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

[vsb 6174]

1 hour ago, supermariobrothe said:

im not sure which one of us is in denial here.

9 hours ago, Solamente said:

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

i don't think its me

 

 

1 hour ago, supermariobrothe said:

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.

after playing apb for almost 10 years i dont feel any need to screw my opp over (other than by winning i guess), most veterans (at least the ones i know) realized a long time ago its not worth it to be so plugged into the game

 

 

1 hour ago, supermariobrothe said:

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.

even if removing threat would somehow lower elitism (spoiler: it won't), you'd still end up removing a huge reason for people to play

 

 

1 hour ago, supermariobrothe said:

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.

listing a random symptom instead of the actual causes led me to believe you were focused on the wrong thing, if thats not the case then my bad

 

 

1 hour ago, supermariobrothe said:

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

1 pedestrian =/= 1 player afaik, and being forced to waste time/attention running around killing civilians on a mission is still effectively punishing players for playing well

 

losing prestige at the money laundry requires a player to have dirty money, for an enforcer that means finding a stolen car or stolen items and turning them in - again, not a process ideal for the middle of a mission

 

 

[yood 345]

17 hours ago, supermariobrothe said:

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.

 

 

 

big post . but I will highlight what is a problem for me :

 

Death themes : the most annoying part of the game . there are a lot of variants of processing themes of murders . I'd prefer to be able to manually control-disable everyone .

 

The bounty system : the team leader must be able to remove any team member .let even after voting in team .

[supermariobrothe 80]

51 minutes ago, Solamente said:

i don't think its me 

Im not sure what you are quoting here or what you are even trying to say with this, also to respond to one of the people you quoted, i never said this game makes people into full blown sociopaths, i said it makes people develop symptom of it.

 

51 minutes ago, Solamente said:

after playing apb for almost 10 years i dont feel any need to screw my opp over (other than by winning i guess), most veterans (at least the ones i know) realized a long time ago its not worth it to be so plugged into the game

Well congratulations, you are in the same boat as me than, but people like us are the exception, not the norm.

 

51 minutes ago, Solamente said:

even if removing threat would somehow lower elitism (spoiler: it won't), you'd still end up removing a huge reason for people to play

Elitism is a symptom of a bigger problem that you are ignoring, also i never said anything about removing it, i said myself that i do not think it should be removed, rather made it harder to obtain gold, so that only the people at the very top could get it.

 

51 minutes ago, Solamente said:

1 pedestrian =/= 1 player afaik, and being forced to waste time/attention running around killing civilians on a mission is still effectively punishing players for playing well

 

losing prestige at the money laundry requires a player to have dirty money, for an enforcer that means finding a stolen car or stolen items and turning them in - again, not a process ideal for the middle of a mission

You are right, but its still something and not "no other way", and when you got all these tasty pedestrian snacks walking around pretty much everywhere, why not grab a few?

Edited September 10, 2019 by supermariobrothe

[vsb 6174]

8 minutes ago, supermariobrothe said:

Well congratulations, you are in the same boat as me than, but people like us are the exception, not the norm.

well yes but actually no

 

i meet way more average people than toxic people, whenever im online a majority of the people don't even interact beyond shooting each other

 

 

11 minutes ago, supermariobrothe said:

Elitism is a symptom of a bigger problem that you are ignoring

elitism is a symptom of pvp, its unavoidable as long as there's any tangible way for one player to prove theyre better than another

 

 

 

[CookiePuss 5382]

Just make ram raiding only available in districts with a minimum population of 10vs10. 

That way crims aren't getting free money, and enfs have ample opportunity to witness and make some cash themselves. 

 

There, EZ. 

[supermariobrothe 80]

44 minutes ago, Solamente said:

elitism is a symptom of pvp, its unavoidable as long as there's any tangible way for one player to prove theyre better than another

Ok but what i mean by it is that you are focusing on the elitism part and ignoring everything else that was said about it,

5 minutes ago, CookiePuss said:

Just make ram raiding only available in districts with a minimum population of 10vs10. 

That way crims aren't getting free money, and enfs have ample opportunity to witness and make some cash themselves. 

 

There, EZ. 

And also increase the rewards for both parties doing it to incentivize people to do it despite the risk, like, make crims get double or triple of what they normally would get by ram raiding without being witnessed so they would actually want to be witnessed, like a payday 2 style thing.

