Get rid of the threat system

[I-Reaper-I 46]

It's just not working lol.

Get rid of it and unify the instances, so players can actually get matched on instances without waiting for peak times and there is a little mix & match in there with inexperienced + experienced players in the same team.

[LordTimzor 7]

[I-Reaper-I 46]

2 minutes ago, LordTimzor said:

Why tho? Since June 2018, exactly how many times did the playerbase thrive with more than a thousand players? Ah yes... 0 times.

Has de-threating been adressed?... No
Are the gold instances thriving with players now?... No
Do we see an influx of players rolling in with RIOT added?... No
Has there been any considerable changes that introduced new players to this game?... No
Has the matchmaking become balanced to the point people enjoy a good fight between teams?... No

Give me a good enough reason, why not to get rid of the threat system entirely.

[LordTimzor 7]

20 minutes ago, I-Reaper-I said:

Give me a good enough reason

I've talked about this in my quality of life post

On 12/23/2019 at 11:18 AM, LordTimzor said:

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.

I, for one, don't enjoy being put in matches against maxed gold threats. You know, those kinds of people I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO BEAT.

There's a reason competitive games have matchmaking based on your skill level, so you can ACTUALLY ENJOY THE GAME.

And guess what? People left because they got fed up with playing against the same group of elitists. There's no fun in being buttfucked every single match.

The matchmaking, together with the current shit about the server migration and the fact that the anti-cheat is not state-of-the-art + dethreating is hard to monitor (supposedly) are all reasons to why the player base is so low.

 

Removing the threats will not do shit. People will hear that and think "well fuck me now I'm never going to play APB for sure"

All my friends quit APB for the same exact reasons. Most players did, with a few white-knight special snowflakes here and there.

 

And okay, let's say I'm wrong.  How do you propse we fix matchmaking without threats?

What would you implement to make matchmaking fair and give everyone a fair chance at playing against equally skilled players and actually enjoying the game?

[I-Reaper-I 46]

19 minutes ago, LordTimzor said:

I've talked about this in my quality of life post

I, for one, don't enjoy being put in matches against maxed gold threats. You know, those kinds of people I WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO BEAT.

There's a reason competitive games have matchmaking based on your skill level, so you can ACTUALLY ENJOY THE GAME.

And guess what? People left because they got fed up with playing against the same group of elitists. There's no fun in being buttfucked every single match.

The matchmaking, together with the current shit about the server migration and the fact that the anti-cheat is not state-of-the-art + dethreating is hard to monitor (supposedly) are all reasons to why the player base is so low.

 

Removing the threats will not do shit. People will hear that and think "well fuck me now I'm never going to play APB for sure"

All my friends quit APB for the same exact reasons. Most players did, with a few white-knight special snowflakes here and there.

 

And okay, let's say I'm wrong.  How do you propse we fix matchmaking without threats?

What would you implement to make matchmaking fair and give everyone a fair chance at playing against equally skilled players and actually enjoying the game?

Remove threat system altogether and base the matchmaking on reputation level.

You won't be able to get rid of smurfs anyway, because that exists in literally every competitive game and it's an issue that cannot be tackled. People will open numerous new accounts just to start from scratch but with the experience already in their hands.

Once you remove threat from the scoreboard so you cannot see what rank the current player is, you will give yourself the benefit of the doubt by not knowing how good the opposing player is, making you think "I might or might not have a chance". It's not going to be the usual "oh frick he is a gold, I'm so done".

Currently the threat system is obsolete, useless and creates unnecessary segregation among the players. Why am I saying that? Because elitist golds deliberately reduce their threat to silver and bronze to be able to jump on the more lively instances and steam-roll players with the actually less experience. I saw numerous bronzes and silvers play like veteran golds, trust me, the threat system showing changes nothing, it simply adds unnecessary segregation to instances and results in a more broken matchmaking system.

EDIT: De-threating is massively easy by the way, all you have to do, regardless of winning or losing a match, is to be on the lower 50% of your team's scoreboard with 100 points at least (equal of 1 kill) so you still qualify as having taken part of the mission. Around 10 matches like this and your gold threat reduces to silver. Another 10 and you are reduced to bronze.

