Why does everything has to be so hidden and mysterious ?

[GhosT 1318]

That's part of why APB is failing.

[Bran34 2]

Hey Matt, just so you know there are lots of us that quit during reloaded watching, and while we arent actively participating in the discourse, do check in every once in a while to see where you are on the upgrade, watching and waiting for the time to come back.  Don't get discouraged by these types of people, you're doing god's work trying to revive our game.

[CookiePuss 5394]

4 hours ago, Bran34 said:

Don't get discouraged by these types of people

By 'types of people" do you mean the people who kept the game alive, who kept playing while you bailed on us?

[Pufty 113]

12 hours ago, MartinPL said:

[...] Long Post

I fully agree with Martin's points and just quickly want to go on from there. The community is going to give a hard time... No matter what. I've definitely fought with words in this community, but some really scare away any new life from this game. I think anyone that has tried to recommend this game from the outside to try the game has met the same reaction. NONE of the many people I've recommended the game to have sticked around. There are the usual - wonky driving, hard gameplay, but also the 24/7 toxic spewings in chat. Quickly put - the community is not the whole issue, but it's quite a big one.

 

Thanks to Matt for not really putting on any masks to deal with situations. Seriously, the reaction has been very weak, but LO in every way is better than what G1 was or other Dev group would be. Sitting and watching how APB has gone for these years, I just can't appreciate enough the clear replies and honesty. I can't do much in support, so I just sit and wait with the usual 'Like' and word 'Thanks'. I hope that's enough for now.

[PingOVER9000 189]

12 hours ago, Frosi said:

I already have a few ideas for this, 2.1 needs to be properly tested which means that we as the SPCT and Community can come together and figure out what exactly is inconsistent to live or is flat out broken, this means that people in the SPCT that stream the game can use their streams to organize playtests together with the community.

 

That's a good suggestion and I guess it's worth to give a chance to accelerate in resolving this matter, not just in time matter, but also QUALITY matter, because get directly straight from the source, the players, about the feedbacks and suppositions, avoiding less possible discontents,  changes after changes for patchs release, discussions.

 

Maybe it can be a good idea also involve some youtubers, there are a lot good ones and directly/ indirectly show the perfomance of weapons/ apb mechanics such as @Hei, @Shini, @Failstation, @Cuve aka Richard etc there are several Good ones.

 

It may be a good idea (ask to/ pressure to  )involve also them in this project, as players/ streamers, it's also of their interest having a better gameplay possible

 

Bye

Edited March 29, 2020 by PingOVER9000

[Haganu 105]

16 hours ago, MattScott said:

When we took over APB, we only had Reloaded as an example of how to run things. So largely we started by following their previous policies with some smaller changes. I also took a very conservative approach, because aspects of the community were very scary (ie. calling bomb threats to Tigg's home). For the safety of my staff, I chose to expose my identity up front, but that allowed everyone else at LO to remain somewhat anonymous till we got a better feel for things.

 

Beyond that, we stepped into a very difficult spot. Towards the last couple years, Reloaded promised a lot of things and never delivered. Initially, we tried being more transparent with dates and things coming up, but most players responded either neutrally or negatively because those dates are often challenging to hit.

 

This is really the only comment that confused me. I post every week about the Engine Upgrade - good, bad or ugly. I also post Customer Support stats every week. Those are areas where we are already giving 100% transparency. For the most part, I see those efforts as successful, so I am looking for more opportunities to continue doing that.

 

Lixil lasted more than a year, and while she wasn't perfect, I think it's tough for a CM to "compete" with me. I try to get on the forums, twitter, Facebook, and discord as much as possible to stay aware of what is happening. I also try to respond when I can. We made some changes with SakeBee, so that he would have a clearer space to manage without me constantly jumping in. He's still new, but we are working on ways he can hang out with the community and get to know you guys better.

 

I'm not going to defend RIOT. It had its benefits for my team, but we did it mostly because it was "low hanging fruit" that Reloaded had mostly finished. There were some hard lessons learned there.

