APB now got stagnant population - and this is source of all APB problems

[Mitne 725]

While it might sound good from brand point of view (brand loyality and all of that), stagnant population in game isn't anything good.

 

Most of mechanics in APB are based on promise that there will be always new players filling up void of constantly increasing more experinced playerbase to create "skill tiers".

With APB it don't work - bah... it's outright abused by experinced playerbase - and in some twisted way playerbase balance itself out by this... as long as we getting fresh blood that is.

 

We talk about dethreating of course. Dethreating is effectively vampirism. Each time new player joins the game during his first 5 matches is pretty guaranteed to land match against several year veterans playing this game. Veterans prey on unexperinced fresh players and you don't have to look much around - it's commonplace situation even now on all bronze districts in both Jericho and Citadel.

 

Ever tried some unknown MMORPG from depth of internet? Never could get into it and all content locked behind PvP is impossible to reach because of entrenched veterans in PvP? That's how newbie in APB feels.

In APB it's 10 times worse though as APB is 100% PvP game. So new player after several matches most likely having negative opinion being litteraly steamrolled at first matches by top tiers, give up and never comes back.

 

And funny thing is... there is karma in APB with stagnant population.

Ever felt like there is shitton of cheaters around? Well... that's disease of low populated games in stagnancy.

In normal working games with dynamic populations - meeting cheater is rarity, mainly due high population of overall players, to that there is big rotation of them causing cheaters to be mostly flushed out by sheer numbers of all other players.

Anyone wondering how this is correlated should ask themselves this basic question: Where 1 cheater makes big difference? In population of 700 players or in population of 70000 players?

 

So wanna fix problem of cheaters and dethreaters?

Well there are several ways for that - and to understand problems we need to know about two things - skill curve and learning curve.

Here's how they represent themselves right now in my personal opinion:

 

Skill curve:

 

Learning curve:

 

This images were required for me to represent solutions, which are:

 

1. Flatten skill curve - which is impossible as each player is unique on it's own and skilled less or more.

2. Lock people in corresponding sections of knowledge and skill curves - newbie for greens, basic for bronze, seasoned for silver, veteran for gold - quick solution which might create problem of creating new characters just to dethreat and kill off veteran population (due to insanely high skill in group which some might not meet). In positive (but unlikely case) it can create it's own curves within each population (newbies, basic, seasoned, veterans) and prevent intermixing in battles newbies and veterans so the first group can really learn and have fun and other have proper challenge matching their knowledge.

3. Flatten knowledge curve - while you can't make newbie posses veteran knowledge, you can make them posses at least basic one. Proper and interactive tutorial (not current wall of text) - something like we had in past during first years of G1 reign - just learning you to do everything you need to know about APB. That way we at least lift up newbies to basic status - which would help them already a lot. PVE interactivity can also help less skilled players (or this who look for other activities than constant PvP) to enjoy themselves despite PvP competiveness and toxicity - although I imagine brining such action to reality would need total redesign of game.

4. Open discussion? - Democracy is not bad but we as community really need to think of action, not just leave it as it is and say "it's alright" - it ain't.

 

I see LO doing something in regard to players being pushed away by veterans (actions like bringing ARMAs to Joker Distribution are great) but it seems that this actions are not enough.

 

What do you guys think?

[Queen of Love 454]

Dethreating should near to be impossible .

F2p is free 2 cheat , put a 1 dollar for entry.

 

/solved.
 

[Catgorl 67]

Just don't let bronzes get queued in matches with high silvers/golds until they reach that rank themselves, even if they outnumber the competition. It might increase mission finding time, but low silvers are a lot easier to learn against as a bronze than a gold veteran.

[Y2Venom 221]

I think existing players should be rewarded for taking rookies under their belt. New rewards for teaming with new players. New players get to learn from experienced  players. With the current structure, you make more money steamrolling existing players.

[swft 356]

I think the main issue is progression, it needs a major rework. I'm talking about guns, vehicles, modifications and equipment being much easier to obtain for new players to, at least, level the playing field.

Knowledge and skill, are impossible to fix from a gamedev point of view only, the one thing that can be done is introducing better matchmaking, but that will only actually make the game playable for everyone if we have a much bigger playerbase (several thousands of players online).

 

Sadly, this discussion will never lead to a fix since the game is severely unpopulated. You either face people of your skill level and you barely get a match or you face people of lower/higher skill levels and you get matches constantly, those are the only options on the table right now and none of them are good for the game in terms of player retention.

Edited October 4, 2020 by swft

[iLostMolly 10]

LOL what a joke. Maybe people dont play because they actually CANT? OOM every 15 mins. do i really need to downgrade to play a fkin game? 

