Things in APB that are detrimental to the mental health of its players

[supermariobrothe 80]

Ive played many online games over the years and i have not seen a game that would have such a large quantity of people with varying degree off nastiness to them, for a lack of a better word(well maybe dota).

So this has got me wondering for a while now, does A. APB attract those kind of people, or B. does it create them?

 

One day i was driving around in an empty district and saw some ram raiders doing their thing, i didnt bother them or anything. But than 2 other enforcers showed up, one was driving a white jericho and the other one was car surfing with an osmaw, they were witnessing the raiders, blowing them up and grabbing their hard earned cash. Apparently one of the raiders had amassed 8K stash and the 2 car surfing osmaw trolls took all of that from them. Needless to say, the raiders were really distressed about it, all that hard work wasted.

The trolls kept turning up into the district every 20 minutes to repeat it.

 

Removed image due to Naming & Shaming.     - Mina_

 

I tried to calm them down and explain to them why they cant report them for simply playing the game how it was meant to be played, and that moment in the middle of telling them that i realized that the answer is B, this game causes people distress and makes them develop symptoms of ASPD (antisocial personality disorder)

I also realized that even if i tell them that this is how the game is supposed to be played, it wont take away the shitty feeling of being robbed, and a gameplay mechanic that gives you this kind of a feeling is a bad mechanic,

 

So what do i mean by this? the design of many of the game mechanics forces players into doing desperate things, creating situations that will bring out the worst in people and make receiving end bitter at them for it. So im going to list a few of them.

 

 

Ram raiding and witnessing

 

While this is far from the worst mechanic in the game in terms of begin detrimental to player's mental health, it is probably one of the most poorly thought out mechanic in the game.
Crims can easily make cash by stealing cars and looting stores. Enforcers on the other hand, have no such easy ways to make money, they can turn in stolen cars or goods but they get peanuts for it, and even reaching a high enough prestige level for a multiplier is a challenge. Its a lot of pointless driving around and looking for things to turn in, so Enforcers are forced into the role of a parasite, abusing other players by witnessing them and taking their stash instead.
And its not all fun and games for crims either, while ram raiding is the best way to make the most cash, it is also the most stressful and monotonous activity you can do in the game, it is a lot of work and anything but fun, so the least thing you want is some asshat with osmaw legally griefing you. No one is doing ram raiding for the hopes of "fun times" in getting a mini mission with the cop that witnessed them.

All in all, this brings a lot of unnecessary grief and rewards abuse.

 

 

Bronze/Silver/Gold icons

 

Now this is a big one and i bet im gonna get a bunch of insults over this but, a HUGE chunk of all the toxicity in the game comes from this, The gold status is a source of inflated ego and elitism, people who arent gold are not taken seriously, belittled and treated like they know nothing and not worth your time to even speak to. Because of this, people who are low gold will stress over it, obsessed with their score, obsessed with other people's score, not wanting to play with people of lower threat level, tryharding and worrying about performing. Some will rage whisper insults to people that killed them or people they killed. They will do things like abandoning missions that have at least one silver in the team before opp gets assigned (back in the good old days they used to just kick silvers from teams in the middle of the mission) or ALT-F4 the game when they are doing bad, because their pride depends on it, they wanna be one of the cool gold kids in the eyes of other cool kids. Once their gold is secure and their ego is safe, they will taunt others that arent gold.

 

All in all, while this is probably the biggest thing that has a negative mental effect on the community as a whole, personally im a bit conflicted about LOs decision to scrap this system, i cannot imagine APB without the gold/silver/bronze thing, its like the soul of the game, for better or for worse, and i would hate to see the system go as much as i would love to see it go, maybe it should be reworked instead so that only the truly best players would get to be gold instead of everyone and their mom like it is now, i believe back in the day it was a lot harder to get gold too.

 

Item hold missions.

 

These would be fine by themselves if everyone played fair, but most of the time players will either run with the item, or exploit the awful map design to get the item into some way up high unreachable place, and as a cherry on top, the missions where an armored truck is the item and you are literally supposed to run with it, nothing takes the wind out of your sail than runners, i know a few people who just stopped playing the game because of this.

Now every time this topic comes up, you always get geniuses belittling the poster about how they should just use the rocket launcher like everyone just have one laying around in their gun locker, or get car surfer LMG or some other nonsense perfect world scenario that can only happen between high level players that already have all those toys unlocked and in their inventories.

 

 

High level locked gear

 

Things like the rocket launcher, car surfer, creating impossible to win scenarios, making players bitter at the car surfing osmaw dudes with cowboy hats.

 

 

Awful objective placement

 

Sometimes the objectives are placed in locations with no thought put into it, like hacking an ATM in a middle of a wide open space with enemy spawn points in sight of the objective, or investigating a car that is surrounded by buildings with easily accessible roof tops that the opp can spawn next to, and you gotta love the spawns around the warehouse and boat area in waterfront, so it becomes a matter of who gets to it first, resulting in missions with bitter outcomes.