 

 

There are going to be a lot of opportunities for this coming up. But right now, we have to focus on the Engine Upgrade. It's blocking everything else, and a lot of the tasks for the Engine Upgrade are more "mechanical" to just getting it working like Live. However, the upcoming Beta will very much be work in progress. It will be a chance for the community to jump in and give us feedback, so we can make corrections.

 

Thanks,
Matt

I don't know how long it exactly took for LO to prepare that whole takeover, but before LO stepped in Reloaded was silent on every front for about 2 years straight.

The policy of, from how I experienced it at least, to keep things silent and leave everything to the community to speculate about wasn't a great policy.

 

I think Ketog is more talking about future plans. The moment we heard about Riot to bring up his example was when it was already being worked on.

The Engine Upgrade and Customer Support tracking are good. A very necessary change in policy from what Reloaded has been keeping prior to LO times, and you see it back in your posts' reactions.

We're grateful for it, but that alone wouldn't be enough to save this game.

 

Lixil was a decent GM. I wish we heard more from her, but I can't say she was bad. Sakebee has been alright too, but to me it still looks like you're the main spokesperson here.

Maybe it's because what you post is so critical and important to this game and its players, while events we're hearing from from Sakebee are more to keep us busy until the cards come down.

Despite the effort I still think there's too much of a wall between developer and community. There's a CM posting events and a CEO tracking UE3.5 and CS progress... but what's beyond that?

Other than sometimes GMs answering questions in Social or hanging out at a car club, there's no real interaction going on with the community, unless it's a constructive and someone critical post like Ketog's.

 

At the same time, I feel like this lack of interaction is a two headed monster. It can't say the effect of keeping the playerbase at an arm's length while keeping them up to date with important information has worked out positively sofar. By that same token, that makes a GM showing themselves or even more than that, Sakebee log into the game even to randomly say hi such a big deal, which in turn makes dealing with that like a minefield.

 

I think a possible solution that's somewhat unorthodox but quite underused or half-assed in games like this is to bring players into this. Not just streamers or SPCT, but less known people, too.

Reloaded had a couple initiatives such as SPCM but they never did anything with those ideas. They just remained ideas for the most part.

 

You showing your identity up front has done nothing but good to this playerbase. It showed us there was finally someone who truly had the best intentions and a will to carry them out.

 

I get that the Engine Upgrade is priority number 1 right now, and from the last couple posts it looks like the end of the tunnel is nearby for that. However...

I've posted it a couple times before, but I'm curious what LO plans to do with this game, its setting, its theme.
I'm not just talking about matchmaking, phasing or anything. I wish this game could be more immersive instead of competitive if anything.

I honestly would prefer if you wouldn't make the characters be brighter than the rest of the world, for example. It would make the game feel ugly and it would feel like the characters just look out of place.

 

Now that the Engine Upgrade is nearby though, it wouldn't be a bad idea for you to propose some ideas for what comes after. Beyond Lucas van Rooijen and Lynette Casey I mean.

 

Just thinking of this game's setting I can think of thousands of things that could be interesting, and if done right would make this game so much more than it is now.

I'm looking forward to what you have envisioned for this game though.

 

 

If there's one game that has things like future planning and communicating such done right it has to be Phantasy Star.

Every month they do a 2 hour long stream in which they announce all the new stuff to come to the game. From the core of the gameplay, to the cosmetics, to QoL improvements, to literally everything else related to the game outside of the game's client.

 

Definitely makes me wish this game had something like that, but before APB can get to such a point it would need a pipeline to create new content worth announcing.

And more players, ofcourse.

Edited March 29, 2020 by Haganu

[Sophiie 50]

On 3/28/2020 at 6:08 PM, MattScott said:

Hi Ketog,

 

You raise some good points, and I think the answers are a lot more simple than you might expect.

