Quality of life update (+ more)

[LordTimzor 7]

Instead of complaining about stuff like everyone else I thought I'd just drop some suggestions here.

 

-A threat level above gold

 

"GiT gUD sCRuB" "L0L UNiNstAll" shut up.

 You know those pesky max-ranked, gold-threat, die-hard players? Wether they cheat or not there is just no way of beating them.

 Now I know I'm a mediocre, R133 silver threat player at the moment (see quoted sentences above).

 And being rusty after a break of about a year jumping in with no threat locked districts due to the server migration certainly doesn't help either.

 But let's say there would be a Platinum threat. For those who have never tasted defeat. Especially with the plans for the globalized disctricts instead of split NA/EU servers.

 Let the elite fight amongst eachother. Not against people like me and certainly not against new players.

 

-A change to District chat

 

"WhUT?"

 This title is a little vague so let me explain. Primarily because of the russians but there are people all over the world who pull this shit so I'm not just hating on them okay.

 I personally think people should only speak english in the District chat. Now a little comment in one's own language here and there will always happen, and that's perfectly fine.

 But if you're gonna have full-blown conversations with someone in a global channel, there should be some sort of encouragement to take it somewhere else.

 E.g. join a group, a clan or take it to discord/teamspeak/skype or whatever. With the steam overlay you can make group chats and chat there as well.

 

 Now I understand this is more of a personal thing because it's blood-boilingly annoying to me, especially if you're having an argument with someone and they suddenly switch to cyrillic

 AND YOU CAN'T FUCKING RESPOND TO IT (reeee). And I'm not saying some algorithm should be wielding the ban hammer for let's say 5 minute chat-bans (allthough it would be effective)

 Let a message pop up on their screen stating that the chat detected they're using their own language too much in a global chat and let it encourage them to search for alternative options.

 

-Gender change

 

 Aww shit here we go again,

 "YoU SHoULdVE pICkeD RiGHt aT THe StARt" "DeAL WiTH wHAt YOu CHosE" "JuST StaRT OvER" shut up.

 I don't personally care about a gender change for I like my main character to look like myself (and since I only actively play 1 char I have no need to create waifu material as second char)

 But I can see why a LOT of people would like to see this. Now I've seen arguments against this before, main point being the unlocked clothing since you can't convert that.

 That does not seem to matter to me for why there can't be a gender change. That's just a loss you have to be willing to take. As you change the unlocks from contacts change for you as well.

 Most Armas gear already has a opposite gender equivalent which should convert just fine (right?). Otherwise just re-send the clothing items and let them claim it as the opposite gender.

 So you can just delete the clothing that don't fit on the gender you're changing to and start customizing the 'newly unlocked' clothing.

 Those who will buy this gender change most definitely have the in-game funds to support their new wardrobe anyway.

 

-Stop punishing me for running an RTX card

 

 I will not use 3rd party software to be able to play a game. Even though it is allowed in this case. I just don't feel safe doing that.

 Does anyone have any idea on the progress of fixing this?

 

We already got the trading system which was long overdue and is just a top-notch addition and with the weapon balances happening APB is well on its way to become what it should've been from the start.

And just like everyone else I can't wait for the engine update, which should draw a lot of old players and hopefully a lot of new players to the game.

 

Now for some Armas stuffs

 

-Cisco audio kit, when?

 

-Vegas audio kit, when?

 

-Make the Rapier Mako and Kissaki kit cross-faction. These make no sense to be faction specific imo

 

Thanks for coming to my TED talk

 

Edit: A suggestion

Edit2: RTX complaint

Edited December 23, 2019 by LordTimzor
Added some stuff

[iReznov 2]

I definitely approve of adding 1 or even 2 new threat levels. I think it would bring back lots of players and take the game to another level in terms of being competitive. Many gold threat level players have a huge skill gap between each other, going from "fake golds" who just got out of silver luckily to anyone who beats these guys without even taking damage from them. This is a great idea, which could change the variety of the entire game and balance it after the chaos that the no threat segregation districts cause.

[PraiseTheSun 48]

Issue with more threat levels is the low player base. Now you'll have often 2 full districts and maybe one half full.. If you make more threat levels you'll have a bigger spread between servers and thus less people to play against. 