 

Death themes

 

Really love the death theme idea but it can often get abused to create very loud ear no beeps or insult the player with an arrangement of leboyce voice samples.

That being said, i think the good far outway the bad in this case and im kinda against the proposed idea of an option to turn of death themes, theres a lot of really creative people in the game that make wonders with the music editor that i shouldnt be silenced because of a few bad apples.

 

 

The bounty system

 

Now i personally love the idea but i think its implementation is very poor, randoms outside your mission can mess your whole mission up if you turn P5/N5 or if there happens to be someone outside your mission who turned P5/N5 thirsty for some kills, and finally, people who arent as thrilled about being the bounty and just wanna get out of it, will kill a random person of their own faction just to get rid of it.

The fix for this problem would be really simple, if someone turns P5/N5 on a mission, it should be restricted to the mission and people outside the mission couldnt interfere with it, once the mission is over, it should open up to the whole district and whoever is not on a mission could go after the bounty.

 

Conclusion

All these things i listed and many more are not a big deal on their own, but when you pile them up, it can make people playing this game develop varying degrees of ASPD (antisocial personality disorder) and im glad that some of these issues were address by Matt in the recent Q&A stream, and while some of his answered were not ideal(turning off bounty system, removing visual threat), its still nice to know that something is being done about it. Also matchmaking is another huge issue but i havent listed it here because that topic has been done to death.

 

 

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

I think you're thinking about this a bit too much.

23 minutes ago, supermariobrothe said:

 

Really love the death theme idea but it can often get abused to create very loud ear no beeps or insult the player with an arrangement of leboyce voice samples.

 

I'm sorry. Are you talking shit about LeBoyce sound clips? I think you should go get hired at Tasty Burger.

[Ketog 1031]

I actually, agree with each and every one of your points, with threat being the one that has the biggest mental impact on players .

 

Having "how good of a player you are" being shown above your head at all times, makes people judge you even before having any sort of interaction, and knowing that threat itself is a poor representation of someone's skill doesn't make it better either ...

[illgot 379]

Witness

 

Crims being witnessed... that is how Enforcers earn money.  They can't simply ram raid in an empty district at N5 all day solo and earn a million credits, they have to get lucky and witness idiots doing this out in the open when there are enforcers around (check the map to see if enforcers log in to the empty district).

 

and 8k?  That's nothing.  I've been able to gather nearly 250k in 30-45 minutes with my crim.

 

Now, if you want to really bypass the whole witness system, since you were working with a crew, have one of the crew log on as an Enforcer and just have them hold the money.  The Criminal farms say 5k, blows themselves up which drops the money, Enforcer picks up the money and holds it.  After you reach a goal, the Enforcer stands at the crim drop off with all the cash, the Crim (who can easily reach N5 by mugging) then kills the Enforcer holding the cash, picks it up, takes a step in any direction and completes the drop off.

 

Your whole complaint about a group of Enforcers doing what is intended is silly.

 

Bronze/Silver/Gold

 

The tags should go and so should displaying rank.  No one needs to see anything more than the players name, title, and guild. 

 

Item hold missions

 

Players should not be able to hold these items in vehicles or while car surfing.  The whole idea of running with an item in a vegas 4x4 is just boring especially when there is a group of car surfers protecting the car with Aligs/Osmaws/Ntecs.

 

High level locked gear

 

Nothing should require more thank rank 85 to use.  

 

Awful objective placement

 

This is just part of the game.  Learn to use vehicles to block line of sight and your team mates to draw fire.

Death themes

 

I just /ignore people with annoying death themes.

 

The bounty system

 

This is a system that creates balance.  If one team is slaughtering the other, N5/P5 is the only way to balance the mission and take those players out of the game long enough for the losing opposition to complete the objective.  If you do not want this happening to you, go to a contact and lower your N4/P4 status.  This has to stay as it is or there will be no chance for lower skilled players to win missions against much higher skilled players.

 

 

Conclusion

n/a

Edited September 9, 2019 by illgot

[supermariobrothe 80]

27 minutes ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

I think you're thinking about this a bit too much.

I'm sorry. Are you talking shit about LeBoyce sound clips? I think you should go get hired at Tasty Burger.

haha, yeah well i do like the creative ones, i even recorded one after a match because it fascinated me lol, but threes some that just mean

 

23 minutes ago, Ketog said:

I actually, agree with each and every one of your points, with threat being the one that has the biggest mental impact on players .

 

Having "how good of a player you are" being shown above your head at all times, makes people judge you even before having any sort of interaction, and knowing that threat itself is a poor representation of someone's skill doesn't make it better either ...