Edited September 10, 2019 by supermariobrothe

[vsb 6174]

2 minutes ago, supermariobrothe said:

Ok but what i mean by it is that you are focusing on the elitism part and ignoring everything else that was said about it,

enlighten me then

[supermariobrothe 80]

I did, 2 times already, just go back and reread it, just omit the word elitism.

[Salvick 248]

12 hours ago, Solamente said:

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 

Agreed.

 

But let me point this opinion I have, while the management of any game does not held any responsibility over online interactions between players I think this debate about mental health of online players could be helpful to bring some concerns that should lead any company to have at least some ethic values to assume part of the responsibility over social interactions in their games, because at the end, that's what lead any community to behave better or become toxic.

10 hours ago, FDLM said:

 

The bad losers, who never like to lose.

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

I'm totally okay with the type of game APB is, it is all about rivalry between factions, but that belongs to the fictional scenario that the game brings and rivalry is just between characters, as long as you can always remember that the other player is also a person like you looking to have fun no one should get angry when get beaten. Said this, no one likes to lose, but the bad losers are the ones who only wants to destroy other people's experience because they need to overcompensate frustration. These are the toxic ones I think you are referring to, and the reason why I always turn off district chat when I'm playing and put on ignore the whole opposite team until the mission ends.

 

 

1 hour ago, CookiePuss said:

Just make ram raiding only available in districts with a minimum population of 10vs10. 

That way crims aren't getting free money, and enfs have ample opportunity to witness and make some cash themselves. 

 

There, EZ. 

 

Something in that direction should work, or at least 4vs4 I'd say, but I'm totally okay with how ram raid works and the risk of getting caught is what gives the adrenaline that makes playing that game funnier than just PvE farming.

[Newbplay 16]

i cba to read everything but at the start 

22 hours ago, supermariobrothe said:

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

 

for me it is A

[supermariobrothe 80]

After reading everyone's responses i came to the realization that its a little bit of both A and B.

[Uru! 50]

there's a lot i could say about this topic from the perspective of a diagnosed bipolar person but as for this:

On 9/9/2019 at 12:39 PM, 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 think you would be incredibly hard-pressed to find absolutely any game with a ranking system where high rank players take low rank players seriously. in csgo, a global elite wouldn't take a silver I player seriously. an immortal in dota wouldn't take a herald seriously. a challenger in lol wouldn't take someone in bronze seriously, and so on.

 

in my experience however, the amount of volatility regarding "rank shaming" isn't as bad in other games, for one general reason: apb's threat system is flawed. ranking systems work great when there's a large enough pool of active players to judge, and apb tries to assist that by ranking absolutely everyone who plays, but ultimately there just aren't enough players to have accurate ranks. it creates a situation where the vast majority of "competent" players are gold, and aside from some edge cases like you mentioned, the divide between a random gold and a random silver could be massive in terms of capability.  i would go as far as to argue that the difference between a random bronze and a random silver could be less drastic, but this is speaking from the perspective of someone who in my entire playtime of apb has been gold.

 

i don't remember the actual threat spread, but iirc it was something like "the top 10-20% of players performance-wise are gold". if this were the case, there should be significantly less gold players in the game than what we see. this is likely a problem because threats have (to my recollection) never been reset, where other games reset their ranks seasonally, or at least have some method of deprecating inactive players' rankings. a good rank spread for games is generally thought to be a bell curve, and the actual competency of apb's playerbase may be similar, but the threat system really just boils down to "competent or not, with some people randomly bounced around".

[blockblack 91]

For those 2 car surfing OSMAWs you are probably talking about Volvo1965 and Krikkesmets, Right? Also I got first degree brain damage because these people, 2 OSMAWs on a car came to literally take everything, I had only 2k cash and had more than 110k cash stash and I mugged to reach 5 stars and go to laundry and literally they explode the hell out of me while I was 5 stars and just 3 meters away from the money laundry... and till this day I keep wishing they get banned...

[CookiePuss 5382]

Just now, blockblack said:

For those 2 car surfing OSMAWs you are probably talking about Volvo1965 and Krikkesmets, Right? Also I got first degree brain damage because these people, 2 OSMAWs on a car came to literally take everything, I had only 2k cash and had more than 110k cash stash and I mugged to reach 5 stars and go to laundry and literally they explode the hell out of me while I was 5 stars and just 3 meters away from the money laundry... and till this day I keep wishing they get banned...

