Working From Home - Week #1 recap & thank you

[MattScott 15242]

Hi everyone,

This week was a total surprise for me.

 

On Monday, the entire US watched as our government slowly tightened up social rules to help suppress the spread of COVID-19.

At Little Orbit, we took the plunge and moved everyone to working remote, and I had to hope things would all work out.

 

And thanks to all of you, we've seen a spectacular rise in population.

 

Keep reading below the graphs to get an update on a new data center location for APB, my Engine Upgrade has big news, and a nod to our folks in Customer Support who have worked hard to get our response times down.

 

First, the population increase.

 

This is our PC traffic from two weeks ago on Saturday the 7th. It shows a total peak concurrency of ~900 PC players.

While this is a good measure of Citadel (which is in yellow at 700 peak players). Jericho's peak comes later in the day beyond this graph at around 8pm. 

 

This is our PC traffic from today on Saturday the 21st. It shows a total peak concurrency of ~1500 players. That's a net gain of 600 players or 66% growth.

 

I'm extremely grateful that players have chosen to spend their free time on APB during this world wide situation. We had a couple issues with district disconnections, and a client-side issue with this week's patch that causes a hitch every so often which we will correct on Wednesday. But overall I feel like the new server architecture and anti-DDoS got a chance to shine.

 

If this continues, we will be out of server space in the next 2 weeks.

With that in mind, we have started the process to open more servers in Warsaw, Poland so our Eastern Europe and Russian players can get better latency.

 

Next, if you haven't been following my weekly updates on the Engine Upgrade, you should check out this week.

We are making our preparations for Beta. One player in our community was able to get a copy, and I am now sharing details about the rollout plan.

 

And finally, for those who don't look at my Customer Support updates I also made an exciting post there this week.

Despite moving our entire team off site, we are now at only a 4 day initial response time for tickets. We will continue to work hard to bring that down as new and old players join APB, but that is our lowest ever.

Thanks,

Matt

[TheMessiah 430]

after the new engine is complete and live,new matchmaking and new contacts-u not gonna believe what increase in playerbase ull have(if things are done right ofc)

[Jilleroo 349]

9 minutes ago, MattScott said:

First, the population increase.

I'm surprised.

 

Hope the engine update is soon so the matchmaking system and instancing can be focused on.

[numlockcapslock 1]

Wow, good job @MattScott. I'm super excited for the beta ;D

[Acornie 490]

Thanks Matt, for the work LO has been doing, making sure to say thanks also because that free premium probably helped attract people back along with everything else. It's been really nice to see this game having decent pop again, especially in NA where it was looking pretty bleak the last few months.

 

Hey but ya know, if EU and NA servers were connected, some of that EU pop could come and play on NY servers, hint hint. Pls Matt, we need the population

 

 

Edited March 21, 2020 by Acornie

[TurboBRCrim 29]

Thanks but why more server in EU? Its is SA who needs it the most.

[MattScott 15242]

4 minutes ago, TurboBRCrim said:

Thanks but why more server in EU? Its is SA who needs it the most.

I'm looking into South America and Asia servers as well. We have a pretty specific architecture that needs to be supported, so it takes time to identify data centers we can operate out of.

6 minutes ago, Acornie said:

Hey but ya know, if EU and NA servers were connected, some of that EU pop could come and play on NY servers, hint hint. Pls Matt, we need the population

 

It's coming. Some of the crossplay work was paused to get the Engine Upgrade out the door. But getting in support for regions was a big first step.

[KyoukiDotExe 231]

This is all amazing and good news. Thank you and the team for all the hard work so far. Looking forward to the future.

Edited March 21, 2020 by KyoukiDotExe

[LilyRain 674]

@MattScott

 

It is delighting to see good progress on all fronts (engine, support and player counts). May LO continue to see further success. Thanks for the good work.

 

I'll take this opportunity to inquire about/be_reminded of the current progress on the plan to make characters available globally rather than locally to a single server. Thanks in advance!