 

When we took over APB, we only had Reloaded as an example of how to run things. So largely we started by following their previous policies with some smaller changes. I also took a very conservative approach, because aspects of the community were very scary (ie. calling bomb threats to Tigg's home). For the safety of my staff, I chose to expose my identity up front, but that allowed everyone else at LO to remain somewhat anonymous till we got a better feel for things.

 

Beyond that, we stepped into a very difficult spot. Towards the last couple years, Reloaded promised a lot of things and never delivered. Initially, we tried being more transparent with dates and things coming up, but most players responded either neutrally or negatively because those dates are often challenging to hit.

 

This is really the only comment that confused me. I post every week about the Engine Upgrade - good, bad or ugly. I also post Customer Support stats every week. Those are areas where we are already giving 100% transparency. For the most part, I see those efforts as successful, so I am looking for more opportunities to continue doing that.

 

Lixil lasted more than a year, and while she wasn't perfect, I think it's tough for a CM to "compete" with me. I try to get on the forums, twitter, Facebook, and discord as much as possible to stay aware of what is happening. I also try to respond when I can. We made some changes with SakeBee, so that he would have a clearer space to manage without me constantly jumping in. He's still new, but we are working on ways he can hang out with the community and get to know you guys better.

 

I'm not going to defend RIOT. It had its benefits for my team, but we did it mostly because it was "low hanging fruit" that Reloaded had mostly finished. There were some hard lessons learned there.

 

 

There are going to be a lot of opportunities for this coming up. But right now, we have to focus on the Engine Upgrade. It's blocking everything else, and a lot of the tasks for the Engine Upgrade are more "mechanical" to just getting it working like Live. However, the upcoming Beta will very much be work in progress. It will be a chance for the community to jump in and give us feedback, so we can make corrections.

 

Thanks,
Matt

Hi Matt,

 

First, I'd like to say thank you for providing technical insight as to why the engine upgrade is taking so long. It's long overdue and more than the folks at Reloaded Productions were willing to give out to the public.

 

I'd like to preface what I'm about to say is largely opinion based on my experience with Reloaded, and not so much Little Orbit - I honestly haven't given the game that much of a try since you bought the game when Reloaded went under and that's largely due to the hybrid good/bad memories about the game from Reloaded's tenure with it.

 

Let me first say that Tiggs' policies were some of the harshest in the MMO market. She policed members of the community who were unruly to begin with and those members were consistently baiting her into conversing with them. Those members of the community absolutely stopped messing with the game as soon as you introduced Easy Anti Cheat largely due to how effective EAC is as not only an anticheat, but as a spying tool on those unruly members who committed real-world crimes like calling in bomb threats. She did not deserve the harassment, but largely her actions as community manager and strict enforcement of Terms of Service ended up getting her into the generally disliked position she was in. This is not to say her policies were ineffective, but by publicly acknowledging trolls she made herself enemy #1 of the trolls. I don't blame you for taking precaution regarding protecting the rest of your staff, given that certain individuals were actively causing drama.

 

For community management; you need the right person for the job. I can't tell you how many CMs I've seen that just take up the position, do nothing but schedule out events, communicate limited, filtered information from the development team to the public, and take a hefty salary for doing nothing of importance that you, as a CEO, can often do better and you would not need approval to release information. Whereas a community manager would often be left in the dark. As much as this community gives Tiggs a bunch of crap... Tiggs was unique in the sense that she filled multiple hats: she led the CSR team, she ran the community forums, organized two volunteer programs, and also played liason about pressing issues between the community and the development team.

 

She was deeply ingrained into Reloaded's workflow and went above and beyond. Hell, a lot of people at Reloaded went from supporting roles to leading roles, including her. She went from managing customer support, to being the CM, and then a Producer later in the game's life.

