Timeframe on return of threated districts?

[Hexerin 1140]

Now that the EU datacenter is up and running (per the locked pinned thread), how much longer until we get a playable game environment? The itch for APB's gameplay is getting pretty intense lately, and other games I play are having content lulls...

[Fortune Runner 796]

i thought that they were not finished yet that there were more servers to setup?

did they finish that already with the rest of the servers?

[CookiePuss 5379]

Hex ready to run back to bronze districts because as he says, "silver districts are easy". 

[Tragia 12]

The problem with bringing back threated districts is NA players will no longer be able to play in Waterfront and be stuck on their contacts and the game will also not be playable at late/ early hours as we can barely get a 15-15 district at 5 AM EST or so on weekdays.

It sucks not being able to play a game anytime you want in 2020. Some people have weird hours or are from other countries and can only play at those times.

 

If you guys bring back threat segregation, I would suggest making it population based. If current playerbase total is over a certain amount, force segregation. Once the average hits under a certain number, remove it. This would make it possible to play at any hour of the day.

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

Should just leave them as is.

[SunnyMonroe 180]

1 hour ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

Should just leave them as is.

No! Im okay with open districts

But if there is any matchmaking it is worse then it ever was (atleast in the last years i played)

Beginners and bronzes has to face high skill golds and silvers/golds with very smart playstyle

Silvers where insulted cuz they die against golds

 

Thats not the way to keep that game up

 

Matchmaking needs to be fixed

 

Im okay with open districts, im fine with more ppl on the districts aslong they dont effect other players it can be 100/100 (ik thats a bit much to not effect others, just think bout the trafic)

 

But leave them like they are is not the answer

[Mitne 724]

I though I was right about open districts but like with every utopia it don't work.

Bring back threat servers. Open Conflict was empty for a reason it seems.

 

It would work with bigger population but... eh, times bygone. I'm so sad about this.

Edited January 18, 2020 by Mitne

[CookiePuss 5379]

5 hours ago, Tragia said:

The problem with bringing back threated districts is NA players will no longer be able to play in Waterfront and be stuck on their contacts and the game will also not be playable at late/ early hours as we can barely get a 15-15 district at 5 AM EST or so on weekdays.

It sucks not being able to play a game anytime you want in 2020. Some people have weird hours or are from other countries and can only play at those times.

Bold of you to assume this wouldn't quickly make things worse.

[DedGaem 146]

19 hours ago, Hexerin said:

Now that the EU datacenter is up and running (per the locked pinned thread), how much longer until we get a playable game environment?...

I griped loudest and longest against Threat Segregation when it first rolled out.  Now, some years later there's almost no population... and everyone is thrown to the wolves with an easily exploited and broken matchmaking system... as a consequence, sincerely talented Gold teams of try-too-fkin-hards + yeah exploiters and cheaters are sht stomping everyone... resulting in them being virtually the only population left... and a few, somewhat talented silvers, and desperate bronzes getting hard face-wrecked nearly every mission... as their population slowly disappears.

I don't have a solution to cancer that's been ignored for so long... Maybe bring back a Silver + Gold District.  Give some special titles or items for playing on Gold at least, might even be clan wars type of thing... doesn't have to be gifting OP weapons, just maybe special reskins with clan logos or titles.  Then the talented Try-harders can at least get recognition for their expertise, and championship matches would be worth streaming... rather than creaming the crap out of bronzes who get killed 42x and never come back...

And for the slower, older, noobier crowd... deserve a more chill, slower paced District all their own... with a different scoring system, a better tutorial. There wouldn't be skilled competitions or special items or anything, BUT... some cool, light-hearted, fun events once a month would bring people back, at least a few.  The more chill crowd wouldn't worry about getting totaly hard-fk-wrecked every mission,,, and could invite new guys to come try the game.  The minute someone turns gold, skill-wise they should get KICKED out of district.  SURE, folks will dethreat to come back, and that should be OK... so long as their PLAY is lower-slower paced to match.  NO ONE should dethreat, turn gold, then WTF-STOMP the noobier district for hours and hours and hours until all the noobs perma rage-quit.  Insta-KICK, let them dethreat playing on the REAL Gold server... and then they can come back.

