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

[KyoukiDotExe 231]

With these low population numbers you don't want to create more segmentation though but I approve of your detailed post. It's very often the case you get the basic versus the veterans, which isn't fun for neither party.

Stomp or get stomped - never fun to play with or against. I'd argue the curve from basic to veteran is even more larger due how many guns and complex situations APB can have, from missions to weapon load outs.

 

Match making is one of those crucial systems which should be possible after the engine upgrade to take a look at, I doubt they can do anything about it right now nor would you want to spend more time on the old spiderweb code.

[RCooper 182]

Just fix the matchmaking idk why it wasnt first priority to be honest,we wouldnt be in this situation

[Spillra 135]

5 hours ago, RCooper said:

Just fix the matchmaking idk why it wasnt first priority to be honest,we wouldnt be in this situation

They cant create a good matchmaking system with this pop, there needs to be some sacrifice otherwise certain players will never get matches

[proxie 271]

I think they should make the game perma death so nobody wants to dethreat. This would make for much more fair match making. Thanks.

[ShawLOL 50]

2 hours ago, proxie said:

I think they should make the game perma death so nobody wants to dethreat. This would make for much more fair match making. Thanks.

no pls noooo, me and my friend play good.

[Todesklinge 143]

The Engine is to old, there are to much limitations and performance issues to add, realy new content.

 

There is no PvE Content (so player can play together). PvP is a place of hate... in every game i see.

 

Unbalanced weapon and modification system gives the last coffin nail to apb.

 

Then G1 Team have not added new content and mechanics, only Joker Boxes... that was much more nails for the coffing.

 

I have loved APB very much, played about 1000 Hours... but nothing have changed in the last years. Only the Abbington Towers are the last "real content".

 

Some weapons here, some clothing... if i take a view to GTA 5 Online... there are huge world different!

 

What Little Orbit try to do, is to give a dead body a new heart (like Frankenstein), but we dont know what we can see as a result.

 

Another huge problem is the ignorant playerbase, most of players are killing all new suggestion (like mine) to improve the game. They spray hate and toxic arguments, this dont helps the game to survive.

 

New players come and new players go, because there is no balancing, economy, clan, social and more that is missing in the game.

APB is a empty shell, but... its to old.

[xHenryman90x 129]

19 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

These later years the population drop is almost purely because the game is just so old now,

Many MMO games older than APB are more popular, many of them have lots of competitors unlike APB. APB population never grew, you can still see new players around, most of them just try the game and quit obviously. Lack of content and slow development is another thing.

[BlatMan 718]

For me the current skill curve is more like this. This is mostly due to threat segregation. Players that hold gold reach max threat and get stuck there. Players who vary in threat are barely better than new players. If a new player groups with real golds they end up reaching gold and getting stuck there too.

 

 

 

Edited October 6, 2020 by SquirrelFace

[Lign 361]

10 hours ago, Todesklinge said:

The Engine is to old, there are to much limitations and performance issues to add, realy new content.

 

There is no PvE Content (so player can play together). PvP is a place of hate... in every game i see.

 

Unbalanced weapon and modification system gives the last coffin nail to apb.

 

Then G1 Team have not added new content and mechanics, only Joker Boxes... that was much more nails for the coffing.

 

I have loved APB very much, played about 1000 Hours... but nothing have changed in the last years. Only the Abbington Towers are the last "real content".

 

Some weapons here, some clothing... if i take a view to GTA 5 Online... there are huge world different!

 

What Little Orbit try to do, is to give a dead body a new heart (like Frankenstein), but we dont know what we can see as a result.

 

Another huge problem is the ignorant playerbase, most of players are killing all new suggestion (like mine) to improve the game. They spray hate and toxic arguments, this dont helps the game to survive.

 

New players come and new players go, because there is no balancing, economy, clan, social and more that is missing in the game.

APB is a empty shell, but... its to old.

Comparing gta 5 with apb is the stupidest thing I usually see on forums. GTA 5 is pve based adventure game when apb is a competitive arcade pvp game.