[TurboBRCrim 29]

22 minutes ago, MattScott said:

I'm looking into South America and Asia servers as well. We have a pretty specific architecture that needs to be supported, so it takes time to identify data centers we can operate out of.

It's coming. Some of the crossplay work was paused to get the Engine Upgrade out the door. But getting in support for regions was a big first step.

Thank you very much

[quixxius 67]

@MattScottGood news. Can't wait for beta!

[ChellyBean 200]

1 hour ago, MattScott said:

With that in mind, we have started the process to open more servers in Warsaw, Poland so our Eastern Europe and Russian players can get better latency.

 

 

Sounds like Warsaw is gonna be.... Packed with servers

 

YEEEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

[WorldDominator 61]

15 hours ago, MattScott said:

With that in mind, we have started the process to open more servers in Warsaw, Poland so our Eastern Europe and Russian players can get better latency.

How about having servers in south-east european countries like Croatia, Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece or even Turkey for north african / middle-eastern players and players in that region in general to have better latency aswell?

 

Edit: just curious whether that was considered as to be something in the future or not

Edited March 22, 2020 by WorldDominator

[wHisHi 206]

Really nice to see  Matt, can we expect any sale in armas store? I would love to support you guys!

[neophobia 216]

3 hours ago, Acornie said:

some of that EU pop could come and play on NY servers, hint hint.

but why would one from eu want to

it's clearly the inferior way of playing

[Acornie 490]

3 hours ago, neophobia said:

but why would one from eu want to

it's clearly the inferior way of playing

Joker is clearly best. There are many NA and SA who have committed to EU due to the higher pop, and by the time NA is getting to peak, EU is dormant.

Edited March 22, 2020 by Acornie

[WaIeed007 65]

No asian servers huh? ever since han was removed ive been playing with 180-300 ping on Citadel and 350+ ping on Jericho. Well its aight you can focus on other important stuff first no pressure.
And also, can we have some sort of little event like beacon gungame or anarchy so we can keep playing and not get bored of the same normal missions? If it doesnt cause  a delay in the engine update.

[SmilyFace 300]

nice

[TheMessiah 430]

11 hours ago, MattScott said:

With that in mind, we have started the process to open more servers in Warsaw, Poland so our Eastern Europe and Russian players can get better latency.

polish and russians always love to play together 

[jjpn 6]

  a

Edited June 30, 2023 by jjpn
1

[Queen of Love 452]

restore p5 N5 system cause waiting oppo is boring.

 

[Golderlight123 23]

It's good i like - but you must get it right, it sounds good on paper but in reality it will be not so good,, i mean you need plenty of players to test the engine upgrade, that way you will be able to get things done quicker iron out the bugs, 2-5 people is just not enough.

because you need to stress test the servers... the more players that join the more players that will find the bugs and  report.

 

Anyhow great job as always. i am looking forward to it, but is there any reason why you're not going for 4.0 after upgrading to 3.5?

is it because 4.0 you have to pay for it? it just feels like a cop out. Also thanks for  giving everyone free premium.

 

 

I would Love to be in the beta for testing the engine upgrade, I've been playing since rtw,  even tho i made this forum account in 2013 - i never used to go on forums so there was no need to sign  up for forums, as you can tell i never used to post as much as i do now. Keep up the good work

[vsb 6171]

1 minute ago, Golderlight123 said:

Anyhow great job as always. i am looking forward to it, but is there any reason why you're not going for 4.0 after upgrading to 3.5?

is it because 4.0 you have to pay for it? it just feels like a cop out. Also thanks for  giving everyone free premium.

i believe orbit has stated before that ue4 apb would require them to rewrite all code from the ground up, for all intents and purposes it would be less like the current engine update and more like a complete engine replacement

[L0pht 28]

I could be one of those players but Matt doesn’t want to unban me. 

[MrChan 337]

53 minutes ago, L0pht said:

I could be one of those players but Matt doesn’t want to unban me. 

Don't try and sell your account and then make up bullshoot to get out of it when you get caught.