 

Yeah like, i need a few matches to warm up, than i can be really good at the game for 2 or 3 matches but than i run out of stamina and just start sucking at it again, theres no way for the color above your head to reflect that.

 

12 minutes ago, illgot said:

Crims being witnessed... that is how Enforcers earn money.  They can't simply ram raid in an empty district at N5 all day solo and earn a million credits, they have to get lucky and witness idiots doing this out in the open when there are enforcers around (check the map to see if enforcers log in to the empty district).

 

and 8k?  That's nothing.  I've been able to gather nearly 250k in 30-45 minutes with my crim.

 

Now, if you want to really bypass the whole witness system, since you were working with a crew, have one of the crew log on as an Enforcer and just have them hold the money.  The Criminal farms say 5k, blows themselves up which drops the money, Enforcer picks up the money and holds it.  After you reach a goal, the Enforcer stands at the crim drop off with all the cash, the Crim (who can easily reach N5 by mugging) then kills the Enforcer holding the cash, picks it up, takes a step in any direction and completes the drop off.

 

Your whole complaint about a group of Enforcers doing what is intended is silly.

I suggest you read it all again

 

"I tried to calm them down and explain to them why they cant report them for simply playing the game how it was meant to be played"

"I also realized that even if i tell them that this is how the game is supposed to be played, it wont take away the shitty feeling of being robbed, and a gameplay mechanic that gives you this kind of a feeling is a bad mechanic"

 

Also yeah that is what im doing, helping crims ram raid as an enforcer

 

Edited September 9, 2019 by supermariobrothe

[Eisena 86]

I just really enjoy talking in /district chat. It's the people which make this game amusing.

 

I am not bothered so much by negative comments in this game. This game's community is just like real life.

 

-ps
I am a pro silver.

Edited September 9, 2019 by Eisena

[Bambola 379]

Apart from APB, I haven't played and I surely won't ever play any other PvP game but I do not see APB players being anything more toxic or to some extent defective, than the majority of the Internet community is, which consists of the majority of this planet population. Overall IQ scores have been falling for quite some time, same goes for the ethic and moral values. This is not exclusively a problem APB has to deal with, it's the biggest issue the world today has. And yeah, it's getting only worse. 

[Eisena 86]

Your view of the world is as bleak as ever Bamb.

 

But true. The idea that this is an acceptable way to treat each other is untenable.

[neonlol 0]

lmao

[Kylegrey2 31]

To blame a game for antisocial personality disorder just removes all personal responsibility from the equation. Its the anonymity the web provides that emboldens people to act this way. The more they get away with, the further they push it. Apb is frustrating but not to blame for how shitty people treat each other online.

 

Want to also point out the leftist logic of "it upsets me, so get rid of it". You cant nerf the world for grown up children who cant handle reality.

Edited September 9, 2019 by Kylegrey2

[supermariobrothe 80]

1 hour ago, Kylegrey2 said:

To blame a game for antisocial personality disorder just removes all personal responsibility from the equation. Its the anonymity the web provides that emboldens people to act this way. The more they get away with, the further they push it. Apb is frustrating but not to blame for how shitty people treat each other online.

 

Want to also point out the leftist logic of "it upsets me, so get rid of it". You cant nerf the world for grown up children who cant handle reality.

you should have just replied with a "tl;dr"

 

and besides, even if my theory is not correct and the game does not create these kind of people, you cannot deny that it facilitates this kind of behavior.

Edited September 9, 2019 by supermariobrothe

[Kylegrey2 31]

1 hour ago, supermariobrothe said:

you should have just replied with a "tl;dr"

 

and besides, even if my theory is not correct and the game does not create these kind of people, you cannot deny that it facilitates this kind of behavior.

A lack of morals and self controll is to blame. Games are hard and can be incredibly frustrating... ive been there and would be lying if i said i never behaved in this manner. The key is self awareness and the desire to be better. The game is not the problem. This of course is just my opinion, so dont be offended and feel free to disregard if it upsets you

[Guest]

14 hours ago, supermariobrothe said:

The trolls kept turning up into the district every 20 minutes to repeat it.

 

Removed image due to Naming & Shaming.     - Mina_

 

I tried to calm them down and explain to them why they cant report them for simply playing the game how it was meant to be played, and that moment in the middle of telling them that i realized that the answer is B, this game causes people distress and makes them develop symptoms of ASPD (antisocial personality disorder)

It's not based on trolls or anything you think, it's based on real life problems those peoples have, i know both of them and i can say that they aren't really normal "gamers".

Even if you are your friend and you win vs them and you don't let that S*****Y to kill you or your team mates, he will blame you, will start an infinite spam of insults, just because that S*****Y like to win, not lose.

