The hell did you do to the bounty system

[DeadPixels 253]

On 2/6/2020 at 4:17 PM, Lign said:

Why should I be punished for being good?

If we're being honest, bad players are constantly punished for playing bad. 

[PotatoeGirl 220]

53 minutes ago, DeadPixels said:

If we're being honest, bad players are constantly punished for playing bad. 

I would even say more than it should. The game already has a very steep learning curve. 

[HighSociety 148]

On 2/6/2020 at 4:17 PM, Lign said:

Why should I be punished for being good?

Why should u call it "punished" and not "challenged" ?

 

On 2/7/2020 at 12:09 AM, VanilleKeks said:

Imagine if I have a decent score in CSGO and now there's a random chance that my bomb explodes on me when planting/defusing.

That actually sounds pretty good to me... they should add it to CSGO 

[VanilleKeks 737]

6 hours ago, Noob_Guardian said:

So competitive in fact that the Game's population is literally dead because of competitive mindset of high rank golds farming lowbies. Yes, that's sooo much worse than everyone being able to kill the actual problem.

 

High rank golds farming noobs aren't competitive players. They wouldn't be farming noobs if they had a competitive mindset because you WANT to play better players if you have that mindset. That same mindset helped me get to and stay within the Top 500 of the European Overwatch ladder. I wanted to play against the best, even if that meant getting stomped by semi-pros and pros countless times just to learn something.

 

I believe the reason that many new players quit (apart from de-threaters stomping them) is because they are the wrong type of player. The way APB was advertised has been attracting a lot of casuals, which then play against the competitive mindset and feel lost. You can see that most people are casuals because the difference in skill within tiers is insane. There's bound to be different tiers of players in any shooter but I have never seen a game with THIS much divide in between.

 

So what naturally happens over the time is that most of the more casual oriented players get filtered out and most of the competitive players stay. This results in any new players that aren't competitive in spirit getting matched against the competitive people who have spent a lot of time improving. To a large degree, this happens because of low pop and bad matchmaking. Sadly it is the devils circle we are stuck in until those things get overhauled.

 

Edit: Just to clarify I got nothing against casual players. In fact over the last two years I've been going at APB with a more casual approach because high skill competitive missions became rarer and rarer (because pop ans matchmaking).

Edited February 8, 2020 by VanilleKeks

[PotatoeGirl 220]

2 hours ago, HighSociety said:

That actually sounds pretty good to me... they should add it to CSGO 

Looks like they are all playing the wrong game if all that they want is isolated matches. CSGO already exists. 

[Salvick 248]

On 2/7/2020 at 9:03 AM, VanilleKeks said:

Marketing it as this cops and robbers MMO has been attracting the wrong kind of crowd. The crowd which doesn't like competitive shooters. While APB is certainly not ready for a competitive scene, it is competitive by nature because it is a PVP shooter. 

 

[...]

 

Punishing people for being good is NEVER a good idea.

 

I have to say that I agree with the way you put things but I still need to share my perspective here too, which is indeed different.

First of all we must stop calling it a "punishment", because that's a subjective experience of a feature that is not meant to penalize but to put some heat on a players that is consistently playing at an intense level and I think is meant to make the rush more intense indeed. I see how the bounty system in the current state of the game is messing up things more than adding fun, any experienced player getting matched against a mix of vets and newcomers are hitting N5/P5 often and it is messing up missions many times because there's a lack of consistency in teams around the map, I mean there are low skill and high skill players all mixed up in a same district aka fake golds/high rank silvers vs pros, dethreaters vs bronzies, etc.

But in my personal experience I pay attention to my heat level and whenever I'm about to turn on bounty I'm ready to shoot or take cover from nearby hostiles no matter their faction, indeed I get ready to kill everyone I can as it is its purpose and if I can screw someone's mission from outside I'll do it before they screw mine, but the odds are that anything can happens and I get over any frustration it could create because it is part of the game.

 

Now, saying a game is attracting the "wrong kind" is, let's say unfriendly, but also ambiguous because for someone who looks to play a game to "live the experience" of being a punk-looking criminal or an all geared up praetorian vigilante we could say the competitive players are the wrong kind of crowd. I'll point out some other details in these regards below in the other quotes...

