Cyrillic nick name change & Jericho/Citadel consolidation

[TackoGirl 130]

@MattScott can we get an update from the support system? There has been no update for 2 weeks 

[Nev 200]

7 minutes ago, ForumUser said:

 

Are those the only requirements? People are going log in and then never play again.

 

I believe that any conflicting name should be based on recent gameplay hours prior to the merge. For example, if "Bum" on Jericho has 40 hours of recent gameplay before the merge and "Bum" on Citadel only has 1 hour of recent gameplay, "Bum" on Jericho gets to keep the name. In order for this to be fair, an exact date for the merge should be publicly mentioned. If the merge were to happen on September 25th, this would give us ample time to prepare and accumulate gameplay hours to keep our names.

 

I am sure a few people would be mad about this stating that it is unfair to veterans, especially the 255s holding these names. My argument is this. Why should inactive players be able to hold names that they do not use? If you have not played APB in awhile, you did not care about the names in the first place.

No.

 

This would create a huge mess and most players who levelled their chars to a high level are bound to come back at some point and it would be a kick in the teeth for them.

 

if someone hasn’t been active since launch sure I understand. But most old players don’t play the game because it’s been managed poorly and they want to see a change before coming back and they shouldn’t lose their names because of that. 

[ForumUser 7]

Just now, Nev said:

No.

 

This would create a huge mess and most players who levelled their chars to a high level are bound to come back at some point and it would be a kick in the teeth for them.

 

if someone hasn’t been active since launch sure I understand. But most old players don’t play the game because it’s been managed poorly and they want to see a change before coming back and they shouldn’t lose their names because of that. 

I play the game on and off regardless of its shortcomings. Simply put, if they cared about their names they would have played "x" amount of hours to at least retain their names.

 

I have played a lot of games and whenever a merge comes up, the publishers or developers usually cater to those who are currently the most active within their video games. Catering to those who do not play your game is not a good way to show how active the game is.

[Cr0 328]

Since on the topic of name changes etc, I would like to ask if you can please make all the names available that nobody is using but are registered as unavailable because people had them before a name change.

[Ohshii 215]

I dont give af about my character names just don't screw up the mails like you guys did with the Russians OR ELSE.

 

or else nothing lol just pls dont mess it up

 

[Nev 200]

4 minutes ago, ForumUser said:

I play the game on and off regardless of its shortcomings. Simply put, if they cared about their names they would have played "x" amount of hours to at least retain their names.

 

I have played a lot of games and whenever a merge comes up, the publishers or developers usually cater to those who are currently the most active within their video games. Catering to those who do not play your game is not a good way to show how active the game is.

 

That's on you. There are some players who wasted 17k hours of their life playing APB and sure that's some dedication to the game but doesn't make the player with 17k hours any better than someone with less. The point I am trying to get at is that the active population is so low that it wouldn't even make sense to cater them compared to the potential population that would return with the engine update. If those players find out that they won't keep their names it would decrease the potential of them coming back again . If you are talking about erasing names of players who just created their chars and spent less than 20 hours overall in the game sure I would understand but penalising anyone that has spent hundreds of hours in this game would just create a bad impression of this company in my opinion.

[ForumUser 7]

1 minute ago, Nev said:

 

That's on you. There are some players who wasted 17k hours of their life playing APB and sure that's some dedication to the game but doesn't make the player with 17k hours any better than someone with less. The point I am trying to get at is that the active population is so low that it wouldn't even make sense to cater them compared to the potential population that would return with the engine update. If those players find out that they won't keep their names it would decrease the potential of them coming back again . If you are talking about erasing names of players who just created their chars and spent less than 20 hours overall in the game sure I would understand but penalising anyone that has spent hundreds of hours in this game would just create a bad impression of this company in my opinion.

You are basing your opinion on loyalty, which is not a bad thing, but not always the best case from a business perspective.

 

Let us use your scenario, 17k hour veteran with the name "Bum" (Citadel) and 1 hour of recent gameplay and 1k hour veteran with the name "Bum" (Jericho) and 40 hours of recent gameplay. Out of the two, who is more likely to spend money on the game? Who is more likely to promote the game? The user who currently plays the most.