It's not a perfect solution, but... maybe LO could fine-tune the scoring and match-making, so that everyone could REASONABLY play together... and not be exploited all to hell with stacked Gold teams with Ursus and Volcano and Ogres ripping the faces off... some sad bronze who got an AFK team mate (fake alt) trainee account... probably belonging to some dweeb on the Gold team for the LULZ so they could stream how gawd damn hard they could rip this guy apart.

Edited January 18, 2020 by Hey!

[PatrickBatemann 7]

Back in the G1 days when I was vouching for threat segregation, I was almost skinned alive for such a stupid idea, but that of course was when you would find 2 full silver districts of both Financial and Waterfront.

 

My point is that gold districts were empty even then so all golds were in silver, silvers in bronze but where should the bronze go? What's the point of even having those "skill groups" if you will, if you don't use them and make people play against equals? I have brought up to 5 friends to APB over the years and I have seen even friends quitting forever after maybe 2-3h in game and this is something that this game can't afford at this time.

 

One other point I'd want to make is that imo the skill difference between a gold and a "good gold" is too big - it is too easy to become gold. I have played for years but never enough in one go to become really good. I am fluctuating between silver and gold all the time but I admit without shame that I get absolutely molested by some golds and usually drop to silver again after a few games as gold threat. So perhaps the bar to becoming a gold should be raised a bit too.

[CookiePuss 5379]

4 minutes ago, PatrickBatemann said:

One other point I'd want to make is that imo the skill difference between a gold and a "good gold" is too big - it is too easy to become gold. I have played for years but never enough in one go to become really good. I am fluctuating between silver and gold all the time but I admit without shame that I get absolutely molested by some golds and usually drop to silver again after a few games as gold threat. So perhaps the bar to becoming a gold should be raised a bit too.

the color has nothing to do with matchmaking

[PatrickBatemann 7]

2 minutes ago, CookiePuss said:

the color has nothing to do with matchmaking

Care to explain? When a silver is dispatched against a bronze one, the bronze one can call backup to even the stakes. How's it not related to matchmaking?

[Acornie 490]

I think this is all the info we gonna get for now, m8

[CookiePuss 5379]

5 minutes ago, PatrickBatemann said:

Care to explain? When a silver is dispatched against a bronze one, the bronze one can call backup to even the stakes. How's it not related to matchmaking?

To use terms most people are familiar with, your "threat" is akin to your "elo"... a value. Its this underlying value that is used for matchmaking, where colors decide to change is completely arbitrary. You could go from the 10 levels of threat per color we have now to 100, or add 5 more color classes, but none of that would change your underlying elo meaning it would have no effect on matchmaking or your in game experience.

 

 

Edited January 18, 2020 by CookiePuss

[illgot 379]

19 hours ago, Tragia said:

The problem with bringing back threated districts is NA players will no longer be able to play in Waterfront and be stuck on their contacts and the game will also not be playable at late/ early hours as we can barely get a 15-15 district at 5 AM EST or so on weekdays.

It sucks not being able to play a game anytime you want in 2020. Some people have weird hours or are from other countries and can only play at those times.

 

If you guys bring back threat segregation, I would suggest making it population based. If current playerbase total is over a certain amount, force segregation. Once the average hits under a certain number, remove it. This would make it possible to play at any hour of the day.

 

that's why I never bother to win missions anymore.  I'll make a few kills, finish daily missions but screw winning missions.  Being gold just locks you out of a mission district for dailies.

 

NA does not have the population for segregated districts no matter how you tweek matchmaking. 

Edited January 19, 2020 by illgot

[Fortune Runner 796]

dump truck wars..... now hat would be a fun mission to do

 

Edit : posts were changed about how getting districts up wouldn't bring in new players or old ones , so my post wouldn't make much sense.

whomever put the confused , thanks or i wouldnt of known.

witchqueen did a dump truck war on one of the videos on youtube it looked fun

Edited January 20, 2020 by Fortune Runner

[KnifuWaifu 499]

On 1/19/2020 at 8:06 AM, Hey! said:

 and a few, somewhat talented silvers,

 

I wouldn't use the word "talented" but I agree with the sentiment. 