 

...someone said:

Quote

The only reason I am here, wasting my time and keystrokes on the forums is to make sure that LO don't listen to the wrong people, again.

 

Again, as I was saying, who are the "wrong people" is a subjective statement, but more than that just look at the numbers, if the remaining ~850 players joining APB are the competitive ones. Where are the other +2.5k players that left because they are not competitive? Wouldn't be the inverse? Shouldn't LO start listening the few players that are still trying to contribute with opinions and ideas even after they stopped playing or barely plays at all anymore because of many reasons after years of experience playing? With the same subjectivity that sentence shows I can say LO is listening to the wrong people if they think anyone telling them APB is competitive are the right crowd to attract.

 

Is as simple as taking a look at 2013 to 2015 numbers and try to profile that amount of freebies converted to paying customers and their purchasing habits in relation to the game management and developing events that happened after these years. Besides how accurate the statistics could be you'll never know the opinion of someone who stopped consuming your product because there's a reason why they left it usually is the exactly opposite reason of what the ones staying are saying.

 

On 2/7/2020 at 10:24 AM, VanilleKeks said:

This system has been consistently critiqued and ranted over for close to a decade now. If you want to confirm, browse the history of this and the old forum. I haven't been able to play missions (because I'm on a really bad laptop) but I have heard from within the circles of players I know that this is a great change. I also think it's a great change and I hope for it to be present when I have my PC in a couple of months.

 

Again, the "circle of players" any of us could know does not represent an objective relation between target audience and current game population, there are two specific factors to consider when saying this, first of all the social bubble, which means that any circle in social networks will eventually filter out these who doesn't agree with the topic of any given group leaving alone and isolated to the group of people that agree with each other. A good analogy would be to look at a fraternity that gets very vocal in their university and all they want is to play football, everything they ask for is for a sports field and more resources for their team but nobody is listening to the scientific dudes that are needing resources for their scientific research while they are developing something interesting that would attract more people to science. This could be not the more accurate comparison with a video game but is just an analogy of why we should refrain from pulling the "my circle of friends" card when we don't know what the whole or the majority of a community thinks or wants.

 

 

14 hours ago, Noob_Guardian said:

So competitive in fact that the Game's population is literally dead because of competitive mindset of high rank golds farming lowbies. Yes, that's sooo much worse than everyone being able to kill the actual problem.

[...]

New players pretty much NEVER get bounty though unless ramraiding. The only people legit crying are the vets/skilled players for getting killed and losing the obj hold because of it, new players can't care less because they'll never get it.

...and...

14 hours ago, Noob_Guardian said:

You talk about competitiveness in APB as if there's even a population left to support it after the competitive players ravaged the population to nothingness. But please, lets talk about making it even moooore competitive than playing like assholes and sitting 400m away from obj on the items for ez wins against newbies and exploiting broken game animations to move medium items at sprint speed. It'll never be competitive for as long as such things exist, but if you actually "fix" those issues you'd have a whole slew of baddies crying.

 

 

Exactly what I'm aiming to, "competitive mindset" sounds like a small group of players in relation with the peak population APB gathered and sustained for over 3 years since 2011/20122, a very small one. I like the competitive aspects of any game as part of the fun, but if this game is so competitive where's all the other people playing other competitive games consistently over decades? Without comparing games what I'm saying is that is not because of broken mechanics or flaws in the game's design that competitive players are not sticking to APB but maybe is because the game is not competitive and these mechanics and features are meant to provide wider options to enjoy the game in any way you want, casual or competitive, and that might need some work to get improved but are part of a shooter game with Open World and MMO elements on it.

 

 

8 hours ago, VanilleKeks said:

I believe the reason that many new players quit (apart from de-threaters stomping them) is because they are the wrong type of player. The way APB was advertised has been attracting a lot of casuals, which then play against the competitive mindset and feel lost. You can see that most people are casuals because the difference in skill within tiers is insane. There's bound to be different tiers of players in any shooter but I have never seen a game with THIS much divide in between.