 

BUT I do have a suggestion myself:

 

-Keep the no threat segregation. "why?" servers are more full and often you'll have more variation in fights. 

HOWEVER.. In order to make this work; fix that matchmaking. Then no threat segregation should be fine.

 

-"but what about that good ol' gold on green?" make a proper working tutorial district. Where you keep the new people untill a certain level/skill level. Unless they go to the advanced tab of course. 

 

-ranked? I mean in most games ranked matches attract people. Like in many games max a group of 2 can join, so you wont get full pre-made teams. Get some different threat tiers.. To sort the so called "pro gold" and the "lucky silver player whom got gold by chance." (and visa versa for the other threats.) and get some rewards depending where you ranked at the end of the season.

Also, if you don't play matches you should lose your rank. 

 

[mtz 496]

58 minutes ago, LordTimzor said:

-A threat level above gold [...]

I see your point, but I can't 100% agree. Honestly, right now I would much rather see a redistribution of threat within the existing system, or a rework of it. Due to dethreaters, there is a massive skill gap between the average Silver and the average Gold. I think that adding one more step to the ladder at this point would only cause further divide and serve to spread the levels even further apart than they already are.

I'd love to see my threat level in a redistributed system. Something tells me that I would probably be a Silver!

 

1 hour ago, LordTimzor said:

-A change to District chat [...]

Not a bad idea, honestly. I used to play on this one Multi Theft Auto server once; even though it was international, there were distinct chat types/channels that you could chat in. You could use the Global channel to talk with everyone, but it was strictly English (with timeouts if you deliberately used other languages); you could use the Language channel which you opted into, and the server remembered your preference; you could also chat with players in your clan using the Clan channel in any language you mutually preferred.

The obvious downside of separate language channels is that you would probably have to have moderators who speak those languages, in order to prevent things from escalating.

 

1 hour ago, LordTimzor said:

-Gender change [...]

As far as I'm aware, the problem with this is that there is no back-end system that would allow for this type of switch to happen.

 

Clothing unlocks are just the tip of the iceberg. Male and female characters have completely different body shapes. There are customization options which only exist for one of the in-game sexes (the most obvious being Pelvic Width for female characters; Muscularity for male characters can change body/muscle shape, whereas the same setting for female characters only adjusts skin shading in certain places) — what is the game supposed to do with those options when porting a character from one gender to another? You're effectively asking the system to fill in a blank.

 

Back to the clothes themselves — unfortunately, most Armas gear is not all Armas gear. There will inevitably be situations where you cannot give the character the other gender's equivalent of a clothing item because it simply doesn't exist. It's not just an Armas-exclusive problem — the Long-sleeved Shirt is a completely different item depending on the character's gender.

Also, what about customization? The aforementioned Long-sleeved Shirt may have nicely aligned symbols if you're applying them to the Female variant, but the same symbols applied to the Male variant, even at the same angles, will not give you the same results. The only situation in which I could see this working is if all symbols were removed from the character's clothes... which is a problem in itself.

 

The foolproof way of handling this would be to pretty much make it so characters are completely wiped and have to be remade in terms of customization - but they keep their rank, items, weapons and all that. And at this point, why not just have them make a new character? The way I see it, low ranks give the incentive to play the game more.

 

1 hour ago, LordTimzor said:

-Cisco audio kit, when?

 

-Vegas audio kit, when?

 

-Make the Rapier Mako and Kissaki kit cross-faction. These make no sense to be faction specific imo

No complaints about the first two, personally. Audio kits could be a nifty addition.

The Mako and Kissaki kits, though, have some explicitly factioned things, don't they? I think the Enforcer kit has some on-board police laptops or something like that. Would be a tiny bit silly to give those to Crims. Then again, faction boundaries got destroyed with cross-faction content itself.

[LordTimzor 7]

40 minutes ago, PraiseTheSun said:

Issue with more threat levels is the low player base

Maybe it's because of those elites that people left?

 

21 minutes ago, MartinPL said:

I see your point, but I can't 100% agree [...]

Wasn't dethreating bannable? Thought I read that somewhere. I think if the top-tier threat is as difficult to get in to as to get out of most elites would be stuck in that pool for a while.

 

21 minutes ago, MartinPL said:

Not a bad idea, honestly [...]