 

Reloaded did in fact promise a lot and not deliver. There were a lot of behind-the-scenes drama that, quite honestly, is game-industry politics at its finest. Under the guise that talking about your game would hurt the 'intellectual property' of the game, Reloaded purposefully misled the community that the engine upgrade was further along than it was. There was also the whole idea that Reloaded shouldn't allow testers not under NDA, for the sake of hiding how far along the engine upgrade was. I realize they were in financial distress (public records showed as much) but withholding information from the public and not allowing these test builds into the public hands was very snake-y, and one of the major things I disagreed with and probably the community will disagree with, too.

 

Continuing these trends, Little Orbit has made SPCT into its own clique once again for focused, NDA-gated testing, while the rest of the general public is left in the dark, except for a weekly news update - or people poking and prodding your patcher, as the trend was before. I don't know who has you by the collar-and-chain, Matt, but you really need to push these builds out to the public as soon as possible. Give people a timeline as to when they can expect these builds.

 

I personally do not give a damn if the build crashes on an RTX card or not. Would you agree with me that pushing out these builds to the public would be the right move here? The public was constantly dismissed as unreliable at Reloaded despite having better QA for issues than any 'compliance testing' team would. There are countless people who would provide feedback on hardware the build works on. You'd be able to judge performance over a large variety of devices. There might even be, get this, a programmer or 10 lurking in the shadows that could even diagnose these issues *for free*, and you could push out a build to fix these high-end card crash issues.

 

The notion that an 'unfinished game' would kill the hype surrounding the engine upgrade is based on falsehood. There are plenty of games in worse states than APB: Reloaded on Steam. The average consumer is used to very poor early access builds that crash a lot. As long as you keep everything isolated to a test server - is there really any downside to doing this?

 

I speak from experience here; gating an undisclosed game to a select number of testers and then giving it out to the public and closing the old build's servers when 'you think' a build is ready is one of the dumbest mistakes that was made in the past. In fact, I bet if the game was given to the public alongside the actual release, the game may have been up and running still, collecting revenue.

 

When people say they don't want to be in the dark, they expect someone actually talking to them, not just posting on an outdated medium such as a forum. Mediums such as Discord, Twitter, Twitch, Facebook Live, YouTube/YouTube Gaming, etc, are all great resources and modern, especially with everyone being home and able to watch updates. Schedule out times for your development team to show off videos, livestream new things they've been working on, and even just a weekly 'vlog' from you, Matt, would do a lot to restore faith in this community beyond what you have already done. I think at one point, prior to the engine upgrade, I had to stalk your Twitter for engine upgrade news including a video of someone playing the game on a PS4 devkit that was never posted here and eventually made its way to the other mediums I listed above.

 

Furthermore, I cannot stress this enough, people do not believe progress unless they can put their hands on their keyboard and mouse and actually *play* it. Pictures paint a good image, but playing the end result is much more believable. And based on the Engine Upgrade thread, you are closer now more than ever to putting it in the public's hands.

 

Matt, you've already proven that you're dedicated as CEO of Little Orbit. I cannot thank you enough for going this far. As someone who was, and still is, supportive of this game, its development team, and its community, you've been a godsend in a sea of prior end-user mismanagement.

 

It's time to let the chains off and let us see the fruits of everyone's effort - RealTime Worlds, Electronic Arts, Reloaded Games, Reloaded Productions, Reloaded Inc, Little Orbit, The Workshop, Deep Silver and the countless volunteers  - that have all put their time on the line to make sure this game stays alive and fun. Let the floodgates open to 2.1's testing center. It's the only way to be 100% transparent with this community.

 

(PS: I loved the concept of RIOT's ARG. It was a refreshing change of pace for a game that largely was regarded as boring with their content release cycle. I think the ARG was more fun than actually playing RIOT itself.)

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

I mean, all of us did tell G1 that the BR thing they were working on was a joke and destined to fail yet LO still went on with it. So it really isn't a situation of them keeping it to themselves until too far in development for the players to tell them 'lol no'.

[KnifuWaifu 499]

On 3/29/2020 at 4:06 AM, Solamente said:

SPCT

ingame

Pick one.