 

We have unbalanced weapon system because of the stupid players who had been asking for new weapons for years during g1 era. We have over 100 weapons. It’s just impossible to make it balanced. That’s the reason why big companies that producing pvp competitive games do not add new weapons or add it super rarely. 

 

I won’t be surprised if suggestions you make are something like: we need a new district, new hairstyles, a racing district and we need it right now.

 

The only thing that the game needs right now is the new engine that will let LO get rid of matchmaking per instance, having only up to 40 players to match with and making cross instance matchmaking instead.

Edited October 6, 2020 by Lign

[KyoukiDotExe 231]

2 hours ago, Lign said:

Comparing gta 5 with apb is the stupidest thing I usually see on forums. GTA 5 is pve based adventure game when apb is a competitive arcade pvp game.

 

We have unbalanced weapon system because of the stupid players who had been asking for new weapons for years during g1 era. We have over 100 weapons. It’s just impossible to make it balanced. That’s the reason why big companies that producing pvp competitive games do not add new weapons or add it super rarely. 

 

I won’t be surprised if suggestions you make are something like: we need a new district, new hairstyles, a racing district and we need it right now.

 

The only thing that the game needs right now is the new engine that will let LO get rid of matchmaking per instance, having only up to 40 players to match with and making cross instance matchmaking instead.

Gold medal to you, sir.

 

Feels like you've nailed most things on point.

[Motorola 107]

On 10/5/2020 at 12:19 AM, 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,

there are many "old" games i can name that are way older than APB and have a steady pop and STILL are being updated and maintained. one of them that comes to mind is competitive and they are still balancing it its also like 20 years old.

 

i don't buy the "game is too old" excuse... APB plays good it just needs fixes... once everything is fixed then it can just run on auto pilot like other old games that people are still playing.

 

the MAIN problem that has haunted this game since the begining was its matchmaking. well i honestly think the match making worked better in beta days before they changed it to threat segregated servers... once they started locking people out of servers thats when dethreating became a thing.

[Todesklinge 143]

3 hours ago, Lign said:

Comparing gta 5 with apb is the stupidest thing I usually see on forums. GTA 5 is pve based adventure game when apb is a competitive arcade pvp game.

 

We have unbalanced weapon system because of the stupid players who had been asking for new weapons for years during g1 era. We have over 100 weapons. It’s just impossible to make it balanced. That’s the reason why big companies that producing pvp competitive games do not add new weapons or add it super rarely. 

 

I won’t be surprised if suggestions you make are something like: we need a new district, new hairstyles, a racing district and we need it right now.

 

The only thing that the game needs right now is the new engine that will let LO get rid of matchmaking per instance, having only up to 40 players to match with and making cross instance matchmaking instead.

GTA 5 Online and APB are very equal, just the Content is different. So you are wrong.

 

It is possible to balance all weapons! But it need more game mechanica. Actually the game mechanics of APB is the same like in Counter Strike.

 

I have allready suggested to take a new engine (Unreal 4/5) and from beginning (it takes the same time).

Make Instances for Missions, so there is no chance for griefers etc.

 

Clanwar System in combination with instances for "just" the player they take part on mission.

 

Better Pre-Anti-Cheat. It makes no sense to say hello to every cheater again, on registration.

 

But yeah, you are talking about things you dont understand.

[Lign 361]

On 10/6/2020 at 1:59 PM, Todesklinge said:

GTA 5 Online and APB are very equal, just the Content is different. So you are wrong.

It’s like comparing wow with dota. They’re maybe mechanical similar but they have much more differences than similarity.

 

On 10/6/2020 at 1:59 PM, Todesklinge said:

It is possible to balance all weapons! But it need more game mechanica. Actually the game mechanics of APB is the same like in Counter Strike.