I tested this myself, it takes no effort, can be done within 2 hours and this is why the current threat system and matchmaking is doing more harm than good to the game.

Edited December 31, 2019 by I-Reaper-I

[PraiseTheSun 48]

Guess it could be done if you count k/d and w/l together and this gives you a certain rank point. Now if it matches you up against people who are around your rank level.

If it would searches from narrow to wide (in case of few people online) and it would matches you against someone with a high rank it should prioritize a high rank once you call for back-up. Visa-versa of course. 

And maybe prioritize other players before selectings a premade team. 

[I-Reaper-I 46]

9 minutes ago, PraiseTheSun said:

Guess it could be done if you count k/d and w/l together and this gives you a certain rank point. Now if it matches you up against people who are around your rank level.

If it would searches from narrow to wide (in case of few people online) and it would matches you against someone with a high rank it should prioritize a high rank once you call for back-up. Visa-versa of course. 

And maybe prioritize other players before selectings a premade team. 

500 players during peak time, 250 on Jericho. I'm sorry but it is simply just not possible, because during a gaming session you end up seeing the same player about 60% of the time, probably even more.

EDIT: 70% of these players spend their time on social districts, so you play against 200 players at best.

Remove threat system, re-implement a revised threat system once the game has been promoted and balanced enough that around 5000 players will be active on the game.

I suggest a timed event with rewards for downloading the game and logging 30 hours of gameplay on it to earn 3000 G1 credits, 30 days of free premium and a 30 day lease of an ARMAS weapon of your choice.

GIVE. PEOPLE. INCENTIVE. TO. RETURN. OR. TO. START. PLAYING. THIS. GAME.

Edited December 31, 2019 by I-Reaper-I

[LordTimzor 7]

So we're kind of stuck in a negative loop. We can't properly fix it because there are not enough players and nobody joins/returns because nothing has been fixed.

37 minutes ago, I-Reaper-I said:

Remove threat system altogether and base the matchmaking on reputation level

Reputation as in rank? If I would ever reach max rank it would just mean that I've played a lot of missions. Yet I'm still a mediocre player.

If you're talking about a threat system rework.. It will basicly just end up the same, but under a different name. You're still rated on your performance and you could still underperform and get dropped.

So according to that logic there's no way of fixing this? 

Edited December 31, 2019 by LordTimzor
Double statement

[PraiseTheSun 48]

1 hour ago, I-Reaper-I said:

500 players during peak time, 250 on Jericho. I'm sorry but it is simply just not possible, because during a gaming session you end up seeing the same player about 60% of the time, probably even more.

EDIT: 70% of these players spend their time on social districts, so you play against 200 players at best.

Remove threat system, re-implement a revised threat system once the game has been promoted and balanced enough that around 5000 players will be active on the game.

I suggest a timed event with rewards for downloading the game and logging 30 hours of gameplay on it to earn 3000 G1 credits, 30 days of free premium and a 30 day lease of an ARMAS weapon of your choice.

GIVE. PEOPLE. INCENTIVE. TO. RETURN. OR. TO. START. PLAYING. THIS. GAME.

Even with a low population the matchmaking could be a lot better if it takes more things in account and prioritize different groups above other groups.

Like if you call for back-up it doesn't spawn a team of 2 gold players, but instead prioritize other groups first during a certain duration before inviting that group.

Search from narrow to wide instead of just adding whatever pressed 'K'. 

Average % of k/d and w/l which gives you a number would also filter out low gold and high gold. 

"you'll fight the same players" you'll do that anyway. I prefer to fight the same around my skill level over unfair matches.

Edited December 31, 2019 by PraiseTheSun

[I-Reaper-I 46]

4 minutes ago, PraiseTheSun said:

Even with a low population the matchmaking could be a lot better if it takes more things in account and prioritize different groups above other groups.

Like if you call for back-up it doesn't spawn a team of 2 gold players, but instead prioritize other groups first during a certain duration before inviting that group.