 

As you have stated, there is the possibility for an increase in population, but data from past merges refute that. Our previous merge with Joker and Colby proves this. There was a brief increase in overall population, but overtime it died down to what we currently have now. From a realistic perspective, what exactly do you think will prevent those inactive veterans from leaving again? The engine upgrade? New contacts? The gameplay of APB is cut and dry. An engine upgrade would not magically hold players' attentions and new contacts are another way of saying boring grind.

 

I understand your perspective, but the past has shown that the inactive players will continue being inactive. The choice to cater to those who are currently active is the safest choice out of the two.

[Nev 200]

13 minutes ago, ForumUser said:

You are basing your opinion on loyalty, which is not a bad thing, but not always the best case from a business perspective.

 

Let us use your scenario, 17k hour veteran with the name "Bum" (Citadel) and 1 hour of recent gameplay and 1k hour veteran with the name "Bum" (Jericho) and 40 hours of recent gameplay. Out of the two, who is more likely to spend money on the game? Who is more likely to promote the game? The user who currently plays the most.

 

As you have stated, there is the possibility for an increase in population, but data from past merges refute that. Our previous merge with Joker and Colby proves this. There was a brief increase in overall population, but overtime it died down to what we currently have now. From a realistic perspective, what exactly do you think will prevent those inactive veterans from leaving again? The engine upgrade? New contacts? The gameplay of APB is cut and dry. An engine upgrade would not magically hold players' attentions and new contacts are another way of saying boring grind.

 

I understand your perspective, but the past has shown that the inactive players will continue being inactive. The choice to cater to those who are currently active is the safest choice out of the two.

I mean you are definitely entitled to your opinion and I get what you are trying to say. But I am sure you are an old player like me,  Have you really seen this game bring a lot of players based on people recommending the game? The active population has been hovering around the same point for so many years and since last year has been going down with the exception of the recent surge with merge but I am sure it will go down again.  I also would like to point that the current active population is what most people would consider a failure and wouldve shut down the game by this point. But just to touch on your idea of prioritising recently active players compared to veterans, what if someone is deployed to the army for a year or something would they deserve to lose their names to someone who have been playing actively the past couple of months? The point I am trying to make is that not everyone has the time to play this game a lot and recent hours should never be a variable in the decision of who gets the names in my opinion.

 

Personally I think the only thing that would prevent majority of the current inactive players to leave again would be a game without active updates. It seems like LO are willing to bring new content to the game which I hope would entice them to stay. I have a lot of friends that haven't touched the game since 2013 who have been asking about the progress of the game over the years, these are the types of players that would come back once there is a major update and once they are satisfied that LO will deliver new content and actually look after the game which GamersFirst failed to do.

[MySodium 29]

As for an European like myself who used to play on the old Joker server, its great to have the old characters back, pretty interesting project we got here.

[ForumUser 7]

4 minutes ago, Nev said:

I mean you are definitely entitled to your opinion and I get what you are trying to say. But I am sure you are an old player like me,  Have you really seen this game bring a lot of players based on people recommending the game? The active population has been hovering around the same point for so many years and since last year has been going down with the exception of the recent surge with merge but I am sure it will go down again.  I also would like to point that the current active population is what most people would consider a failure and wouldve shut down the game by this point. But just to touch on your idea of prioritising recently active players compared to veterans, what if someone is deployed to the army for a year or something would they deserve to lose their names to someone who have been playing actively the past couple of months? The point I am trying to make is that not everyone has the time to play this game a lot and recent hours should never be a variable in the decision of who gets the names in my opinion.

 

Personally I think the only thing that would prevent majority of the current inactive players to leave again would be a game without active updates. It seems like LO are willing to bring new content to the game which I hope would entice them to stay. I have a lot of friends that haven't touched the game since 2013 who have been asking about the progress of the game over the years, these are the types of players that would come back once there is a major update and once they are satisfied that LO will deliver new content and actually look after the game which GamersFirst failed to do.