Apb is more similar to cs than gta, I agree with that. But there’s the reason why valve stopped adding new weapons in cs after releasing revolver that turned the game into clownfiesta for a week until they nerfed it into abyss and everyone still chooses deagle over it. Valve actually can’t balance the weapon roaster they have now. Year ago they buffed a bit krieg and aug. So, everyone moved from ak and m4 to using these weapons. And what they got? Pro players started whining in Twitter and asking to nerf it because ak/m4 is the most balanced meta since 1.6. And they nerfed it. And apb has much more weapons than cs. 

 

Merged.

 

On 10/6/2020 at 1:59 PM, Todesklinge said:

I have allready suggested to take a new engine (Unreal 4/5) and from beginning (it takes the same time).

Make Instances for Missions, so there is no chance for griefers etc.

The idea to make missions instanced is a good idea but again it requires the new engine. Porting the game to unreal engine 4 or even 5 is nearly not valuable. They literally have to make a new game. While 3.5 is basically the same engine as apb is being ran with few updates that supports x64 libraries and much better optimization but even this takes a lot of time for LO to port.

 

On 10/6/2020 at 1:59 PM, Todesklinge said:

Clanwar System in combination with instances for "just" the player they take part on mission.

Again it requires a new engine

 

On 10/6/2020 at 1:59 PM, Todesklinge said:

Better Pre-Anti-Cheat. It makes no sense to say hello to every cheater again, on registration.

 

I don’t even want to discuss that subject because it was discussed thousands of times here. 

Edited October 6, 2020 by Lign

[Todesklinge 143]

On Unreal Engine 4 Marketplace, there are ultra much systems (inventory, weapon, car driving, social chat + grouping etc.) Most of them are ready to use in multiplayer... its actually so easy to make a copy nearly to APBs gameplay...

 

Most of the weapons are just a reskin, with some adjusted stats.

[Lign 361]

13 minutes ago, Todesklinge said:

On Unreal Engine 4 Marketplace, there are ultra much systems (inventory, weapon, car driving, social chat + grouping etc.) Most of them are ready to use in multiplayer... its actually so easy to make a copy nearly to APBs gameplay...

 

Most of the weapons are just a reskin, with some adjusted stats.

After that comment I give up on you

[Nev 200]

5 hours ago, Motorola said:

there are many "old" games i can name that are way older than APB and have a steady pop and STILL are being updated and maintained. one of them that comes to mind is competitive and they are still balancing it its also like 20 years old.

 

i don't buy the "game is too old" excuse... APB plays good it just needs fixes... once everything is fixed then it can just run on auto pilot like other old games that people are still playing.

 

the MAIN problem that has haunted this game since the begining was its matchmaking. well i honestly think the match making worked better in beta days before they changed it to threat segregated servers... once they started locking people out of servers thats when dethreating became a thing.

Don't forget the people that thought it was okay to cheat back when the game had a decent population then they come back complaining about what happened to the POP now! Crazy right 

[Mitne 724]

2 hours ago, Lign said:

After that comment I give up on you

Gosh, I watched this train derail at my work.

It's like explaining basic things to flat-earthers.
It was funny. Defintely upvote.

 

Todesklinge represent perfect example of Dunning-Kruger effect.

Edited October 6, 2020 by Mitne

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

3 hours ago, Todesklinge said:

On Unreal Engine 4 Marketplace, there are ultra much systems (inventory, weapon, car driving, social chat + grouping etc.) Most of them are ready to use in multiplayer... its actually so easy to make a copy nearly to APBs gameplay...

 

Most of the weapons are just a reskin, with some adjusted stats.

Sometimes I hope you really are just trolling long term.........

[vsb 6174]

On 10/4/2020 at 8:19 AM, Mitne said:

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

its not impossible to flatten the skill curve, its just hard to do without breaking everything - as an example, the largest skill curve flattening apb has had (imo) was the ttk reduction back when g1 acquired the game, something that's still causing balance problems 10 years later

 

 

Edited October 6, 2020 by 404
typo

[Mitne 724]

6 minutes ago, 404 said:

its not impossible to flatten the skill curve, its just hard to do without breaking everything - as an example, the largest skill curve flattening apb has had (imo) was the ttk reduction back when g1 acquired the game, something that's still causing balance problems 10 years later

 

 

I mean you can affect skill curve but each kind of this change is revolutionary to say at least.