I helped him out becoming gold and everytime he become that threat he stop playing with that char or he play only in empty district vs who help him get more kills, then make a new char and start over, like all others, he don't even know how to play in a full district.

 

I really hope that Little Orbit will Punish those type of peoples, because this isn't fun.

Of course "trolls" keep coming back, because they having fun seeing them raging, it's easy to know.

 

With that being said, i will see you in APB once again, have fun and don't let these scrubs to ruin your brain.

[Fortune Runner 796]

I'm not about to blame APB for what people individually choose to do.

 

and running with an item is a valid option even if its against me alig exists for a reason

if you want a game with no conflict then any type of game with competition will not work....and be super boring

[Salvick 248]

5 hours ago, supermariobrothe said:

-snip-

 

I'm glad someone took his time to list up a few things that I actually agree doesn't contribute at all with the spirit of what the online gaming was meant to be on its origins, although I wouldn't go as far as to list up a psychological pathology unless there is a valid research and a professional opinion to back it up, though I still agree that this game as same as many, many other games and internet social networks can lead to toxicity and unacceptable behaviors, but I think the problem lays when the social interaction is a key feature and there's poor moderation from the game management over player's interactions.

 

Said this, my belief is that if the medical community around the world raises awareness regarding mental health issues in online gaming, specially in stages of personality development, then there should start to be stronger parameters and probably laws for game companies to get their content approved by the authorities.

 

There's some stuff already going on regarding the gambling pathology on underage gamers that is being researched with solid data about their behaviors and how companies target them to ensure huge profits triggering these behaviors on people that matches the profile and, although I'm not saying APB is doing this, specially under LO management where everything seems to aim to a healthy environment for everyone, what this researching also pointed out is that some of the main factors that helps to develop what is now known as "Internet Gaming Disorder" are loneliness, competition, self esteem issues and many others such like these in the path of developing a social capital to be prepared to interact in the real world within and after school.

 

Internet interaction also implies some sort of depersonalization since we can't always know exactly who are the others behind the screen, who is developing and providing the information we access, and at the same time this allow us to selectively show what we would like to let others know about us while hiding what we think the others wouldn't approve from our personality or life style.

 

Everything you listed is accurate in terms of producing rivalry and competitiveness between players, how we react to that depends in our personal education and life experiences, and I dare to say this is how this game was designed in the first place. The former CEO Björn Book-Larsson said this on his own words: "APB produces rage between players, that's how it works", he didn't mean he support this but was saying he was aware of what this game can produce when playing it.

 

I agree that the PvE mechanics could provide a more enjoyable experience if witnessing is reworked or such, I do agree that visible threat was never necessary, specially when the system is absolutely inaccurate and manipulable (maybe some league system and an option to turn it on and off could work better), and I agree that some missions does not match with the map design in many cases but...

 

TL:DR:

...I strongly believe that everything that might be an issue regarding players interaction is a matter of in-game moderation, not through support with the delay it implies, not through invisible admins and moderators that could give the feeling that they are not there and not through forums and district chat blaming and flaming other players, but with simple and proper active presence of the admins in game, showing up and interacting with everyone and encouraging the best behaviors between players which will eventually push everyone else to do their best to fit with the community if what they want is to be likely popular or avoid being marginal elements of the community.

 

4 hours ago, Bambola said:

Apart from APB, I haven't played and I surely won't ever play any other PvP game but I do not see APB players being anything more toxic or to some extent defective, than the majority of the Internet community is, which consists of the majority of this planet population. Overall IQ scores have been falling for quite some time, same goes for the ethic and moral values. This is not exclusively a problem APB has to deal with, it's the biggest issue the world today has. And yeah, it's getting only worse. 

 

Quite much this is how it is on the internet, but I want to point out that online games weren't like this before, back in the days an online game was a place to gather and share good fun with others and even the admins and mods were an active and visible part of the community helping everyone while encouraging others to behave gently towards everyone else and making us feel safe from cheaters and griefers who could attempt to destroy the gaming experience.

 

 

3 hours ago, Kylegrey2 said:

To blame a game for antisocial personality disorder just removes all personal responsibility from the equation. Its the anonymity the web provides that emboldens people to act this way. The more they get away with, the further they push it. Apb is frustrating but not to blame for how shitty people treat each other online.

 

I also think that the anonymity in the web is the main factor leading people to misbehave but my opinion is that the rest of the community vouching for a better environment needs to be actively backed by the game authorities, either in-game moderators or the company representatives, through the game rules and terms of service.

 

 

 

 

Edited September 10, 2019 by Salvick
typos

[greenfield 135]

some of you are taking this too serious looks like.

[Bambola 379]

4 hours ago, Eisena said:

Your view of the world is as bleak as ever Bamb.

I wish you were wrong. 