 

So what naturally happens over the time is that most of the more casual oriented players get filtered out and most of the competitive players stay. This results in any new players that aren't competitive in spirit getting matched against the competitive people who have spent a lot of time improving. To a large degree, this happens because of low pop and bad matchmaking.

 

Again and to end this post, there's no such thing as the "wrong type of player" specially when the idea is to attract a wider audience, as a shooter I can understand a game will aim to gather competitive players but making it to the E-Sports leagues isn't a goal for a game like APB, shouldn't be a goal at all for any game in the development stage like APB still is. This game is incomplete, always have been, its released features are okay and some could be reworked but none should be removed.

 

There's is a serious and dangerous contradiction in many statements here, the main one is the self-proclaimed experts saying they can find design flaws in the game but then these flaws are related with a feature that anyone who "mastered" the game could easily handle or adapt and overcome to it like the bounty system is.

Another contradiction is that someone who "mastered" a game and stick around for more than 5 to 10 years should already learned about any feature or game mechanic in a way that it could be improved instead of asking to remove it.

The more contradictory argument is the one that states that the majority of players wants something when that majority of players is actually conformed by the few remaining players after a drop of more than 2k or 3k players over the past 3 or 4 years...where's the other majority of players then? Did they quit because of the bounty system? No. Did they quit because of the competitive players? No. They probably quit for a sum of things such as poorly game management, lack of in-game moderation along with toxicity, exploits, bad match-making and weak anti-cheat measures.

 

I think if LO keeps listening to the same remaining players from the G1 era nothing will change for good ever, there are a few smart, nice and kind players around, but the ones calling other players salty, noobs, or turning down players for their threat or skills are the ones that are not just toxic and stubborn but the ones that reject newcomers from joining the game and LO should never ever listen to that kind of player when making decisions that will impact of the quality of life and gameplay of APB, because these are clearly looking for advantages and ways to suppress anything that makes their gameplay uncomfortable...and where's the "competitiveness" in that kind of mindset, right?

 

 

 

Edited February 8, 2020 by Salvick
Typos.

[Donjae 52]

the new bounty system are bless .

before people out side the mission was can kill you and you can loss you mission only cos someone outside your mission .

but in this new bounty system people only in your mission against you can kill you as bounty and they will get more money as reward .

like this for me its good way to fix the bounty system .

u cant be punished cos your good and that fix it 

[Noob_Guardian 417]

On 2/8/2020 at 4:34 AM, VanilleKeks said:

High rank golds farming noobs aren't competitive players. They wouldn't be farming noobs if they had a competitive mindset because you WANT to play better players if you have that mindset. That same mindset helped me get to and stay within the Top 500 of the European Overwatch ladder. I wanted to play against the best, even if that meant getting stomped by semi-pros and pros countless times just to learn something.

 

I believe the reason that many new players quit (apart from de-threaters stomping them) is because they are the wrong type of player. The way APB was advertised has been attracting a lot of casuals, which then play against the competitive mindset and feel lost. You can see that most people are casuals because the difference in skill within tiers is insane. There's bound to be different tiers of players in any shooter but I have never seen a game with THIS much divide in between.

 

So what naturally happens over the time is that most of the more casual oriented players get filtered out and most of the competitive players stay. This results in any new players that aren't competitive in spirit getting matched against the competitive people who have spent a lot of time improving. To a large degree, this happens because of low pop and bad matchmaking. Sadly it is the devils circle we are stuck in until those things get overhauled.

 

Edit: Just to clarify I got nothing against casual players. In fact over the last two years I've been going at APB with a more casual approach because high skill competitive missions became rarer and rarer (because pop ans matchmaking).

I'm glad you think that, but I'd highly disagree, because i've seen many of the extremely competitive players who are a literal nightmare for most people to even think of playing against constantly stomp, farm, and spawn hunt new players. You might not find it fun, but it IS what is happening regardless of how "fun" it is, luckily the number of such people are also "low" but that doesn't prevent the damage from being done.