 

I have seen some new faces in APB, but it could always be rerolls. Based on my most recent gameplay, I would say that the population is a 50/50 mix of new faces and old vets. I wholly agree that the current active population is what most people would consider a failure. One thing that astounds me is how this game is still running off of ~1000 overall players.

 

Regarding your scenario about being away, I would say that this is type of event is unusual and rare. This is also not a valid excuse to allow a person to retain a name. Businesses rely on current income, not past income to continue running. So yes, the person should expect to lose their name. Your argument is like expecting Blizzard to allow me, a WoW player who played from Vanilla to Cataclysm, to keep my old character name to myself just because I played an egregious amount of hours and started the game earlier than another player instead of giving it to a currently paying customer. That is entirely unreasonable and does not benefit the company and the active players who care about a certain name.

 

What I am trying to say is that if a person truly cared about their character names in a video game, they will find a way to be active in said video game. One way of accumulating recent gameplay hours is afking in social. You do not have to play the game at all and you are free to do whatever you need to do in real life.

[MidnightQ 11]

If you guys gonna start merging and make all characters play on any server you guys really need to figure out to merge accounts into one im tired logging both accounts all the time i want everything into one account lots of people ask for this. There is gotta be a solution for it.

[Sophiie 50]

7 minutes ago, MidnightQ said:

If you guys gonna start merging and make all characters play on any server you guys really need to figure out to merge accounts into one im tired logging both accounts all the time i want everything into one account lots of people ask for this. There is gotta be a solution for it.

Why do you have multiple accounts? Serious inquiry.

[Dead_Game 73]

Better not change my character name and add some random numbers to it ( name is not in Cyrillic) , when the merge happens. But looking forward for the inevitable merge.

 

Edited August 24, 2019 by Hypothesis

[Guest]

7 hours ago, MattScott said:

Hi all,

 

During the coming weeks, we will be disabling special characters (Cyrillic, Latin, etc) in names and flagging all names that contain special characters for a forced change. 

 

This is to fix the /report and mail issues and to prep the upcoming Jericho and Citadel merge. The goal is to finally open all characters across all regions.

 

EDIT: This isn’t like a traditional server merge. World servers will be merged, but we are spreading out the Action Districts so that North American players can play with other regions and so that our Asia-Pacific, South America, and Russian players can have better latency.

 

We haven’t nailed down specific locations for new Action Districts, but options are Los Angeles, New York, Moscow, Singapore, Rio. These Action District servers will be marked in the Advanced list by region, but will be available to all players to join.

 

This is how the Action Districts are hosted alongside the World Servers now, which limits where we can host them.

 

 

This is how we can expand the locations of Action Districts after the merge (although we will have multiple district types and threat levels in each location).

 

 

(@SKay thanks for the images, and Happy Birthday!)

 

EDIT: This move is a prerequisite for Phasing, which eliminate the need to spam click in an effort to join a district with 79 players. Instead we will match across all online players in the same district type and move those players to the best server for them.

 

EDIT: We are also going to do something special with character names to avoid collisions this time. Anyone who hasn’t logged in their character within the last year will have their name released so that new and existing characters can use it both during and after the merge.

 

Thanks,

Matt

Wow! Beautiful news about disabling those strange characters in names, finally i will be sble to read them normally (maybe), who knows new ones, but for sure many will put strange names or old ones, i will appreciate that in anyway, atleast we will be able again to report if needed, without opening support tickets.

Oh god, this merge is so huge, can't wait for it to come and make new friendships, meet oher players, finally! After so many years i really ddn't thought something like this to be done honestly.

LO, I RESPECT YOU.

Also Happy Birthday dude SKay from me, congrats.

All good moves, i can't wait for Phading and all other updates, keep going forward and good luck, i am with you, always.

[Sayori 311]

The announcement explains it badly but the way I get is that there will be one server with instances across multiple geo. locations. 

Fine I guess until the part about phasing where the best district will be chosen. And if I get matched against US player? There's no server location between EU and US so which is best? Because I'm really not looking forward playing with 100+ms.

You will need to do a name wipe but 1 year inactivity is too low. 3 years maybe is better And lets not forget some people have paid for name change. Changing their names sucks.