22 minutes ago, Salvick said:

Quite much this is how it is on the internet, but I want to point out that online games weren't like this before, back in the days an online game was a place to gather and share good fun with others and even the admins and mods were an active and visible part of the community helping everyone while encouraging others to behave gently towards everyone else and making us feel safe from cheaters and griefers who could attempt to destroy the gaming experience.

I know, I grew up on such games within the communities you've described. 

APB was a cultural shock when I first played it. 

[Ohshii 215]

TLDR Spoiled af mellianial kids on the internet using mommy and daddys credit cards to play games dont have no god damn respect for themselves or for others lowering the bar for overall maturity on the internet due to their parents being trashcans who suck at parenting. It started back in 2003-4 when XBOX introduced online gameplay where all the 9-12 year olds could call people the N word on Halo 2 and it's progressively gotten worse every year since, especially on literally every single f2p internet game. APB is no exception, in fact it's an exceptional example of how bad it can actually get.

 

News at 11.

 

 

 

Edited September 10, 2019 by Ohshii

[vsb 6171]

5 hours ago, supermariobrothe said:

it can make people playing this game develop varying degrees of ASPD (antisocial personality disorder)

holy crap what the hell, playing videogames gives people mental illnesses? sounds like you have a few of your own lmao

 

here's the bottom line: apb is a solely pvp game - in order for player A to win, player B has to lose, and yeah losing sucks because (almost) no one wants to fail, but blaming a video game for a personal inability to control oneself is a pretty crazy level of denial

 

thats not to say that apb is perfect and nothing should change, but framing your personal opinions on balance as some crusade for "mental health" is hilarious

 

 

5 hours ago, supermariobrothe said:

Ram raiding and witnessing

 

While this is far from the worst mechanic in the game in terms of begin detrimental to player's mental health, it is probably one of the most poorly thought out mechanic in the game.
Crims can easily make cash by stealing cars and looting stores. Enforcers on the other hand, have no such easy ways to make money, they can turn in stolen cars or goods but they get peanuts for it, and even reaching a high enough prestige level for a multiplier is a challenge. Its a lot of pointless driving around and looking for things to turn in, so Enforcers are forced into the role of a parasite, abusing other players by witnessing them and taking their stash instead.
And its not all fun and games for crims either, while ram raiding is the best way to make the most cash, it is also the most stressful and monotonous activity you can do in the game, it is a lot of work and anything but fun, so the least thing you want is some asshat with osmaw legally griefing you. No one is doing ram raiding for the hopes of "fun times" in getting a mini mission with the cop that witnessed them.

All in all, this brings a lot of unnecessary grief and rewards abuse.

the "wrong" way most players ramraid isnt stressful at all, put on some tunes, zone out, and drive into walls in the corner of an empty district until you have enough cash

 

either way, ramraiding and witnessing are leftovers from the old (rtw) mission system so its no wonder they feel clunky in the current game, especially after g1 bungled them even more a few years back

 

i feel like there's a good opportunity for little orbit to enhance and expand on open world activities, and loop them back around to tie in more seamlessly with apb's core gameplay, but honestly so few people actually bother to ramraid that working on open world activities seems like a waste of time at this point

 

 

5 hours ago, supermariobrothe said:

Bronze/Silver/Gold icons

 

Now this is a big one and i bet im gonna get a bunch of insults over this but, a HUGE chunk of all the toxicity in the game comes from this, The gold status is a source of inflated ego and elitism, people who arent gold are not taken seriously, belittled and treated like they know nothing and not worth your time to even speak to. Because of this, people who are low gold will stress over it, obsessed with their score, obsessed with other people's score, not wanting to play with people of lower threat level, tryharding and worrying about performing. Some will rage whisper insults to people that killed them or people they killed. They will do things like abandoning missions that have at least one silver in the team before opp gets assigned (back in the good old days they used to just kick silvers from teams in the middle of the mission) or ALT-F4 the game when they are doing bad, because their pride depends on it, they wanna be one of the cool gold kids in the eyes of other cool kids. Once their gold is secure and their ego is safe, they will taunt others that arent gold.

 

All in all, while this is probably the biggest thing that has a negative mental effect on the community as a whole, personally im a bit conflicted about LOs decision to scrap this system, i cannot imagine APB without the gold/silver/bronze thing, its like the soul of the game, for better or for worse, and i would hate to see the system go as much as i would love to see it go, maybe it should be reworked instead so that only the truly best players would get to be gold instead of everyone and their mom like it is now, i believe back in the day it was a lot harder to get gold too.