[Kapler 36]

There's nothing that can be done right now, our unique chance will be when the new engine release and hope for a new matchmaking mechanism with it, as everyone know a simple update on engine is not enough to revive this game.
My suggestion is to add level limit on each district, change the gameplay mecanhic would be fantastic, maybe removing this ridiculous jumps and make the things easier with a new smoother mechanic.

 

[ArtDeco 55]

Every 3 matches I get one different team completely dethreating. I really hope this whole threat thing gets revamped somehow. Or if they just let us pick what threat color to "use" before we go to a match and the option to switch to whatever threat color you want in between matches.

[TheMessiah 430]

2 hours ago, Queen of Love said:

F2p is free 2 cheat , put a 1 dollar for entry.

 

/solved.

pubg is b2p $30 and have more than 5m banned accounts i think..

Edited October 4, 2020 by TheMessiah

[CookiePuss 5384]

2 hours ago, ArtDeco said:

 let us pick what threat color to "use" 

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, are you suggesting letting players choose whether to be bronze silver or gold?

[Raichu 45]

This sort of thing has an impact on the upper end of the skill spectrum too since the skill ceiling seems to have increased alot in past couple of years and the gap between what i always considered a mid-gold and a high-gold has increased. There seems to be alot less mid-golds nowadays.

Edited October 4, 2020 by Raichu

[claude 223]

10 hours ago, Mitne said:

In normal working games with dynamic populations - meeting cheater is rarity, mainly due high population of overall players, to that there is big rotation of them causing cheaters to be mostly flushed out by sheer numbers of all other players.

yeah but how many active cheaters do you really think there are in apb? it works both ways... if the game is dead, less people play it = less people cheat on it.

 

games pop is prob avg 350-450, and you might see maybe... 4 or 5 cheaters every now and then? (probably the same people rerolling) so only 1-2% of the pop is consistently cheating?

 

11 hours ago, Mitne said:

1. Flatten skill curve - which is impossible as each player is unique on it's own and skilled less or more.

2. Lock people in corresponding sections of knowledge and skill curves - newbie for greens, basic for bronze, seasoned for silver, veteran for gold - quick solution which might create problem of creating new characters just to dethreat and kill off veteran population (due to insanely high skill in group which some might not meet). In positive (but unlikely case) it can create it's own curves within each population (newbies, basic, seasoned, veterans) and prevent intermixing in battles newbies and veterans so the first group can really learn and have fun and other have proper challenge matching their knowledge.

3. Flatten knowledge curve - while you can't make newbie posses veteran knowledge, you can make them posses at least basic one. Proper and interactive tutorial (not current wall of text) - something like we had in past during first years of G1 reign - just learning you to do everything you need to know about APB. That way we at least lift up newbies to basic status - which would help them already a lot. PVE interactivity can also help less skilled players (or this who look for other activities than constant PvP) to enjoy themselves despite PvP competiveness and toxicity - although I imagine brining such action to reality would need total redesign of game.

4. Open discussion? - Democracy is not bad but we as community really need to think of action, not just leave it as it is and say "it's alright" - it ain't.

 

I see LO doing something in regard to players being pushed away by veterans (actions like bringing ARMAs to Joker Distribution are great) but it seems that this actions are not enough.

they've talked about making a better tutorial and changing how matchmaking works, they need to push the engine upgrade out before touching anything like that.

 

rather have threat be disabled than have any threat system at all honestly, game is so much more enjoyable when there's a variety of different players and playstyles to play against. i feel like there's not even a point in playing the game if im playing against the same 3 or 4 people every mission. 

[KnifuWaifu 499]

Without really knowing a great deal about the current way threat works I am of course going to throw in my highly (self)valued opinion - I agree that the thresholds between each Threat Colour should be very difficult to cross and maybe even twice if not three times as difficult to dethreat into. A ton of yellow players are really just either lucky or noob-stomping silvers

 

But obviously there isn't a single cure all approach to threat, it needs to be tackled from different angles. Phasing, less flexible matchmaking, and more difficult crossing of threat thresholds are good starts though.

 

Here's some random idea - try to completely deinsentivise Higher Threat players from attacking Lower Threat ones. 

 

Make it cost money instead of win money to kill someone more than 1 tier lower? So like if a Gold kills a Bronze they have to pay money (maybe to the dead player) instead of earn money? If they kill someone 1 tier lower (Gold kills Silver) they just get $0.

 

Another option is to simply have the Gold threat player's money (and JTs to be extra evil) count down the longer they spend in the Bronze district. That would be fun.

 

Increase lower threat damage and health if in matches against higher threats? I know some games (mostly RPGMMOs) have ways of pseudo-levelling up players so they can play together in the same level dungeon, maybe somehow work that into APB? Establish a "happy level" of damage and HP and either increase the lower threat's stats or decrease the high threat's stats to """balance""" the match?

