Biweekly Poll

[Weeb TheEpicGuyV2 269]

As this will be the last biweekly poll for indefinite, I'll end things on a simple question: was this year a good year for APB?

 

The best way for LO to make changes that will be accepted is to voice our opinions in an easy analysable manner, so let's put our initial opinions out in the open for them

 

Thank you all who participated in these polls and happy holidays to everyone

 

[HighSociety 148]

No... like every year without engine upgrade

[GhosT 1301]

I'm on the fence.. LO is definitely doing their best, but then again, nothing important has been changed this year.

[shft 74]

Overall game performance, decreased ever since LO took over both server wise as well as game wise. Other than that, I feel like they're still completely clueless to the weapon balance, mostly due to lack of gameplay experience. I don't think there has been a single weapon balance change that was made for the better apart from the fixing of the Yukon. The shotgun change was hands down one of the worst changes that's been made to the game along with the HVR change. Honestly, what they should do is make a group similar to the SPCT but with actual good players to help them with balancing, not sure how many times I'm going to have to repeat this but it's honestly really needed based on the what we've seen so far. What was the point in fixing the Yukon when the first thing you do is release the Showstopper which arguably is even stronger, than Yukon previously was.

 

I think what they should've done instead of trying to overcomplicate very minor tweaks such as the shotgun / HVR / mod changes now this first period before the engine is released is focused on bug fixes and obvious mission balancing issues such as 1v1 / 2v2 VIP, both teams not having VIP, all items not spawning at once on Creme De La Crime and changing out heavy objectives for medium items. Temporarily disabling almost certain win missions such as Anti Social Networking and getting rid of the current P/N5 system.

 

If simpler changes like these would've been to get rid of some of the frustrations in playing this game I feel like it would've maintained players better instead of in the current state where players return only to realize there are even more broken things now such as the radar tower, spotter, mission objectives disappearing, desyncing being even more common than before.

[Guest]

There are so many points and thigns that LO didn't changed or even touched, so i will say no, agree with all others above me, while im seeing effort in making new things and other stuff, i wish they to complete this engine upgrade and start to advertise the game.

[Kakalaki 65]

no i think it was not a good year ... even tho LO tried to Change things, many things got worse

 

Positive Things for me: Tade System - More permanent guns for JT - Balancing Weapons

 

Negative Things for me: more People are dethreating - more gamecrashes with high end Computers - stuttering - Server Performance got worse - more lags - more bugs - always nerfing guns that People paid for because they are "op" best examples RFP9 fang, Yukon and probably in soon Showstopper - RIOT Mode is gone again

 

I'm not even participating in Events no more bc they are always the same. Yes i know they are working on the engine upgrade, but that's what we hear since years now. And so for we just got some screenshots, no gameplay of the new engine, just the same as we had on the other companies before. Would be nice if you gave us a number how many % you are finished with the new engine. You know the game is over 10years old now and still Looks 2009 like since we got Unreal 4.2 already. Could be so much better.

 

The RIOT Mode was a nice and refreshing Thing and i really liked it, but now it's gone again and doesnt seem to come back.

 

One Thing that has decreased in a positive way is the Population of cheaters. But i dont know it thats bc of LO and EAC or because most of them just got bored of cheating and trolling in an almost dead game.

 

I still got hope for the game to get great again, but im slowly taking Longer and longer breaks until i will not come back in one day. All because of promises that are made and cant be fulfilled. 

[Jilleroo 349]

LO is the greatest thing to happen to this degenerate game  - this alone is a good thing. If G1 was still in charge, instead of LO's communication and actual progress we'd have about 4 ARMAS sales and maybe a new sniper rifle or two.

 

If the Engine Update is, yet again, not released next year then it will be a worse year due to false hope.

[vsb 6174]

riot

[Blackace-RD 35]

5 hours ago, Solamente said:

riot

[Mitne 724]

4 hours ago, Solamente said:

riot

Thanks for reminding me.

Yeah it wasn't good year.