[vsb 6211]

2 minutes ago, KnifuWaifu said:

Pick one.

i know at least two spct who play regularly

 

now, they aren't actually good but that's beside the point

 

 

Edited March 30, 2020 by Solamente
:^)

[CookiePuss 5394]

19 minutes ago, Solamente said:

i know at least two spct who play regularly

 

now, they aren't actually good but that's beside the point

 

 

 

 

That does it... @Sadira, shank this fool.

[vsb 6211]

8 minutes ago, CookiePuss said:

That does it... @Sadira, shank this fool.

oh, that makes three actually

 

still not good :^)

[CookiePuss 5394]

12 minutes ago, Solamente said:

still not good :^)

 

[Sadira 292]

14 hours ago, Solamente said:

oh, that makes three actually

 

still not good :^)

 excuse me im the best fake gold around here 

Edited March 31, 2020 by Sadira

[Mitne 734]

On 3/30/2020 at 9:43 AM, NotZombieBiscuit said:

I mean, all of us did tell G1 that the BR thing they were working on was a joke and destined to fail yet LO still went on with it. So it really isn't a situation of them keeping it to themselves until too far in development for the players to tell them 'lol no'.

Problem is even SCPTs told them "don't do it" and two weeks before release SCPTs were open with RIOT for how it is, bah, even Beta revealed and showed every problem with it on plate. And it was just few matches.

[Golderlight123 23]

On 3/28/2020 at 4:28 PM, Ketog said:

But then why do the SPCT's exist, that's where it's conflicting, SPCT's are publicly known "special" people and can even have a fancy tag yet than can be themselves,  but somehow GM's are not the same, im not saying it matters if we know their real identity or not, it's more that, they have to act so much different than a normal player, they can't do missions, they can't play, neither really be themselves, and always answer in a robotic way to questions almost.

It's called doing there job.. you know professionalism. they have accounts where they play on. and if they play on a gm account they will get accused of many things.... that's why you wont see them on playing on gm accounts., just be happy that gm's are there

[Rebelliousness 85]

I liked Tiggs.  Tiggs was next level and able to absolutely command respect from the most toxic playerbase.  That said, as much good as she accomplished, her overly harsh methods basically killed G1... I mean what 14,000 perma banned accounts?  That's disastrous.  But in fairness to Tiggs, that was a later development.  Early on she was pretty amazing.  If only Little Orbit could have her intelligence, her involvement, an actual working anticheat that hasn't been bypassed for years... some GM presence to temp kick toxics, ghosters and harassing griefers... and a TEMPORARY KICK for hack detection and SUSPICION BY QUALIFIED GMS... this game could thrive... and I mean temp kick as in immediately get them out of the match for a couple hours... unless you are ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN it is a cheat... and let them back in. If you are certain, find a way to code your proprietary anticheat to filter it out of game and don't let them in until their software scan is clean.

Temp kicks for reasonable suspicion are a lot more fair than perma kicks that kick legits who are pro... or worse... an anticheat that never kicks at all.

[Genobee 143]

On 3/29/2020 at 7:07 AM, CookiePuss said:

By 'types of people" do you mean the people who kept the game alive, who kept playing while you bailed on us?

In all fairness there hasn't been much of a reason to stick around. Any long time player has burned through what was available years ago. Only new content really has been in JMB's. Which I don't exactly qualify as worthwhile.

 

Plus RIOT falling flat on it's face a day after releasing probably didn't do any favors. Guessing that signaled a good time to take a break for many.

 

The engine upgrade will be the first thing in forever to make people actually wanna take a look at APB again. Just one of those unfortunate things.

[ChristmasElf 15]

On 3/28/2020 at 1:13 PM, Ketog said:

Hey, im Ketog, a long time player of APB 

 

I've been playing apb for years just like a lot of you guys here, and some of the people i met early in the game still play today and also are friends i can count on today.