 

Mess with the spawn timers and distances? The higher the threat the more time it should take them to respawn and the further away from the "battle" they should spawn. Increase costs to spawn vehicles by factors of 100? Want to spawn that 4x4 Vegas with all the mods but you're Gold in the Bronze District? That'll be $100k. 

 

Yeah I have no idea what code-fu will be required for any of that, and no doubt just Phasing, Tweaked Matchmaking, and that little Pop-up/District Removal Notice that Matt mentioned is in the works would be a ton more effective at treating the issue with dethreating/threat levels, but it's nice to dream.

14 hours ago, Catgorl said:

Just don't let bronzes get queued in matches with high silvers/golds until they reach that rank themselves, even if they outnumber the competition. It might increase mission finding time, but low silvers are a lot easier to learn against as a bronze than a gold veteran.

Yes. I was around back in the days when the game rarely matched you with lower rank players and remember the 30+ minute queue times, it sucked but I think the veteran players need to take this one for the team so we can grow a healthy base of newer players. Yea it may be simply delaying the problem as they'll have to come up against veteran players eventually but at least in the time they can have a better chance to get a feel for the game.

 

I've said before that new players need some sort of extended protection so they can really hone in on how to play APB and get a grip on it's little quirks before just being let loose on the greater population. 

 

And I have way more fun in balanced matches away - quality over quantity I say and I'm saying that as someone who barely has a few hours a week to play APB anyway and at the end of the day I'd rather spend those few hours in a tiny few good matches than in frequent matches wrangling bronzes/greens/Ts like escaped kittens while getting kerb-stomped by golds(yellows).

13 hours ago, iLostMolly said:

LOL what a joke. Maybe people dont play because they actually CANT? OOM every 15 mins. do i really need to downgrade to play a fkin game? 

As anecdotal as it is - the majority of players that I know that have stopped playing APB have done so due to that OOM issue after upgrading their PCs. They do intend to return once the Engine Update is complete, but as the time goes on they're finding more and more other games to occupy them in the meantime so I feel bad for APB's chances but the good news is that nothing out to date has yet to completely do what APB does that brings us back time and again and no doubt the "release the same trash with a new hat every year" practice that dominates the gaming industry, they'll no doubt come back, it just might be a while. 

14 hours ago, Queen of Love said:

Dethreating should near to be impossible .

Yes definitely, it sure sucks for the silver/gold (yellow) players who rubberband between threats but the vast majority of those are veteran players anyway and like I said maybe we just need to take this hit to our collective egos for the time being to give newer players a chance to get involved in the game before being noob-stomped by the power of 1000+ hours of gametime. 

 

At the very least, they should make it near impossible to dethreat while playing in a District that's below your current threat level, although that could just make the yellow players camp in the bronze server for longer since they no that there's no chance they'll be able to dethreat until they leave, but maybe they could just make it so a Gold player simply can't K up if they're in a Bronze District? And at least the Silver (Gold) Districts will get the occasional player boost. 

Edited October 5, 2020 by KnifuWaifu

[R3ACT3M 489]

I think LO needs to start from scratch with weapon balance. It kinda feels like they are blindly choosing weapons to see how players react. Like a social experiment. Why would they rebuff the oca as an example?

I also think gunplay is too simple. There should be some sort of penetration system in this game, maybe making kev instead of health based make it so lower level kev protects against smgs, medium protect against rifles, and heavy kev has potential to protect against everything. While keeping the movement debuff. I mean how many times has someone ducked behind a cardboard box and the box blocks your NHVR shot? Same with civilians.

Maybe give this game another dynamic and take advantage of buying ammo from the vending machines, by adding Armor piecing or hollow tip rounds, or slug, birdshot, buckshot ammo

Also, a lot of new players and experienced would love getting a battlefield style pop up on their screen telling you about who killed you and with what. I mean how many times did you get into a gun fight and feel like the person you were fighting was on the cusp of dying only to still kill you?

Also the HUD is broken, having your UI scaled to anything but 1 (default is 0) the game is not actually telling you how accurate your gun is.

I think a lot of imbalance comes from mods. It would be easier for LO to balance weapons if weapon mods didn't completely change how powerful or useless a gun is.


LO can change a lot about this game without removing what makes APB, APB

[cowhorseman 441]

i really so no point in fixing anything because all the vets are just going to sit on the forums and cry like the little assholes they are, and the fact of LOs blind fire past with fix things makes me think it would once again be a blind fire attempt to fix this. like how do you keep out dters? take away threat levels? well then everyone is in two servers and you end up with match's like 5 255 gold's vs 5 very real t's and you know what happens? they quit never to bee seen again. tbh it should not be by threat level it should be by rank number. and even ten armas and jt would fuck that up because a rank 9 could still buy a ATAC with mods

still leaving it inbalanced. then what else to fix it? throw some more gun fixs gun nerfs on it? is there a line were you can win without pissing offf the cry babies of this game?

why not give us more maps and rotate them with a new match making system, i also think an issue of "cheaters" isnt cheating it comes from the fact that some of these maps have been played so much you can basically know were and how a player will be coming from and what he will do and you can already prepare to counter it. been called a cheater for that countless times because i've played fin so many times i can drive around it without paying much of attention as to were i am going which well gives me a upper hand on newer players, but if it wasn't fin everyday or every week it would prove harder to learn all the points

make it harder to over power new people and a new threat system would make it more broke up and fair for old and new.