Thanks for agreeing

 

21 minutes ago, MartinPL said:

As far as I'm aware

As I said, the loss of clothing is the loss you have to be willing to make. But about the back-end stuff? I don't know I'm not a developer. But I still think it would be a nice option to have.

 

21 minutes ago, MartinPL said:

I think the Enforcer kit has some on-board police laptops

I also own the Jericho and I can put a laptop in that too from the Phantom kit. Just remove the sirens and I got myself a nice looking Lambo rip-off from the kissaki kit.

Same for the mako, who says police can't drive in circuit-spec cars

 

Edit: unnecessary quotation marks 

Edited December 23, 2019 by LordTimzor

[mtz 496]

6 minutes ago, LordTimzor said:

Wasn't dethreating bannable? Thought I read that somewhere. I think if the top-tier threat is as difficult to get in to as to get out of most elites would be stuck in that pool for a while.

Dethreating very much is bannable. The problem lies with actually enforcing it. GMs have to tackle several issues that happen in the in-game community; some cases are bound to slip past moderation. We're all human after all. (Allegedly :^) )

 

My experience is that it's very easy to breach into Gold while doing pretty average. Keep in mind that dethreaters really lowered the bar for what the system considers poor performance, to the point where you practically have to go out of your way to be considered eligible for threat level demotion.

Edited December 23, 2019 by MartinPL
threat, not rank

[BaDante 4]

I agree with many things said here,

My personal points are Add a Platinum threat, Keep no threat segregation, AND, Never!... I mean ABSOLUTELY NEVER! Should a Bronce or lower player be put in a Match where a Gold players is present. NEVER. 

I as medium Gold Player myself can only agree that the Bronce/new Player/ etcetera... Will get nothing enjoyable out of it, he will only get killed over and over. Thats no fun, is it?

And the present Gold player will complain about the bronce being useless.

Just dont let Golds play with bronces(or  lower)

[LordTimzor 7]

6 minutes ago, BaDante said:

My personal points are Add a Platinum threat, Keep no threat segregation

As long as they also make it so high threats can't start missions against ram-raiding low threats I guess I'm fine with it.

Nothing is more annoying than fairly ram-raiding and being picked on by max rank gold threats because they have nothing better to do.

I understand it's part of the game but come on, let me at least have a chance. These 'busts' are unfair anyway, If you get killed first it's pretty much done for.

[BaDante 4]

Timzor, You can go safely ramraid if you have an enforcer buddy

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=349773232

[LordTimzor 7]

8 minutes ago, BaDante said:

if you have an enforcer buddy

Not only would I need to find friends for that, but that still does not solve the problem for new players.

I understand that enfs need to be able to earn money from doing this otherwise it would've just been a free pass for crims (wouldn't complain though)

But a gold threat should not be able to bust a bronze/green threat or a trainee. That's why I think threat locked districts are great because (looking past the dethreaters)

it makes a safe environment for new players to experience the game's basics. 

 

Also, to get back to the unfairness:

 

I mostly play it safe by making smaller amounts of money and laundering more often than farming lots of cash and handing it in at once.

This way when I do get busted I won't lose much money. Takes longer, yes, but especially with enfs who're just sniping you it's much safer.

Say I do get busted, if I DONT kill that player first, I'm pretty much done for, if I get killed first or especially if I get arrested there's no way I'm able to win my money back,

By the time I spawn that person collected my cash and is well on his/her way to their delivery point. Then I'd have to find a car and still drive to there.

It would be nice to see something change there too so we both have an equal chance at delivering the cash.

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

For the billionth time. Adding new threat colours (plat or whatever) does not actually do anything.

 

Stop suggesting it.

[LordTimzor 7]

3 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

For the billionth time. Adding new threat colours (plat or whatever) does not actually do anything.

Allright then, enlighten me. How do we make matchmaking more fair? How do we get the elites to fight eachother?

[LordTimzor 7]

On 12/23/2019 at 12:41 PM, MartinPL said:

I think the Enforcer kit has some on-board police laptops or something like that. Would be a tiny bit silly to give those to Crims.

I just realised something, I have an on-board laptop in my Jericho from (allthough it doesn't show anymore) I believe the Phantom kit.

So eh, Ey LO b0ss, gib kissaki kit pls.