My big list of improvement suggestions

[SynRapture 7]

Boys and girls of APB;

As many of you who still roam the forum, I've been playing this wonderful and amazing game since the old RTW days, on and off.

After following LO in social media since they took over, reading their posts, watching the new engine stream, seeing the amazing work they are doing and how open @MattScott is with the community, I'm posting my list of suggestions to improve the game, hoping to get some traction and reaching the people who can take action.

Feel free to add your own suggestions, I'll edit the post to include them.

 

 

CHEATING

• An actual, working anti-cheat for the game would be nice...
• Shadow ban hackers so they can only play against other hackers - this is the feature I want to see the most.
• Ban macros and triggerbots - these external apps are not being monitored at all and there are clans that even distribute them to all members as if a triggerbot was something normal and acceptable to use in any other shooter game...
• Add potential cheater flagging methods based on stats, so a mod is required to review a player live in a district to determine if they are hacking (ie: a K/D ratio above X ==> flags an account to be reviewed by a game mod).

 

THREAT LEVEL

• Make intentional dethreating much harder (more games required to dethreat (especially to Bronze), additional factors considered to dethreat, etc) and lock gold players out of bronze districts (if you're a Silver threat player in a Bronze district and get bumped to Gold for abusing lower skilled players, you {and your group} should get automatically moved to a Silver/Gold threat server without the possibility of rejoining the Bronze district until there are no Gold players in the group). The game is already hard to pick up and currently new players get rekt until they uninstall by people that shouldn't be in low level districts owning them non-stop.
• Add more factors to how threat level is calculated (K/D ratio, assists, medals per game, etc).
• A new threat level above Gold and sub-levels within each threat level. 
• A seasonal pinnacle reward system for reaching the highest levels (similar to Destiny 2) would be nice, but it won't work unless the hackers are dealt with.
• In a completely different, alternative scenario, remove threat level based districts, create a "skill level" value for every player and allow anyone to join any district, but make the matchmaking strict within skill level.

 

WEAPONS

• Rethink weapon balance: instead of nerfing the weapons that perform well, take what makes them good and buff the weaker weapons accordingly. This, of course, is tied to the vision LO has about the overall weapon balance, TTK, etc.
• Reduce the huge impact RnG has in gunfights.
• A LTL weapon series for Criminals, or at least an option as annoying as them.
• Add a "test" feature to Joker Ticket weapons similar to what the ARMAS marketplace has.
• Weapon loadout creation for easy swaps during missions.

 

ACCOUNT-WIDE CHANGES

• Increase to symbol, theme, song and clothing limit.
• Symbols, cash and Joker tickets shared across all characters in the same account.
• Add a safe way to quickly transfer tradeable weapons between characters from the same account.
• Make Joker ticket weapons account bound.

 

SERVER CHANGES

• Server login queue.
• Increase population cap and remove Green threat servers. Have an Trainee exclusive server not visible from the District list) only available for new accounts until they get a proper threat level assigned.
• Add the option to turn off other player's customization (turn them into a default Criminal or Enforcer skin) to improve performance for lower end PCs.
• Rework in-mission spawns ensuring you can't have someone spawn X meters away from you with direct LoS.
• Ping considered for matchmaking.

 

OTHER / QOL

• Disable other players' car radio. Please. Pretty please.
• Character and vehicle customization limit increase.
• Increase the drop rate of vinyls
• Twitch integration (streamer mode, Twitch drops, Twitch Prime packs).
• Clan progression and the always requested Clan base/house/club/whatever.
• Create a standard tutorial mission for new players against bots, going over the basics.
• Take faster and harder action against Nazi symbology. Every day I see multiple people with Swastikas and SS uniforms roaming the Social district like there's nothing wrong with that and it's weird AF...

[SmilyFace 300]

DANG, someone crazy like me, friends.

Btw, jokes a part.. I mostly agree with all of your points, excluded few ones under Threat.

 

[SynRapture 7]

6 hours ago, AlishaAzure said:

DANG, someone crazy like me, friends.

Btw, jokes a part.. I mostly agree with all of your points, excluded few ones under Threat.

 

What's your ideal Threat System rework scenario? There are so many possibilities I just went with a few...

BTW, the low population is an issue when rethinking something as impactful as this... if the game doesn't get a good player base bump with the new engine and, hopefully, a new marketing campaign (including events, having some big streamers play for a few weeks, Twitch Prime loot, etc), we migh be stuck with the Threat System we have today.

Edited May 15, 2020 by SynRapture

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

11 hours ago, SynRapture said:

 

• In a completely different, alternative scenario, remove threat level based districts, create a "skill level" value for every player and allow anyone to join any district, but make the matchmaking strict within skill level.

 

 

This is already how threat works. It just shows you a colour, not your actual matchmaking rating.