 

APB is a PVP game, yes, that implies some competitiveness, however that is also skewed due to threat, matchmaking and a 45v45 game pop. In reality the game in its current state has neither the population, nor the systems to ensure that it is competitive, nor make it competitive. It's always been more of a "cops vs robbers customization sandbox" rather than competitive, which is why there is no real competitive mode, and it hasn't been since G1 took over imo. They G1 removed leaderboards and threat numbers, fixed the most broken locations, and more or less casualized and attempted to fix a number of broken things in game.

 

On 2/8/2020 at 1:54 AM, Flaws said:

The game being dead has zip zero nothing to do with the competitive mindset of some of us. This seems to be the one of the main misconceptions I'm seeing on the forums. It's dead due to the horrendous matchmaking and that goes both ways. Competitive high tier players legit quit the game because they have no one good to fight. Most of you don't seem to understand that we do not have fun farming newbies. That is insanely boring to us. You don't need to have a competitive mindset to dominate new players (and make them quit) AT ALL and the amount of fake golds who dethreat to go play on bronze district and stomp newbies using remote det, atac, true ogre, explosive weapons and showstopper really are the definitive proof of that. If those dethreaters took the game seriously or competitively in any way, they would never dethreat because they would be thinking about beating better players, not stomping lowbies which gains them nothing in terms of skill, only in terms of ego which is not the definition of competitiveness or competition. Point me to one game where having tons of hours doesn't make a difference in skill even if you don't take it seriously one bit. It's called experience and it comes with or without tryharding, with or without the competitive mindset, with or without toxicity. 

 

Can we stop pretending that being competitive is a bad thing and that it is somehow killing APB? It is complete and utter BS made up by salty players who never really got out of silver for 10 years. And yes, we are "crying" about the broken, horrible game design of a mechanic that is the APB bounty system because we are good enough to find it's flaws. Back when APB and some of it's mechanics were designed and integrated, the devs did not think far ahead or simply did not know what would happen if players actually became very good at the game and mastered it and it's mechanics, not thinking far ahead about what the issues would be then and in the past 5-10 years, those problems are shining brighter than anything the moment someone decided to take it seriously.

Actually it does, because depending on the person, generally competitive mindsets for APB players tend to skew more towards "cheap tricks, spawn hunting, and abusing broken mechanics" rather than "fairplay on an equal playing field." This drives away players, new and old alike. Being "competitive" is more than just trying to win, but most competitive players cant even understand that.

 

There is no set guidelines of how to play "competitive" in APB. Regardless of what you think, while many including myself don't enjoy stomping low silvers and new players, pretending that competitive people aren't farming new players is moronic. I've seen it a ton, i've seen some of the most competitive people abuse every glitch, vegas jump to every location, spawn hunt new players, and abuse ingame mechanics for cheap wins. Not only that but years ago when I suggested that there be guidelines/community guidelines for competitive fair play, I legit got laughed at and mocked. Why? Because competitiveness in APB is only about winning. Not how you win, which is what drives people away. Every competitive game in sports has rules and regs to follow, this isn't the case for APB. Hence APB cannot be truly competitive.

 

23 hours ago, Salvick said:

Exactly what I'm aiming to, "competitive mindset" sounds like a small group of players in relation with the peak population APB gathered and sustained for over 3 years since 2011/20122, a very small one. I like the competitive aspects of any game as part of the fun, but if this game is so competitive where's all the other people playing other competitive games consistently over decades? Without comparing games what I'm saying is that is not because of broken mechanics or flaws in the game's design that competitive players are not sticking to APB but maybe is because the game is not competitive and these mechanics and features are meant to provide wider options to enjoy the game in any way you want, casual or competitive, and that might need some work to get improved but are part of a shooter game with Open World and MMO elements on it.

I agree here, at its core currently APB is not meant to be very competitive. With the amount of out of mission interference, abusable glitches/exploits and such it's just not there. That isn't to say you can't have a competitive match here and there, but overall your gaming is going to be very casual with little competition, especially if you're already at the high machanical and tactical skill point.

Edited February 9, 2020 by Noob_Guardian

[Flaws 1033]

2 minutes ago, Noob_Guardian said:

Actually it does, because depending on the person, generally competitive mindsets for APB players tend to skew more towards "cheap tricks, spawn hunting, and abusing broken mechanics" rather than "fairplay on an equal playing field." This drives away players, new and old alike. Being "competitive" is more than just trying to win, but most competitive players cant even understand that.