 

To all the long time players, have you guys realized how everything about apb is always hidden, or secret ? From how teams are managed, to development, and roadmaps , how the community always asks for things and never get an answer, or where actions are taken and the reason behind them is always blurry.

 

One of my APB friends told me yesterday "Ketog, do you know why GM's always have to hide who they are, while you have the spct kinda guys in open sight and their fancy tag?"

 

For all the GM's that have been in citadel, and talked to me, you guys know how much people appreciate when you guys are just being yourselves.

 

I've always wondered, what's the reason , anything APB related has to always be hidden, in my opinion people are so much happier when they're open about everything:

 

Imagine if players knew exactly what Little Orbit was doing on the engine upgrade, what they were planning

what they try and what fails/works, LO never gathers proper feedback from the community always because they hide so much,

Gm's , or team members always appear and vanish all the time and somehow get replaced, we never have any true contact with our community manager, and no one ever properly represents the player base neither LO themselves as a whole

 

The day LO talked about RIOT every single veteran of APB knew it was about to fail, and a huge waste of time and ressources, but guess what, LO was too far in the development to stop, and they kept going on

 

What if they told the community their interests into trying new things, and asking for opinions before any movements.

 

Players wouldn't expect so much from APB content if they knew everything they see on forums is always Experimental.

 

 

APB is a small game and it has a hard time living when managed as if it was a huge Brand.

 

What's the real reason behind APB being so closed from the outside ?

 

What prevents LO from taking a more Open minded path with APB, im sure having a PR person sharing all the work LO does on a daily basis, would bring incredible positive support for the game, rather than daddy matt having to do all the work himself.

 

 

Anyway, i know this is not true for everything, but in my case, me being completely open about what i am, made me much happier, rather than wearing a mask and hiding things that i am unhappy with

Now people like me for what i am, instead of a mask i wear all the time.

Because is more interesting that way. Could you imagine a movie where you know what will happen? Well its the same as apb. If we knew how apb would end we woulndt install it in the first place.

Also its a strategy, too, to avoid peoples feelings hurt. Blind eyes, heart that doesnt feel.

[Noob_Guardian 423]

On 3/28/2020 at 12:45 PM, Rebelliousness said:

Also... listening to a tiny circle of unbanned guys... is following the worst advice possible... not that they don't have valid input... but that it's extremely biased, and therefore not providing the company an overall accurate viewpoint of what the ACTUAL playerbase is wanting... and oftentimes CONTRARY to what that playerbase is wanting.

 

People who havn't been banned tend to have the best attitude towards the game and want the best for the game. Banned players generally don't care, otherwise they wouldn't have done something to get banned in the first place.

[greenfield 139]

On 3/29/2020 at 12:08 AM, MattScott said:

 

Just wow. Simple and honest replies. We're really lucky to have Matt and LO around. The old staff never showed the same dedication and attitude toward its community.

I appreciate all the hard work LO is doing in keeping this game alive and if any slips are happening here and there its quite easy to understand and forgive them when you're getting such replies. Keep up the good work, i will support this game for as much as i can.

Thank you

[PingOVER9000 189]

23 hours ago, Noob_Guardian said:

 

People who havn't been banned tend to have the best attitude towards the game and want the best for the game. Banned players generally don't care, otherwise they wouldn't have done something to get banned in the first place.

About cheaters, It would be awesome if LO take as example what other game companies has done against cheaters, as I have seen a while ago in this random video in youtube.

 

That one in witcher 3 where one is cheating, he will get rekt from the god of cows is kinda hilarious XD

 

Picture that if LO will apply the same where one is cheating in district, every time he log, he will get hunted constantly from a invicible bot with infinite HP and super speed with the name of MattScott and killing him every time he press K,  XD.

 

...and Legal ways if he/they persist to use hacks.. for fighting these people only the fear can make the game free from them, cause they are just cowards that think to hide behind a Pc.

Edited April 1, 2020 by PingOVER9000