[SmilyFace 300]

1 hour ago, SynRapture said:

What's your ideal Threat System rework scenario? There are so many possibilities I just went with a few...

BTW, the low population is an issue when rethinking something as impactful as this... if the game doesn't get a good player base bump with the new engine and, hopefully, a new marketing campaign (including events, having some big streamers play for a few weeks, Twitch Prime loot, etc), we migh be stuck with the Threat System we have today.

We can't predict sadly, we don't even know what are the plans of LO after released the engine on beta for the public.

[SynRapture 7]

6 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

This is already how threat works. It just shows you a colour, not your actual matchmaking rating.

I understand what you're saying, but if things actually work like that then how come you get Golds paired against Bronzes, even in full 40/40 Districts? 

I haven't seen anything official from LO, or G1 for that matter... has any clarification ever been provided by the companies regarding how Threat Level/matchmaking actually work?

 

Merged.

 

6 hours ago, AlishaAzure said:

We can't predict sadly, we don't even know what are the plans of LO after released the engine on beta for the public.

Yeah... I'm sure there's gotta be plans to attract new players once things are looking better from the technical aspect. Otherwise they are just throwing tons of money and time to a game just to make maybe 3k people happy.

[SmilyFace 300]

9 hours ago, SynRapture said:

I understand what you're saying, but if things actually work like that then how come you get Golds paired against Bronzes, even in full 40/40 Districts? 

I haven't seen anything official from LO, or G1 for that matter... has any clarification ever been provided by the companies regarding how Threat Level/matchmaking actually work?

 

Merged.

 

Yeah... I'm sure there's gotta be plans to attract new players once things are looking better from the technical aspect. Otherwise they are just throwing tons of money and time to a game just to make maybe 3k people happy.

Yeap

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

16 hours ago, SynRapture said:

I understand what you're saying, but if things actually work like that then how come you get Golds paired against Bronzes, even in full 40/40 Districts? 

I haven't seen anything official from LO, or G1 for that matter... has any clarification ever been provided by the companies regarding how Threat Level/matchmaking actually work?

 

 

Because the system gives the best it can. Even in a 40 district, the actual amount of people it has to pick from might only be as many as 10 since everyone else is already in a mission.

 

There have been official if you go back through the old blogposts from G1, was around 2011/2012 and then further changes in 2014 I believe. Since then it hasn't been touched. RTW used to use the glicko 1 system and G1 then switched to a modified glicko 2 system, both of which are originally based on ELO. The threat colour is purely a general indicator, not your actual rating.

Edited May 16, 2020 by NotZombieBiscuit

[CookiePuss 5379]

On 5/14/2020 at 8:42 PM, SynRapture said:

An actual, working anti-cheat for the game would be nice

An this is where I stopped reading.

Credibility... lost.

[SynRapture 7]

4 hours ago, CookiePuss said:

An this is where I stopped reading.

Credibility... lost.

Why disregard instead of adding value? 

Is anything being done against trigger bot use that we're not aware of? I'm asking with actual, genuine interest.

[CookiePuss 5379]

9 minutes ago, SynRapture said:

Is anything being done against trigger bot use that we're not aware of? I'm asking with actual, genuine interest.

Ive no access to that kind of information.

I was more teasing you  btw.

[WEISSDEATH 57]

19 minutes ago, SynRapture said:

Why disregard instead of adding value? 

Is anything being done against trigger bot use that we're not aware of? I'm asking with actual, genuine interest.

Yes, they’re getting banned.

 

You realize that it’s impossible for anyone to 100% eliminate cheaters? This doesn’t mean the anti-cheat isn’t working, because that logic can be applied to literally every anti-cheat for even letting one cheater get past.

[SynRapture 7]

Just now, WEISSDEATH said:

Yes, they’re getting banned.

 

You realize that it’s impossible for anyone to 100% eliminate cheaters? This doesn’t mean the anti-cheat isn’t working, because that logic can be applied to literally every anti-cheat for even letting one cheater get past.

I know people that has been using trigger bots for years and still play the same characters, and even people invited me to a clan a few weeks ago and were willing to share the trigger bot most of them use, so either they are programming geniuses or third party apps that are not injecting anything (like hacking tools that manipulate the memory) are not being monitored properly. Same happens with macros, but that's way more debatable because not all games consider macros to be bannable, unlike trigger bots. 

16 minutes ago, CookiePuss said:

Ive no access to that kind of information.

I was more teasing you  btw.

My bad. Tones don't usually translate well over the internet.

But I'd love to hear some improvement suggestions from an SPCT member...

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

2 hours ago, WEISSDEATH said:

Yes, they’re getting banned.

 

You realize that it’s impossible for anyone to 100% eliminate cheaters? This doesn’t mean the anti-cheat isn’t working, because that logic can be applied to literally every anti-cheat for even letting one cheater get past.

Lol your anti cheat only gets rid of 99% cheaters? IT MUST SUCK.