Search from narrow to wide instead of just adding whatever pressed 'K'. 

Average % of k/d and w/l which gives you a number would also filter out low gold and high gold. 

"you'll fight the same players" you'll do that anyway. I prefer to fight the same around my skill level over unfair matches.

Don't forget that even tho there are 80 players on an instance, usually half of them are AFK or just messing around in the district they aren't actually readied up for missions. For player diversity and equal matches you need instances to be doubled and you need more players to have different outcomes for each match.

Edited December 31, 2019 by I-Reaper-I

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

6 hours ago, I-Reaper-I said:

500 players during peak time, 250 on Jericho. I'm sorry but it is simply just not possible, because during a gaming session you end up seeing the same player about 60% of the time, probably even more.

EDIT: 70% of these players spend their time on social districts, so you play against 200 players at best.

Remove threat system, re-implement a revised threat system once the game has been promoted and balanced enough that around 5000 players will be active on the game.

I suggest a timed event with rewards for downloading the game and logging 30 hours of gameplay on it to earn 3000 G1 credits, 30 days of free premium and a 30 day lease of an ARMAS weapon of your choice.

GIVE. PEOPLE. INCENTIVE. TO. RETURN. OR. TO. START. PLAYING. THIS. GAME.

You are attributing the cause of APB's loss of population to be the threat system. 

 

No it is just age. 99.9% of games grow old, lose population regardless of changes/quality, and eventually die.

 

APB will never reach 5000 people ever again. That sucks sure, but it is the hard truth.

[I-Reaper-I 46]

6 minutes ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

You are attributing the cause of APB's loss of population to be the threat system. 

 

No it is just age. 99.9% of games grow old, lose population regardless of changes/quality, and eventually die.

 

APB will never reach 5000 people ever again. That sucks sure, but it is the hard truth.

While I agree and it's completely true, look at some of the notable examples, World of Warcraft, Star Wars the Old Republic, Runescape, Neverwinter, etc etc... All these games have consistently kept to something that this game has not done. Regular content updates, expansions and listening to community feedback.

APB Reloaded is a one-of-a-kind MMO game with an also one-of-a-kind customization feature and it could have become very popular, lest the former developers made the right choices and put effort into bringing new content to the game rather than reskins and cosmetics.

The engine upgrade and many more content releases and fixes afterwards could bring back the game, but LO needs to implement huge and drastic changes for this to happen, without proper funds and a community to support them, it is very unlikely this will ever happen in the foreseeable future.

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

Just now, I-Reaper-I said:

While I agree and it's completely true, look at some of the notable examples, World of Warcraft, Star Wars the Old Republic, Runescape, Neverwinter, etc etc... All these games have consistently kept to something that this game has not done. Regular content updates, expansions and listening to community feedback.

APB Reloaded is a one-of-a-kind MMO game with an also one-of-a-kind customization feature and it could have become very popular, lest the former developers made the right choices and put effort into bringing new content to the game rather than reskins and cosmetics.

The engine upgrade and many more content releases and fixes afterwards could bring back the game, but LO needs to implement huge and drastic changes for this to happen, without proper funds and a community to support them, it is very unlikely this will ever happen in the foreseeable future.

Why do you think I said 99%. These games are the outliers. They are the 1% exception to the rule. The majority of games don't even make it out of the gates and any that actually do usually die soon after. Most of the time this is regardless of the quality of the game or whatever support it is receiving. It is a miracle that APB has even gone on for this long.

[I-Reaper-I 46]

2 minutes ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

Why do you think I said 99%. These games are the outliers. They are the 1% exception to the rule. The majority of games don't even make it out of the gates and any that actually do usually die soon after. Most of the time this is regardless of the quality of the game or whatever support it is receiving. It is a miracle that APB has even gone on for this long.

As much as I want to see this game become popular again and have a booming playerbase, unfortunately I have to agree that this is not far from the truth.

I just hope LO will get the EU done soon and maybe... JUST MAYBE... revive the game through some miracle.

[postalgril 130]