That's literally how the game is supposed to be played. 

[blockblack 91]

Just now, CookiePuss said:

That's literally how the game is supposed to be played. 

No, This is how poor players get f*cked with no chance to even defend themselves, I literally couldn't do anything because they shot 2 rockets at me at once and they didn't witness me so I didn't have a chance to fight back...

[CookiePuss 5382]

38 minutes ago, blockblack said:

No, This is how poor players get f*cked with no chance to even defend themselves, I literally couldn't do anything because they shot 2 rockets at me at once and they didn't witness me so I didn't have a chance to fight back...

Literally how the game is played. 

You have nothing to complain about. 

[yood 345]

41 minutes ago, blockblack said:

For those 2 car surfing OSMAWs you are probably talking about Volvo1965 and Krikkesmets, Right? Also I got first degree brain damage because these people, 2 OSMAWs on a car came to literally take everything, I had only 2k cash and had more than 110k cash stash and I mugged to reach 5 stars and go to laundry and literally they explode the hell out of me while I was 5 stars and just 3 meters away from the money laundry... and till this day I keep wishing they get banned...

this way you can ban all players . in principle, I do not see a violation . when you are engaged in robberies you always have to consider that any enforcer can try to take away from you received  .  practice shows that OBIR easily defeats OSWAN . 

 

are you familiar with the term bait fishing ? production will not make you wait long . the main thing for your team members is not to give away their positions, intentions and participation before the conflict.

 

p.s. I recommend that you edit your comment by removing the names .

 

 

 

Edited September 11, 2019 by olo

[RCooper 182]

35 minutes ago, blockblack said:

No, This is how poor players get f*cked with no chance to even defend themselves, I literally couldn't do anything because they shot 2 rockets at me at once and they didn't witness me so I didn't have a chance to fight back...

Ramraiding is by far the most toxic and unfair thing i have ever seen in a game

 

[vsb 6174]

33 minutes ago, blockblack said:

No, This is how poor players get f*cked with no chance to even defend themselves, I literally couldn't do anything because they shot 2 rockets at me at once and they didn't witness me so I didn't have a chance to fight back...

if you were n5/p5 then you could have just shot them

 

regardless ramraiding isnt meant to be free money, ramraiding in an empty district is more of an exploit than people stealing your cash imo

 

 

8 hours ago, supermariobrothe said:

I did, 2 times already, just go back and reread it, just omit the word elitism.

a nap doesnt seem to have helped me

 

if toxicity is caused by elitism and elitism is caused by aspd, then we're at a bit of a roadblock because i disagree that apb is a tiny sociopath factory 

 

 

2 hours ago, Uru! said:

i don't remember the actual threat spread, but iirc it was something like "the top 10-20% of players performance-wise are gold". if this were the case, there should be significantly less gold players in the game than what we see. this is likely a problem because threats have (to my recollection) never been reset, where other games reset their ranks seasonally, or at least have some method of deprecating inactive players' rankings. a good rank spread for games is generally thought to be a bell curve, and the actual competency of apb's playerbase may be similar, but the threat system really just boils down to "competent or not, with some people randomly bounced around".

we've had 2 global threat resets, but iirc the last was in 2012 or early 2013

 

i'm definitely hoping that dynamic skill brackets are a part of the new ELO visual system orbit will introduce

[Fortune Runner 796]

4 hours ago, RCooper said:

Ramraiding is by far the most toxic and unfair thing i have ever seen in a game

 

uh what? its not that bad

Edited September 11, 2019 by Fortune Runner

[supermariobrothe 80]

8 hours ago, Uru! said:

there's a lot i could say about this topic from the perspective of a diagnosed bipolar person but as for this:

i think you would be incredibly hard-pressed to find absolutely any game with a ranking system where high rank players take low rank players seriously. in csgo, a global elite wouldn't take a silver I player seriously. an immortal in dota wouldn't take a herald seriously. a challenger in lol wouldn't take someone in bronze seriously, and so on.