 

i refer back to my first "paragraph", someone has to lose in order for someone else to win in apb

 

removing threat won't do anything to curb pvp toxicity because threat doesnt cause pvp toxicity, the elitism will just move on to other comparisons; "i have more total kills than you", "i have more weapon roles", "im in this big owner clan and you aren't", "i beat you x days ago and i have a screenshot", blah blah blah, all it boils down to is "i win and you lose so i'm better" and there's no way to get rid of that

 

additionally a pvp game with no ranking system (does that even exist?) has way less appeal to pvp players, because they either want that challenge and competition or they want the bragging rights and epeen that comes with it - there's a reason so many players want the older more detailed threat system back

 

orbit may be scrapping the color system but the recent Q&A made it pretty clear that they intend to stick with a visible skill ranking system and it sounds like they plan on making it a lot more indepth than the current system

 

 

6 hours ago, supermariobrothe said:

Item hold missions.

 

These would be fine by themselves if everyone played fair, but most of the time players will either run with the item, or exploit the awful map design to get the item into some way up high unreachable place, and as a cherry on top, the missions where an armored truck is the item and you are literally supposed to run with it, nothing takes the wind out of your sail than runners, i know a few people who just stopped playing the game because of this.

Now every time this topic comes up, you always get geniuses belittling the poster about how they should just use the rocket launcher like everyone just have one laying around in their gun locker, or get car surfer LMG or some other nonsense perfect world scenario that can only happen between high level players that already have all those toys unlocked and in their inventories.

i personally don't enjoy runners either, but i know quite a few people over the years who find it fun whether they're chasing or running

 

i also don't see why your gameplay preference, which i assume is hunkering down and camping one (possibly broken) spot, should mean more than their gameplay preference

 

feels like you want to band aid the symptoms of larger problems instead of actually fixing the root cause - running is less effective when mods like blowtorch are balanced and carsurfer is more widely available, players abusing map spots merely requires the maps to be fixed

 

 

6 hours ago, supermariobrothe said:

High level locked gear

 

Things like the rocket launcher, car surfer, creating impossible to win scenarios, making players bitter at the car surfing osmaw dudes with cowboy hats.

im with illgot on this one

5 hours ago, illgot said:

Nothing should require more thank rank 85 to use. 

 

 

6 hours ago, supermariobrothe said:

Awful objective placement

 

Sometimes the objectives are placed in locations with no thought put into it, like hacking an ATM in a middle of a wide open space with enemy spawn points in sight of the objective, or investigating a car that is surrounded by buildings with easily accessible roof tops that the opp can spawn next to, and you gotta love the spawns around the warehouse and boat area in waterfront, so it becomes a matter of who gets to it first, resulting in missions with bitter outcomes.

agreed, missions (and maps, and spawns, and a million other things) need an overhaul pass

 

 

6 hours ago, supermariobrothe said:

The bounty system

 

Now i personally love the idea but i think its implementation is very poor, randoms outside your mission can mess your whole mission up if you turn P5/N5 or if there happens to be someone outside your mission who turned P5/N5 thirsty for some kills, and finally, people who arent as thrilled about being the bounty and just wanna get out of it, will kill a random person of their own faction just to get rid of it.

The fix for this problem would be really simple, if someone turns P5/N5 on a mission, it should be restricted to the mission and people outside the mission couldnt interfere with it, once the mission is over, it should open up to the whole district and whoever is not on a mission could go after the bounty.

• make notoriety/prestige mission dependent - notoriety/prestige are reset to x level at the start of every mission (to ensure that you pop n5/p5 because of current performance)
• remove the n5/p5 radar star
• reward players more for popping n5/p5, for staying n5/p5, and for kills while n5/p5
• punish players more for factionkilling n5/p5 players
• allow both factions to pay off notoriety/prestige levels, or have losing missions and dying affect notoriety/prestige levels more severely 

i think any of these, or some combination of them, would go a long way towards fixing the bounty system

 

 

6 hours ago, illgot said:

The bounty system

 

This is a system that creates balance.  If one team is slaughtering the other, N5/P5 is the only way to balance the mission and take those players out of the game long enough for the losing opposition to complete the objective.  If you do not want this happening to you, go to a contact and lower your N4/P4 status.  This has to stay as it is or there will be no chance for lower skilled players to win missions against much higher skilled players.

friendly reminder that enforcers cannot pay off their prestige level

 

the current bounty system isnt balance, its a bad band aid fix for poor matchmaking - with the incoming addition of phasing and matchmaking/threat tweaks there's no reason that any player should be dominating a team so completely that their only chance is someone out of mission killing said player

 

punishing players (which is all the current n5/p5 system really does) for doing well is pretty unacceptable imo

[Salvick 248]

26 minutes ago, Solamente said:

holy crap what the hell, playing videogames gives people mental illnesses? sounds like you have a few of your own lmao

Well, I just found this when googling:

 

The American Psychiatric Association recently included Internet gaming disorder (IGD) as a potential diagnosis. It is defined as “persistent and recurrent use of the Internet to engage in games, often with other players, leading to clinically significant impairment or distress.”