[TehBlizzy 23]

They learned how to use the tools to edit and make game modes, made a new weapon and learned how to edit weapons, made new clothes and symbols, learned how much of a pain the actual server hardware and systems are to maintain and modify when things broke, ran that decently fun puzzle website thing, etc... Matt has been on top of getting customer support down to a more reasonable response time compared to how G1 ever was, and tries to keep us up to date with the engine progress more than G1 ever did.

 

Was everything perfect? God no. Riot while interesting as a concept failed very hard, the Nekrova merge was painful for alot of people, server performance has been a mess (but is getting better imo), weapon balance has been very up and down on their changes.

 

In the end, while they may not have anything amazing and shiny you can go brag to your friends about to make them want to play APB, they've put alot of effort into the foundation for new and better things and hopefully it will be smooth sailing towards what we all want from the game. I think they did OK.

Edited November 19, 2019 by TehBlizzy

[Shui 225]

The year is not over yet..
December will change everything!

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

2014 was the last 'okay' year.

[Noob_Guardian 418]

14 hours ago, shhift said:

Overall game performance, decreased ever since LO took over both server wise as well as game wise. Other than that, I feel like they're still completely clueless to the weapon balance, mostly due to lack of gameplay experience. I don't think there has been a single weapon balance change that was made for the better apart from the fixing of the Yukon. The shotgun change was hands down one of the worst changes that's been made to the game along with the HVR change. Honestly, what they should do is make a group similar to the SPCT but with actual good players to help them with balancing, not sure how many times I'm going to have to repeat this but it's honestly really needed based on the what we've seen so far. What was the point in fixing the Yukon when the first thing you do is release the Showstopper which arguably is even stronger, than Yukon previously was.

 

I think what they should've done instead of trying to overcomplicate very minor tweaks such as the shotgun / HVR / mod changes now this first period before the engine is released is focused on bug fixes and obvious mission balancing issues such as 1v1 / 2v2 VIP, both teams not having VIP, all items not spawning at once on Creme De La Crime and changing out heavy objectives for medium items. Temporarily disabling almost certain win missions such as Anti Social Networking and getting rid of the current P/N5 system.

 

If simpler changes like these would've been to get rid of some of the frustrations in playing this game I feel like it would've maintained players better instead of in the current state where players return only to realize there are even more broken things now such as the radar tower, spotter, mission objectives disappearing, desyncing being even more common than before.

overall performance has been decreasing steadily over years. It got so bad that my old laptop could no longer play APB after playing fine for 2 years, each patch made it worse.

 

weapon balance is fine, shotguns are still an issue and looking at the ntec is also a good thing. They did the HVR because they didn't want to remove 3ps3 from the game, i agree its a bad hvr change, buuut that's what happens when you have mods break guns and have to find workarounds to fix it. (glances over at improved rifling)

 

showstopper isn't even op, sheesh

 

The mission rework is likely sometime after EU, heavy items aren't even an issue, its the turn in locations. Not only that but medium items still need to be unexploitable (bypass 3m/s movement speed via jump/drop exploit).

 

Nah, nothing could have kept those players, because players, especially new players want more enjoyable matchups, and let's be honest, constantly facing players who spawn hunt you, snipe you from spawn, and are consistently "better" than you isn't fun.

 

Radar has been broke since like, before LO, same with objectives, and desync. Most effort is going to EU, the community voted for it to be this way. Luckily LO has made it so that we get more content, albeit slowly even while the EU is being worked on.

[vsb 6174]

6 minutes ago, Noob_Guardian said:

Radar has been broke since like, before LO

orbit specifically broke radar tower, and they even claimed to have fixed it despite obviously not 

[Goldtiger 133]

This year was definitely not a good year. I initially looked to see what everyone else said, but it seems like people agreed with me so I stayed honest and put that it wasn't.

 

A couple of the great things about this year:

Trade System, JT Store Expansion, RFP Nerf, Yukon Nerf, YOLO Nade Nerf/Frag Nade "Buff", Additional Clothing Items (especially the contact-exclusives), and making everything on the store way cheaper and lowering the cost of G1C (this is a very underrated change and I have SO much respect for LO b/c of this decision. I also did really like the 2018 Halloween event (at least I think it was the Halloween event), where you have the 3 Teams trying to take control of the majority of the map, and then the center. It was a pretty interesting mode and I lowkey kinda miss it.