 

There is no set guidelines of how to play "competitive" in APB. Regardless of what you think, while many including myself don't enjoy stomping low silvers and new players, pretending that competitive people aren't farming new players is moronic. I've seen it a ton, i've seen some of the most competitive people abuse every glitch, vegas jump to every location, spawn hunt new players, and abuse ingame mechanics for cheap wins. Not only that but years ago when I suggested that there be guidelines/community guidelines for competitive fair play, I legit got laughed at and mocked. Why? Because competitiveness in APB is only about winning. Not how you win, which is what drives people away.

 

No good players who take the game competitively use cheap tactics against newbies. Those are the exact same people who dethreat to bronze district (not necessarily, but that kind of mentality). Real good players are much more likely to go secondary only against proper newbies than use cheap tactics. The players you speak of are not the players I speak of when we say "competitive". I speak of the players who quit the game for the day if they don't get opp that is equal/around that level of skill within the first 10 missions. Competitive players have 0 interest in farming new players, they get nothing out of it. Fake golds farm new players, because it makes them feel good at the game and it feeds their ego. You speak of the latter and they do drive players away indeed, but nothing drives players away more than the matchmaking system because the matchmaking system can give players a whole variety of reasons to dislike playing the game. They might think everyone is cheating (as we know, that's extremely common even nowadays where cheaters are mostly extinct), they might think it is too late for them to get into the game, being 10 years late or they might just hate the matchmaking like everyone else does and so on.

[Westford 167]

Great ..

 

Absolutely great...

Working as intended.

 

I am in a mission, I spot an N5 Crim, he is most obviously in my mission as I unleash a hail of bullets upon him.

But...   he's not in my mission, or any mission for all I know.

 

Wonderful.

Great...

 

Little Orbit...

You "screwed the pooch" on this one.

Fair enough ?

 

How the hell we suppose to know ?

 

 

[xXD4v1dXx 49]

Little orbit already stated nothings final... Like seriously y'all cry waaaaay too much about a free game that's clearly still going through fixes and changes. Yall need to start acting like adults bruh fr, its honestly pathetic. Just give a good reason on why you like or dislike a change then move on, Im sure they'll take note of it. but to sit n whine and complain about every little thing is little banana energy. Thanks for listening to my TED Talk.

Edited February 9, 2020 by xXD4v1dXx
Fix

[Westford 167]

40 minutes ago, xXD4v1dXx said:

Little orbit already stated nothings final... Like seriously y'all cry waaaaay too much about a free game that's clearly still going through fixes and changes. Yall need to start acting like adults bruh fr, its honestly pathetic. Just give a good reason on why you like or dislike a change then move on, Im sure they'll take note of it. but to sit n whine and complain about every little thing is little banana energy. Thanks for listening to my TED Talk.

You're right.

It is a free game,  for some.

 

Although transparency regarding changes might be considered "too much to ask",

I would surely like to know how these new changes work.

 

I understand, I was asking for too much, and I need to step back.

Thank you for speaking reason, where I had shown none.

 

 

[vsb 6171]

1 hour ago, Westford said:

I am in a mission, I spot an N5 Crim, he is most obviously in my mission as I unleash a hail of bullets upon him.

what indicates that he's in your mission?

[Westford 167]

3 minutes ago, Solamente said:

what indicates that he's in your mission?

Well, to be honest,, there was none.

I had to assume, or face grave consequences.

 

That is the challenge that we face,

 

 

[vsb 6171]

Just now, Westford said:

Well, to be honest,, there was none.

I had to assume, or face grave consequences.

 

That is the challenge that we face,

if you're on a mission, then you don't have to assume anything - either they're a red opponent or a green teammate

[Westford 167]

Just now, Solamente said:

if you're on a mission, then you don't have to assume anything - either they're a red opponent or a green teammate

I was in a mission.

 

Spotted an N5...

I fired many bullets at the player.

 

He was not in my mission.

 

How was I to know ?