[Donjae 52]

bring back the old system ! 

[Hexerin 1140]

1 hour ago, Donjae said:

bring back the old system !

We're still using that system, just with two differences:

• The ten levels are now hidden, you only see what bracket you're in.
• They added green as a fourth bracket, intended as a safety cushion for fresh players.

What we really need:

• Green threat removed. It doesn't serve its intended purpose, and never has.
• The scale shifted back down so that gold threat doesn't take up like 50% of the curve. Gold should ideally only be the top 15-20% of players.
• Threat levels globally reset across all accounts on a set schedule.

To go even further, three threated instances of both districts:

• Gold, available to golds and silvers. Gold threat players get unique/special rewards here. Incentivizes all players to rank up. All players have significantly increased chance for end-of-mission rewards, and get increased quantities on ones that grant a quantity.
• Silver, available to all. Golds get penalized with halved cash/standing gains, as well as significantly reduced chance to obtain end-of-mission rewards and significantly reduced quantity for ones that grant a quantity. This is to incentivize golds to stay out.
• Bronze, available only to bronzes. Just a normal district for bronzes to escape to and play normally. No modifiers or whatever.

Edited January 20, 2020 by Hexerin

[ColorBauss 74]

48 minutes ago, Hexerin said:

 

• Silver, available to all. Golds get penalized with halved cash/standing gains, as well as significantly reduced chance to obtain end-of-mission rewards and significantly reduced quantity for ones that grant a quantity. This is to incentivize golds to stay out.

Wouldn't work. There's plenty of old players that have nothing to gain and only play for the fun of it, like myself. Consequently, most of the players that dethreat and go to bronze districts are players like this. 

If there isn't a strict "no golds can enter" it wont work, no matter what the penalty is.

[Lord Cashpoint 269]

1 hour ago, Hexerin said:

Silver, available to all. Golds get penalized with halved cash/standing gains, as well as significantly reduced chance to obtain end-of-mission rewards and significantly reduced quantity for ones that grant a quantity. This is to incentivize golds to stay out.

 

I don't remember this being a particularly effective deterrent when we had it initially. The issue always was as gold was such a broadchurch when it came to skill level, golds in general never wanted to play in a district solely populated by golds.

 

I don't think matchmaking is ever going to work as long as there is such low population in the game, which is split into two factions who can only face each other, and then further split by being restricted to the district they're in.

[PotatoeGirl 220]

Stuff like this should never happen, yet every second match I get is like that. 

It is funny how huge of a skill gap there is between silver and gold. The one time I got to play against full silver team I just mow them down. They don't even react on shooting them from behind while the golds knows exactly where you are all the time and you can't even see them coming. 

 

Edited January 20, 2020 by HawtGirl

[CookiePuss 5379]

2 hours ago, Hexerin said:

The scale shifted back down so that gold threat doesn't take up like 50% of the curve. Gold should ideally only be the top 15-20% of players.

Gold does not take up most of the curve, silver does.

Full pop matchmaking is the only way to get better matches. Imagine playing any other PvP game, but no matter what the game can only find you opponents from a pool of max 40 players.

Changing the point at which silver turns to gold will have no effect on matchmaking. You are still just as good as you were before, and so is your opp. You will still be fighting the same players. The only real difference would be a little extra ego stroking for players still gold after the change.

[PotatoeGirl 220]

18 minutes ago, CookiePuss said:

Gold does not take up most of the curve, silver does.

Are you sure? Is there a place where to see this information? Right now it seems everyone and their grandmother is gold (which seems logical considering they get matched with easier opposition than just gold).

Also gold seems to lean towards premade groups more often that other ranks so the game has to fill up with anything if they are waiting for too long.

Increasing the server cap back to 100 would help slightly too. 

 

[CookiePuss 5379]

1 minute ago, HawtGirl said:

Are you sure? Is there a place where to see this information?

You can ask staff. (that's what I did)

 

Think of it this way, APEX has tens of millions of players. Any time you hop on there are at least thousands of players for matchmaking to choose from.

... I still get bad matchmaking at times in APEX.

APB is trying to do this with 40 people (50 in your example).