And about cyrillic to english characters transition - sorry but wtf? Didn't you just merge russians with cyrillic names. You should have made that transition last week, not in the future. Yet another thing that's mismanaged. 

 

I foresee a massive clusterf.ck really.

 

And if I have learnt anything from playing MMOs for decades is that when companies start to merge servers it means the dead is imminent.

 

[vsb 6174]

22 minutes ago, Sayori said:

And if I have learnt anything from playing MMOs for decades is that when companies start to merge servers it means the dead is imminent.

this server unification has been the plan since orbit acquired apb, i doubt its really a desperation move  

[Sayori 311]

9 minutes ago, Solamente said:

this server unification has been the plan since orbit acquired apb, i doubt its really a desperation move  

If that was the case then they would have dealt with the cyrillic last week. This "mega server" decision is a new one, possibly even decided during Gamescom. That or they are seriously bad at planning and managing their roadmap for the game.

The plan was to have cross-district matchmaking, they've never said a word about merging EU and NA and really who does this for a shooting game. Now we will be supposedly matched against players from over 5500km...

EvE has one server but it's not a shooter where latency really matters.

Edited August 24, 2019 by Sayori

[yood 345]

 

are these exclusion zones ?

[lucid 6]

I spy an Indian server, can I finally get a ping below 200? oh wow

[WhiskeyTangoFoxX 280]

34 minutes ago, Sayori said:

If that was the case then they would have dealt with the cyrillic last week. This "mega server" decision is a new one, possibly even decided during Gamescom. That or they are seriously bad at planning and managing their roadmap for the game.

The plan was to have cross-district matchmaking, they've never said a word about merging EU and NA and really who does this for a shooting game. Now we will be supposedly matched against players from over 5500km...

EvE has one server but it's not a shooter where latency really matters.

My understanding is that ping is gonna be part of the matchmaking calculations. That's how almost all online shooters work, and there is no reason to think this will be any different.

 

21 minutes ago, olo said:

[snipped image]

are these exclusion zones ?

This is an example image that isn't even made by LO, those locations are not representative of where servers will be.

Edited August 25, 2019 by WhiskeyTangoFoxX

[Acornie 490]

40 minutes ago, Sayori said:

This "mega server" decision is a new one, possibly even decided during Gamescom. That or they are seriously bad at planning and managing their roadmap for the game.

The plan was to have cross-district matchmaking, they've never said a word about merging EU and NA and really who does this for a shooting game. Now we will be supposedly matched against players from over 5500km...

EvE has one server but it's not a shooter where latency really matters.

See Exibhit A and B:

On 10/19/2018 at 5:45 PM, MattScott said:

Lastly, in an ideal scenario, we would collapse down to a single World with multiple servers in North America, Europe and Asia. Then we can distribute Regional districts in as many locations as possible for proper latency / skill / matchmaking.

And then posted July 15th by Matt:

Quote

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.

Pretty sure there is even more examples.

Why would you assume they would come up with this only this week? Not like they cant have plans behind the scenes then wait to tell the community when they felt appropriate.

[burvingtoN 4]

So besides merging the pop to 1 world server. The ping situation will stay the same. Unless that's really the only point to it. Merging pop because the game is dead.

[Goabea 196]

this is great news for me. Now people won't ask me to make stuff on EU Anymore.

Edit: Page King

Edited August 25, 2019 by Goabea

[Zolerox 564]

I'm slightly aroused.

[Fortune Runner 796]

6 hours ago, ForumUser said:

I play the game on and off regardless of its shortcomings. Simply put, if they cared about their names they would have played "x" amount of hours to at least retain their names.

 

I have played a lot of games and whenever a merge comes up, the publishers or developers usually cater to those who are currently the most active within their video games. Catering to those who do not play your game is not a good way to show how active the game is.

Treating people poorly and not respecting their accounts is better?

 

When Little Orbit bought APB there were 2,000 people logging in.

That's because they want to play but wanted to see if it was updated finally or not.

How Little Orbit is handling the names will free up names of those who have not played in years and most likely will not come back without burning those who have played the past year.

That's good enough since ti does not favor one or the other but finds a good middle ground.