I don't want APB to go in different direction about how guns work as this is both problematic to do properly and also won't help long-term. Skill curve will get flattened but especially veterans such like me will eventually pick up ropes pretty quickly.

Skill curve can remain as it is. It is it's correlation with knowledge which is problematic - it usually don't correspond to what we see. New player with only few hints how to move gets thrown into game against veterans who played this game since OBT, CBT or even RTW. Hardly fair for first party.

Edited October 6, 2020 by Mitne

[PepeHands 50]

It's not only the newbie perspective. APB is very comptetive and it's not casual friendly. This could be both it's good selling point but also one of it's coffin nails. I've 8k hours and I'd play to chill sometimes but you can't really do that in APB. I always see that opposition playing like there was $20k irl prize for each kill and I'm just memeing around because sadly there's nothing to motivate me to play that good anymore.

[Aka2k 5]

The only serious issue that drive people away from this game is the ghost shots. I have never experienced that in any other game ever. Everything else you can live with, even the hackers are not an issue if you can actually hit them. But having a gun loaded with blanks is unbearable and very frustrating. That happens especially with shotguns and very fast firing automatic weapons.

 

Worse than that are the people with perfect hitreg (especially cheaters) mocking this issue like it's a lack skill from the player rather than some stupid kink in the game, that wasn't fixed for 10 years already. On top of that, you get RNG to spice things up. It's a goddamn lottery. People can't hit anything, get angry and move on to something less broken - which is practically any other shooter available.

 

Another issue, also with the gunplay, is how stupid you can't fire fast by clicking fast. You have to carefully time your clicks so the gun don't jam. Either that or brute force with a macro to achieve the gun limit. It's another "only in APB" thing. That's not the worst thing tho, since you can always go for an automatic weapon, which brings us back to the ghost shots issue. Fix this and magically things will get a lot better.

 

Or don't fix and keep doing a philosophical investigation on what killed APB.

[ExpectoPatronum 22]

It's still better and always will be better that a few players won't get quick matches or matches at all, than the entire game no new population.

 

Teehee 2005 comment

[BlatMan 718]

Any other game ever? Here's an exaggeration of ghost shots in other games I've played.

• Escape from Tarkov. There's a bug that causes your magazine to not be loaded when joining a raid. Join a raid, spot a player, mag dump them and deal no damage. Reload, first shot kills them.
• Playerunknown's Battlegrounds. Servers run poorly, there's no latency restriction, and it's flooded with Chinese in all regions. You can mag dump a player, your teammates see you mag dump the player, but somehow none of your shots register server sided, then you get 1 tapped. The death cam shows 1 bullet come out of your gun, while the other player was patiently lining up their shot.
• Counter Strike (played Source & GO). Land multiple hits, lots of blood splatter, no damage in console.
• Rust. This game should be named "Projectile Invalid", because that's all you're gonna see in the combat log.

 

Then there's the games where one of the players is assigned as host, like most of the Halo and Call of Duty series. The host is always right. If your shots missed on their screen it missed. If they shot first on their screen, they shot first. You mag dumped someone but the host is on dial up and never received the shots, your gun never fired.

 

Then there was Warrock, back when it was under Gamersfirst. It had server sided ghost shots. You would always fire 1 more bullet server sided than you did client sided, but it would deal no damage because damage was client sided.

Edited October 7, 2020 by SquirrelFace

[xHenryman90x 129]

On 10/6/2020 at 2:59 PM, Todesklinge said:

GTA 5 Online and APB are very equal, just the Content is different. So you are wrong.

GTA V is not really competitive PvP game. Weapon balance is just awful, why use pistol when you can hipfire with LMG without losing much accuracy? Then horrible player controls combined with unrealistic driving mechanics.