 

in my experience however, the amount of volatility regarding "rank shaming" isn't as bad in other games, for one general reason: apb's threat system is flawed. ranking systems work great when there's a large enough pool of active players to judge, and apb tries to assist that by ranking absolutely everyone who plays, but ultimately there just aren't enough players to have accurate ranks. it creates a situation where the vast majority of "competent" players are gold, and aside from some edge cases like you mentioned, the divide between a random gold and a random silver could be massive in terms of capability.  i would go as far as to argue that the difference between a random bronze and a random silver could be less drastic, but this is speaking from the perspective of someone who in my entire playtime of apb has been gold.

 

i don't remember the actual threat spread, but iirc it was something like "the top 10-20% of players performance-wise are gold". if this were the case, there should be significantly less gold players in the game than what we see. this is likely a problem because threats have (to my recollection) never been reset, where other games reset their ranks seasonally, or at least have some method of deprecating inactive players' rankings. a good rank spread for games is generally thought to be a bell curve, and the actual competency of apb's playerbase may be similar, but the threat system really just boils down to "competent or not, with some people randomly bounced around".

Does SC:GO mix golds up with bronze players? and dont they have ranked play and casual play? serious business hardstands do ranked play and people who just wanna chill and have so fun play casual?

Also no otehr game does it the way APB does as far as i know, the whole virtual world thing with social hang out spaces where players can see each other face to face and interact, the only game i can think of that comes close to what APB is doing is splatoon, which do not display anything above people's head's and call of duty WW2 which does show player's prestige level above their head but it does not show how good they are at the game above their head, people need to walk up to someone and personally inspect their stats.

 

 

7 hours ago, blockblack said:

For those 2 car surfing OSMAWs you are probably talking about Volvo1965 and Krikkesmets, Right? Also I got first degree brain damage because these people, 2 OSMAWs on a car came to literally take everything, I had only 2k cash and had more than 110k cash stash and I mugged to reach 5 stars and go to laundry and literally they explode the hell out of me while I was 5 stars and just 3 meters away from the money laundry... and till this day I keep wishing they get banned...

No it wasnt them, some other 2 douche bags whos names i wont mention cuz name and shame.

 

Also, put on a flack jacket next time if you can get one.

 

6 hours ago, Solamente said:

a nap doesnt seem to have helped me

 

if toxicity is caused by elitism and elitism is caused by aspd, then we're at a bit of a roadblock because i disagree that apb is a tiny sociopath factory 

 

Well long story short, it does not help to curb toxicity in the game when players are forced to walk around with the word looser written on their foreheads.

Edited September 11, 2019 by supermariobrothe

[Queen of Love 453]

1. add some enforcer extra activity including AI civilian (like speed limit ,drunk drive control)
2. remove the cash reward for enforcer for witnessing, but convert it in EXP reward.

this could solve a lot of toxicity.

for an enfo in a 20/20 district is bad wait 30m for have a mission, due to crime robbery around city.

this automatic means enfos will hunt every van with a crime inside. maybe also with unwanted trolling  just for hunt potential witnessing.

[CookiePuss 5382]

10 hours ago, Fortune Runner said:

uh what? its not that bad

With the ability to ramraid in unpopulated districts, rampant inflation was added to the in game economy. 

It's currently a nearly unchecked method of printing money. 

[Salvick 248]

15 hours ago, Uru! said:

...this is likely a problem because threats have (to my recollection) never been reset, where other games reset their ranks seasonally, or at least have some method of deprecating inactive players' rankings. a good rank spread for games is generally thought to be a bell curve, and the actual competency of apb's playerbase may be similar, but the threat system really just boils down to "competent or not, with some people randomly bounced around".

 

This is what I think too, or maybe something like a league system that is restarted every month while keeping earned ranks through seasons so it lets inactive and low perform ones fall off in the ladders while making average/high ranks go through a qualification process to match theirs skills with the renewed pool every time. And thank you for sharing your personal experience though.

 

 

14 hours ago, blockblack said:

For those 2 car surfing OSMAWs you are probably talking about Volvo1965 and Krikkesmets, Right? Also I got first degree brain damage because these people, 2 OSMAWs on a car came to literally take everything, I had only 2k cash and had more than 110k cash stash and I mugged to reach 5 stars and go to laundry and literally they explode the hell out of me while I was 5 stars and just 3 meters away from the money laundry... and till this day I keep wishing they get banned...

 

Going alone with such amount...that's your whole fault if you take that risk, I suggest you to get some friends next time.

 

This is how we do it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[CookiePuss 5382]

Just now, Salvick said:

 

 

This is how we do it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nice.