[vsb 6171]

1 minute ago, Westford said:

I was in a mission.

 

Spotted an N5...

I fired many bullets at the player.

 

He was not in my mission.

 

How was I to know ?

afaik n5/p5 players can't interfere in ongoing mission they aren't a part of

 

if this is not the case, then i do agree that little orbit dropped the ball 

[TheMessiah 430]

Whats goin on with the drama some people make about this?The only thing i saw that makes no sense is that when player is P5 and hes mission end-still nobody cant kill him after that.Even players which are not in mission.That makes P5 pointless to remain at all

[Westford 167]

Just now, Solamente said:

afaik n5/p5 players can't interfere in ongoing mission they aren't a part of

 

if this is not the case, then i do agree that little orbit dropped the ball 

They may not be able to interfere with a mission,

but they sure do show up with the N5/P5 Icon.

 

That's why , while in mission , I stopped and unloaded a hail of bullets.

He was not in my mission.

 

Wasted breath, and time.

 

I had no way of knowing.

 

 

[vsb 6171]

3 minutes ago, Westford said:

They may not be able to interfere with a mission,

but they sure do show up with the N5/P5 Icon.

 

That's why , while in mission , I stopped and unloaded a hail of bullets.

He was not in my mission.

 

Wasted breath, and time.

 

I had no way of knowing.

 

 

was it just the icon or was his name yellow?

 

otherwise i refer back to my previous statement of only red and green names mattering

[Westford 167]

1 minute ago, Solamente said:

was it just the icon or was his name yellow?

 

otherwise i refer back to my previous statement of only red and green names mattering

I did not see any yellow.

 

I saw the N5 ICON above the player.

Was I vulnerable to be shot ?

 

I do not know, and I did not wait to find out.

I fired upon them, with wasted effort.

 

THIS is the problem.

 

There is no way of knowing, until after firing multiple rounds.

 

 

 

[vsb 6171]

Just now, Westford said:

I did not see any yellow.

 

I saw the N5 ICON above the player.

Was I vulnerable to be shot ?

 

I do not know, and I did not wait to find out.

I fired upon them, with wasted effort.

 

THIS is the problem.

 

There is no way of knowing, until after firing multiple rounds.

 

 

 

the icon won't appear unless the name is visible

 

the only thing you have to keep in mind when seeing n5/p5 players now is whether you're currently on a mission or not, imo that's far simpler (especially when playing a criminal character) than determining what faction they are and whether or not you can fight them without putting yourself at a disadvantage 

[Flaws 1033]

4 minutes ago, Westford said:

I did not see any yellow.

 

I saw the N5 ICON above the player.

Was I vulnerable to be shot ?

 

I do not know, and I did not wait to find out.

I fired upon them, with wasted effort.

 

THIS is the problem.

 

There is no way of knowing, until after firing multiple rounds.

 

 

 

Almost everyone looks at the color of the nametag first before even the bounty icon... How do you not see that the name is grey for such a long period that you manage to "unload a hail of bullets" without seeing that......?

[Westford 167]

3 minutes ago, Solamente said:

the icon won't appear unless the name is visible

If the N5/P5 Icon would NOT appear, that would be helpful.

 

In these instances, they do appear, so , not very helpful.

 

These players have the "Appearance of N5/P5" as it has always been.

The only difference is, they take no damage.

 

Confusing ... ?

 

Yeah...

1 minute ago, Flaws said:

Almost everyone looks at the color of the nametag first before even the bounty icon... How do you not see that the name is grey for such a long period that you manage to "unload a hail of bullets" without seeing that......?

Not true ...

 

All players look at the N5/P5 Tag first, Player name second.,

We are playing the same game ?

Yes ?

Edited February 9, 2020 by Westford

[Flaws 1033]

2 minutes ago, Westford said:

Not true ...

 

All players look at the N5/P5 Tag first, Player name second.,

We are playing the same game ?

Yes ?

Even if you look at the bounty icon first, you can easily see what color the name is as it's literally right below it...

 

Either way, neither me nor anyone I know has any issue with that but making the icon not visible to people out of your mission would be fine too. Makes no difference if you pay attention.