 

of course i'm also half patootie rambling my ideas in a fashion that works to me but more then likely makes no sense because i'm bad at conveying ideas

[Motorola 107]

i either get a bronze on my team vs 3 golds (3 vs 2 with me having a bronze) or my team is dethreating or the op is dethreating.

 

this is unplayable

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

Yet another thread blaming problems that aren't the real reason. Yes APB has problems that affect population, but that was more of a factor in the earlier years. These later years the population drop is almost purely because the game is just so old now,

[Queen of Love 454]

13 hours ago, TheMessiah said:

pubg is b2p $30 and have more than 5m banned accounts i think..

And 100 milioni of players

[JunoSuzuki 99]

51 minutes ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

Yet another thread blaming problems that aren't the real reason. Yes APB has problems that affect population, but that was more of a factor in the earlier years. These later years the population drop is almost purely because the game is just so old now,

I dont think that's a reason. There are lots of old games still being played like Guild Wars 2 that i still play myself sometimes and i see they have a solid Community. Mitne isn't wrong with this assumption. APB is pure PvP and i know lots of people being fed up getting matched against people that are by far better than them. I also tried to help out new players a lot but most of them don't last long. 

 

And why not opening threads about this games problems and make LO aware of it? At least this is not another "THE END OF APB IS NEAR" thread.

[Queen of Love 454]

1 hour ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

Yet another thread blaming problems that aren't the real reason. Yes APB has problems that affect population, but that was more of a factor in the earlier years. These later years the population drop is almost purely because the game is just so old now,

Plus is a mutilated version.

No p5n5, no car mods, no beacon.

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

1 minute ago, JunoSuzuki said:

I dont think that's a reason. There are lots of old games still being played like Guild Wars 2 that i still play myself sometimes and i see they have a solid Community. Mitne isn't wrong with this assumption. APB is pure PvP and i know lots of people being fed up getting matched against people that are by far better than them. I also tried to help out new players a lot but most of them don't last long. 

 

And why not opening threads about this games problems and make LO aware of it? At least this is not another "THE END OF APB IS NEAR" thread.

Compare guild wars starting population to APBs starting population.

[Deadliest 388]

44 minutes ago, JunoSuzuki said:

I dont think that's a reason. There are lots of old games still being played like Guild Wars 2 that i still play myself sometimes and i see they have a solid Community. Mitne isn't wrong with this assumption. APB is pure PvP and i know lots of people being fed up getting matched against people that are by far better than them. I also tried to help out new players a lot but most of them don't last long. 

 

And why not opening threads about this games problems and make LO aware of it? At least this is not another "THE END OF APB IS NEAR" thread.

well Guild wars 2 has been updated with content over the years while APB literally the same when it first came out with just small changes to the game, the only big update I remember was max rank to 255.

 

You have the same 2 district map + the same 2 fight club maps for over 10 years OMG, game got boring for everyone, if you done everything there's no point even playing.

Edited October 5, 2020 by Deadliest

[Mitne 725]

1 hour ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

Yet another thread blaming problems that aren't the real reason. Yes APB has problems that affect population, but that was more of a factor in the earlier years. These later years the population drop is almost purely because the game is just so old now,

That is so wrong, there many games with even older population than ours. Tibia, Runescape or WoW from top of my head are first to come. And while both Runescape and WoW got major change in engine, Tibia for example didn't.

If game is unique, it will hold itself up - as long as it can be played.

 

This game which died during APB lifetime? They either one of thousand games of the same generic theme of MMORPG, simply bad in every aspect or are EA title ( ).

Edited October 5, 2020 by Mitne

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

1 minute ago, Mitne said:

That is so wrong, there many games with even older population than ours. Tibia, Runescape or WoW from top of my head are first to come. And while both Runescape and WoW got major change in engine, Tibia for example didn't.

If game is unique, it will hold itself up - as long as it can be played.

 

This game which died during APB lifetime? They either one of thousand games of the same generic theme of MMORPG, simply bad in every aspect or are EA title ( ).

All of which started with an immense amount more players.

 

Compare games that cam out around the same time as APB, within the same genre/f2p space, and similar staring populations, and it becomes pretty amazing that APB has outlasted all of them and gone on this long.

[R3ACT3M 489]

3 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

and it becomes pretty amazing that APB has outlasted all of them and gone on this long.

The Jason Voorhees of video games.