 

Source

 

I guess doesn't match exactly with what the OP was pointing out, but neither am I taking sides here, I'm just saying.

Edited September 10, 2019 by Salvick

[vsb 6171]

11 minutes ago, Salvick said:

Well, I just found this when googling:

IGD is basically just addiction, which isn't surprising since basically anything can be addicting

 

that's a far cry from antisocial personality disorder, which is basically the "official" diagnosis for sociopaths - we're on "video games cause mass shootings" levels of meme as far as im concerned 

[Vivenka 11]

Discovering the warm water, there is no game in the world that is not full of people with mental and emotional problems of some kind. There is enough information about that and unfortunately the world is full of people who will lean more towards the negative for whatever reason and attract you, are other factors that will depend on what they have in their rotten heads. Besides, most of them are nothing but spoiled children and if we see the amount of useless youtubers where they support the troll attitude in games ... it is understandable because more and more people are following these reproachable attitudes. One thing urges the other and everyone gets the worst version of themselves, because in today's society, being silly and troll is the norm of the day, is to be the best.
 

APB is clear in its game mode, criminals and enforcers, it explains itself. They have robbed me several times. And when it's not a player, it's the bad connection of the servers. Should I ask for reimbursement or sue those responsible for the game for losing $ 50,000 and more of the game? Surely not, but it certainly gives a lot of regret that due to server problems, more than 6 hours raising that money, it provokes a lot of anger. 6 hours gathering, as long as there are no police or other criminals in the district. More than 8 hours, if they enter and decide to stay, one hides so as not to be robbed and praying that the server does not fall or the Disconnection system due to lack of activity because you can't even go to the quiet bathroom because of that s*** system, it's frustrating, all the holy day of my life just for that. More than 8 hours hidden gentlemen, or playing or anything, hidden, immobile, watching movies until they leave the district, because obviously if you go to the money laundering, they may capture you. A real waste of life time in the monotonous round trip from a store to a contact. And to the contact that best allows downloading, because if you have to leave it they go to 40mt, carrying a cpu translates into slower progress. A totally frustrating dynamic.
 

What I am against is that of those players who, because of playing with people who are not so skilled at aim, want to prevent a person from playing, either by killing him on his own team or chasing him and not letting him advance with the cars so he can annoy The bad losers, who never like to lose. No one has the right to decide who plays, how to play or whether or not to have the game installed. People who like rank, have high ego and believe they own the game to decide who should play and who should not.
 

It is also frustrating and is considered foul play when someone has to face a rocket launcher with a gun, a total disadvantage in every way. But this is the game, everyone plays as they want, and if a gold level kills me more than 700mt with a super legendary weapon and a hacker aim, should I do something to have some advantage, right? This is why there are players who only cry. They have an advantage and do not want to be overcome.

 

Unfortunately, no one has cared or cares about the psychological factor and how that contributes to a person being able to take off that rage in real life. Yes, each person decides what to do, but that does not excuse that external stimuli contribute equally to subconsciously feed that type of destructive personalities. One thing connects to the other. Precisely anonymity plays an important role in which the person can show their bad version and worse when they take a simple game as if it were a religion or something like that. If someone really decides to hurt other people in real life, for a game, it is already a very serious mental problem. This type of game, unfortunately, if, due to its dynamics, it contributes to nurturing that kind of personalities in some way, especially since a toxic interaction between healthy people and people with some type of personality disorder or other emotional factor and psychological. And we have not even taken into account the age difference between players, which is another key factor.

 

If in apb or another game and companies, I really want to control that, something has already been done about it and has never been like that, not even by the system of reporting to a user. Nor will it serve to block the districts according to the level of the player because then, in LATAN they would close the servers or emigrate to those in the EE.UU because almost nobody plays there anymore. If I want to play in a balanced way, I must stay bronze, to play with people who have a similar skill level to mine. But if I'm going to play with a person who seems to be a hacker, very good at aim, with a legendary weapon that I can't even last 3 seconds, he hardly sees me. This prevents me from progressing and will obviously be seen as a total imbalance of the game that insists on the toxic interaction of the community and worse, more and more attitudes like that.

We all want to progress, to advance in a game, it is annoying when we cannot do it because of the slow system of the game and its dynamics or worse, due to the toxic interaction between users.

Edited September 10, 2019 by FDLM

[Spy 152]

11 hours ago, supermariobrothe said:

Ram raiding and witnessing

 

While this is far from the worst mechanic in the game in terms of begin detrimental to player's mental health, it is probably one of the most poorly thought out mechanic in the game.
Crims can easily make cash by stealing cars and looting stores. Enforcers on the other hand, have no such easy ways to make money, they can turn in stolen cars or goods but they get peanuts for it, and even reaching a high enough prestige level for a multiplier is a challenge. Its a lot of pointless driving around and looking for things to turn in, so Enforcers are forced into the role of a parasite, abusing other players by witnessing them and taking their stash instead.
And its not all fun and games for crims either, while ram raiding is the best way to make the most cash, it is also the most stressful and monotonous activity you can do in the game, it is a lot of work and anything but fun, so the least thing you want is some asshat with osmaw legally griefing you. No one is doing ram raiding for the hopes of "fun times" in getting a mini mission with the cop that witnessed them.