 

Lastly, this is a more personal and possibly "unpopular opinion" (hence why I separated it from the rest), but I really think they made a good decision reversing all cheating bans..after all, that's the only reason I'm back in this community. Being falsely banned in the past was ridiculous to me and I'm glad that Matt acknowledged that there were false bans and undid every cheating ban as a way to help falsely banned players.

 

A couple of the terrible things about this year:

Anti-Cheat Systems (more on this in a second), Shotgun Buff, Lack of Perc Nade nerf, adding the Showstopper, adding more Joker Boxes, Wasting their time with RIOT (more on this in a second), Performance (client-side and server-side), and so on. Also, a lot of the guns are still broken as hell (ntec for example) and the meta is still the same (camp/car-rush with nfas/any shotgun or sit back from afar with ntec/obeya/any sniper). And finally, the Engine Upgrade is the main thing that went terrible this year; it is not out yet...I shouldn't have to explain why I'm mentioning this.

 

As for the Anti-Cheat Systems, although I'm really happy that they decided to unban every player for cheating, I am very upset that they didn't replace FairFight with a proper anti-cheat system. There's numerous reason why: For one, it gives people the ability to say that FairFight was fine and that they shouldn't have done that (ignorant to the fact that it literally false-banned many people); for two, the cheaters fairfight would actually regularly justly ban are not getting banned consistently anymore; and for three, it only resulted in the population dying in the NA servers.

 

As for RIOT, I would've definitely preferred for them to spend their time on other projects. This could include weapon balance (which they've been insufferably slow about this year), events, or just improving the base game. I realize that you can't put the same people who designed RIOT on a project such as the Engine Upgrade, but that does not mean that they couldn't have spent their time working on more beneficiary things. I did really like the concept of RIOT, but it just wasn't what the game needed right now. With how broken the balance is, and with how dead the population is, it felt like the only reason they went through with it was possibly because they thought jumping onto the "Battle Royale Trend" would be good for the game...which it wasn't. Maybe that wasn't the reason; maybe there was a better reason behind RIOT. But I still feel like they made a huge mistake dedicating so much of their time to it.

 

~

 

So yes, we did get things that were great this year but the bad outweighed the good... Either things stayed broken to all end, or changes were made that didn't help or just straight up hurt the game. I am very happy that LO is running the game now, but I don't think APB will have a good year until the Engine Upgrade is out and things are being implemented/changed in a reasonable amount of time. Like honestly, we shouldn't have to wait numerous months for the guns like the RFP to be nerfed, there are placeholder things you can implement to keep it from ruining the game (such as decreasing its range), and then a more proper fix can come out in this amount of time.

 

Despite all this, I wish the best for LO and I will continue to support them throughout the life of this game though. ❤

Edited November 20, 2019 by Goldtiger

[Fortune Runner 796]

2 hours ago, Solamente said:

orbit specifically broke radar tower, and they even claimed to have fixed it despite obviously not 

i remember trouble with the radar tower before with G1 a year or two before Little Orbit.

do you remember anything? it might help point them how to fix it.

fix one thing break two....sigh

[CookiePuss 5382]

9 hours ago, Fortune Runner said:

~snip~

LO is aware Im sure. I think they are just having to sort of triage all the problems the game has in order to prioritize what needs doing first.

 

... just a guess tho

[Fortune Runner 796]

50 minutes ago, CookiePuss said:

LO is aware Im sure. I think they are just having to sort of triage all the problems the game has in order to prioritize what needs doing first.

 

... just a guess tho

probably but anyone can get distracted and forget an important detail.

we are only human.

I'm just thinking " just in case"

[Noob_Guardian 418]

18 hours ago, Solamente said:

orbit specifically broke radar tower, and they even claimed to have fixed it despite obviously not 

Pretty sure we had some bad radar tower glitches before LO as well, maybe its in my head but i'm sure it was glitched for some time under G1 as well. Because I used to use it until I realized it wasn't picking people up.

[ZoriaDunne 327]

I'm not sure anymore.