it easier for matchmaking for the fact people will fluctuate more based on how they are playing that particular day and who they are grouped with. Right now the threat levels seem fairly static and restrictive when it comes to district population and matchmaking.  

 

Can and would the 1-15 threat levels be exploitable? Of course, but I am not sure how you can prevent that except doing away with matchmaking in general and going more of an open conflict system.

 

In RTW APB I don't recall people losing on purpose. We were all grouped in the same districts and got matches without having to stand around forever (after they moved to the ready up system). Of course they had leader boards so people cared a little bit more. While leader boards create a whole other issue, why not leader boards for the current players in the district. Who currently logged into distinct has the most kills, which team has the longest winning streak, etc? Once they log off/leave district they are removed from the board.

I would have to disagree on allowing threat to be easily changed. It should require an adequate amount of games to lose or gain ELO by a meaningful margin. Off days happen to everyone, but it was way too easy to dethreat from unlucky streaks and gain threat from lucky streaks. A lot of matchmaking systems take consistency into account now a days.

 

I would agree that people often threw less back in APB. A reason why could have been because more people actually cared about threat, people could actually see their threat increase, and top players had a reason to actually try and win. At the moment who cares about winning or losing because you basically keep your gold or silver no matter what happens because the ELO grouping is so large.

Edited June 7, 2018 by Spudinskes