All in all, this brings a lot of unnecessary grief and rewards abuse.

Ramaiding is working as intended. There's no such thing as free money in APB. Ramraiding is a bonus to get some extra money for both crim and enforcer with a risk factor. If it's such a big deal to crims getting witnessed and risking losing 'their' money then there's always the safe way to get money: do misions like the rest of the community does. Besides that, crims can easely collect their ramraiding money under the $2500 cap and lower the chance of getting witnessed. But as we all know, crims won't do that because it takes to much time, they just want free money fast without doing the extra mile. Not gonna happen...

[Fortune Runner 796]

4 hours ago, Solamente said:

thats not to say that apb is perfect and nothing should change, but framing your personal opinions on balance as some crusade for "mental health" is hilarious

reminds me of someone playing gta 5 then going on a crime spree because they wanted it in real life

tldr they were already nuts

[supermariobrothe 80]

8 hours ago, Solamente said:

holy crap what the hell, playing videogames gives people mental illnesses? sounds like you have a few of your own lmao

 

here's the bottom line: apb is a solely pvp game - in order for player A to win, player B has to lose, and yeah losing sucks because (almost) no one wants to fail, but blaming a video game for a personal inability to control oneself is a pretty crazy level of denial

 

thats not to say that apb is perfect and nothing should change, but framing your personal opinions on balance as some crusade for "mental health" is hilarious

 

Holy crap, someones been taking this post way too personally, sounds like you have a few insecurities with your own mental state

 

heres the bottom line, you completely missed the point of this post, well yeah DUH player A has to win and player B has to loose, and i dont mind loosing a match if it was due to my own mistakes and inabilities, i do not however like to loose when the opposition has glitched the objective, like lets say enforcers breaking store windows that crims are supposed to break, breaking the whole mission, or using other objects in the game to put the item into some place that is not posible to reach normally. im not sure which one of us is in denial here.

 

And this is not my personal opinion, its an observable fact that people that play this game for a long time develop a compulsive behavior where they will preemptively try to screw over their opposition in any way they can before their opposition can screws them over.

 

Quote

removing threat won't do anything to curb pvp toxicity because threat doesnt cause pvp toxicity, the elitism will just move on to other comparisons; "i have more total kills than you", "i have more weapon roles", "im in this big owner clan and you aren't", "i beat you x days ago and i have a screenshot", blah blah blah, all it boils down to is "i win and you lose so i'm better" and there's no way to get rid of that

None of these things are displayed above your head for everyone to see, and people would need to take the time to inspect every single player to know these things, people wont base their interactions with you around your icon color, they will need to get to know you as a person better first before they care enough to inspect your stats.

 

Quote

 

i also don't see why your gameplay preference, which i assume is hunkering down and camping one (possibly broken) spot, should mean more than their gameplay preference 

 

feels like you want to band aid the symptoms of larger problems instead of actually fixing the root cause - running is less effective when mods like blowtorch are balanced and carsurfer is more widely available, players abusing map spots merely requires the maps to be fixed

 

You assume too much, my preference is to carry the item in the middle of the road (doesnt have to be a road but an easy accessible location) and fight over it, grabbing it and letting it go, this is the most fun way to do this and im glad that there are still players that understand what good sportsman ship is and accept my middle of the road challenge, instead of grabbing it, punting it in a car and driving off with it.

 

And i have no idea why you feel like i want to bandaid the symptoms because i never said anything about fixing it, i was bringing up as an example of how broken this game is.

Its like, you are constructing some nonsensical straw man with this.

 

Quote

friendly reminder that enforcers cannot pay off their prestige level

They can kill a random pedestrian to drop their prestige, they can also go to the enforcer version of the money laundry which will take off 1 star

 

4 hours ago, Spy said:

Ramaiding is working as intended. There's no such thing as free money in APB. Ramraiding is a bonus to get some extra money for both crim and enforcer with a risk factor. If it's such a big deal to crims getting witnessed and risking losing 'their' money then there's always the safe way to get money: do misions like the rest of the community does. Besides that, crims can easely collect their ramraiding money under the $2500 cap and lower the chance of getting witnessed. But as we all know, crims won't do that because it takes to much time, they just want free money fast without doing the extra mile. Not gonna happen...

"I tried to calm them down and explain to them why they cant report them for simply playing the game how it was meant to be played"

 

Edited September 10, 2019 by supermariobrothe