The skill difference between Enforcers and Criminals, and it's affects.

[numlockcapslock 1]

Hey guys I have made this topic to discuss and listen to your opinions.

 

I am mainly going to talk about Fight Club, but I will briefly touch of mission districts. These past months a lot of my game time on criminal has been harder, and I feel that the reason behind it, is that the skill level is lower than what you find on Enforcers. If look at the FC districts you will usually see a higher number of Enforcers in Baylan/Asylum than Criminals. This is not to say that there is never a full district, or that there is more Criminals in that certain district than Enforcers. But usually, the Enforcers always end up winning the match, or rush the Criminals because the population is lower, or because it is filled with less skilled people than the opposite faction.

 

I feel this ruins the fun for a lot of newcomers, and it makes it more frustrating for me to play as a Criminal. If you imagine yourself playing in Baylan Shipping as a Criminal, and 80% of the time you get bombed with grenades when spawning with teammates. Or you might get rushed by 10 enforcers eager for kills because the resistance from the Criminals is so low that there is not much to do. This makes it frustrating, and I imagine that people whose skill level is below average get tired of it.

 

Several times I have heard that Enforcers have a better advantage in missions, or spawns in better. I cannot confirm this, but please let me know if it is true. The real issue lies in that a lot of the veterans, and better players in this game choose to play Enforcer. This is what causes the imbalance of skill level between the two factions. A lot of times when playing Criminal, you end up facing premade Enforcer groups which consist of players with years of game time. For people who is not as experienced, this results in an unfair balance where the Criminals are defenseless.

 

The only real way to solve this is to spread out more, and even out the skill gap. People who are new to the game mostly join the Criminal faction, and therefore we end up with the skill gap. If you go to a Fight Club districts and look at the scoreboard. You will see a lot of times the Criminals are filled with Bronze/Silver ranked players. On the opposite side, there is also Silver/Bronze ranked players, but not close to the same amount that is on Criminals.

[Jilleroo 349]

I don't know, I have a couple R255 on both sides and I think both factions have a lot of talented individuals.

[Flaws 1033]

Most players have one of each faction and play both, depending on district population or if they want to level up said character. Most of us have main characters which can be of either faction. I main enforcer but I consider my criminal to be my secondary main. Most of the things I do on my main I try to also do on my secondary main.

 

It is true that most often new players pick criminal because "crime is more fun" but generally the root of this issue comes from the matchmaking (regarding missions). There are strong players who play on each faction on different days so we can't really pin the skill gap on faction alone. The game's population is the lowest its ever been and as such almost every match is imbalanced. The larger pool of players to pick for the matchmaker the better the matchmaking will be. On top of this, keep in mind that unlike most other games nowadays, APB's MM is limited to the confines of the district you're in. That is one of the worst parts about it. Instead of picking out of the entire world server, it only picks from the small 40v40 pool of players which also introduces other issues such as slow MM.

 

Regarding Fight Club, there is no MM there, its completely free for all so it entirely depends on which faction a stronger player will pick to play on that day. I've seen enforcers dominate FC just as much as I've seen criminals dominate it. FC can't really be helped due to the way its designed currently. Instead of matchmaking X amount of players in a fair match, its just chaos and its better that way for the time being as there are not enough players playing the game. Thus, most players don't and shouldn't really take FC seriously. It doesn't affect your threat level or anything else in any way. You just go there to shoot stuff and thats the end of it.

[CookiePuss 5378]

I cant imagine only playing one faction. 

[vsb 6171]

i imagine a lot of new players do choose to play as criminals at first but i doubt it makes much difference if we were to compare overall faction skill, if only because most "good" players have a character for each faction

 

because of how it works fc is more heavily affected by population numbers, unless the skill gap between teams is incredibly high generally whichever team has fewer people is going to fare worse 

 

there are some slight factional imbalances within specific missions (e.g. enforcers have a vehicle mission that does not require them to break into the vehicle objectives, criminals have a bomb mission that allows them a shorter time for defending the objective) but other than these outliers factions are very much equal imo

[Aeronaut 647]

unless someone is able to come up with documented evidence of why they think a faction has more of an advantage over the other, i can already see that this is going to become a "i feel" type of thread.

[vsb 6171]

1 hour ago, Aeronaut said:

unless someone is able to come up with documented evidence of why they think a faction has more of an advantage over the other, i can already see that this is going to become a "i feel" type of thread.

it'd be kind of neat for orbit to release some statistics of some kind, i still think it was cool when g1 broke out the weapon usage breakdown all those years ago

[Bambola 379]

There's no actual skill difference, or any other, as a matter of fact. The only difference between Enforcers and Criminals is in one's kinkiness, someone likes to cuff, the other likes to be cuffed. 

[R3ACT3M 489]

Lemme tell you from my experience. Criminals are fucking cancer, XD

I was mainly a criminal until I hit 255, then began leveling up my enforcer. There have been times where criminals can be so outrageously toxic that it makes sense that enforcers don't exactly roll over.

I would think that if fightclub was matchmaked to be enf+crim against enf+crim it would be a more fair. People in general would probably play it more as well. 

[RatedX 16]

On 2/11/2021 at 2:41 AM, Aeronaut said:

unless someone is able to come up with documented evidence of why they think a faction has more of an advantage over the other, i can already see that this is going to become a "i feel" type of thread.

Since APB's existance the game has been heavily Crim-sided considering its a known fact that the younger player base want to be "Badass criminals" for quite some time and I believe RTW took this into consideration when creating the mission system aswell as G1 with the spawn system.
 

Here's a couple examples from the top of my head :
 

CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM - https://apbdb.com/missions/JG_FEL4_FoE1/
Stage 3 - Enforcers have to do 3 objectives in the porta cabins within 420 seconds.
Stage 6 - Crims have to burn the SAME portacabins , they get 480 seconds to do it. (+60 seconds for no reason).
 

DIRTY WHITE COLARS - https://apbdb.com/missions/JG_BCM3_Bur1/
Stage 4 - Enforcers have to capture a point , said point takes about a minute to fully capture, if you die it resets to 0 progress. 
Stage 5 - Criminals have to capture the same exact point, said point takes roughly 10 seconds to capture.
 

Bomb/defuse last stages where crims just have to hold the bomb for 3 minutes while enforcers have to hold out for 6. Even if the 6 minutes still run down while the bomb is planted, its still undeniably a crim-sided objective.

Criminals have multiple missions with essentially "free" objectives in the form of vandalism.
Enforcers have a single vandalism target in BANG FOR YOUR BUCK
 

Enforcers have the highest number of missions with 7+ stages, at 10. + about 19(!) 6 stage missions. Crims have just 3.  2 of them being CREME DE LA CRIME (5 actual stages with the last 5 being medium bag pickup for the final scavenger) and EYE WITNESS TESTIMONY having 2 of its 7 stages being just "pass-bys" with a Fresno. | Crims have 12 missions with 6 Stages.

Enforcers also have some of the most difficult missions to complete , a few examples : 

THE HIDDEN MENACE -
This mission has you investigate 2 storefronts , to then trigger the next stage where you have to defuse bombs on those same very stores mind you the bomb defuses takes a surprisingly long amount of time, this pattern repeats for stages 3-6 , ends in the crim sided bomb/defuse stage
 

DIAL-A-DETONOR - 
You have to hack 3 sattelites in extremely open spots, those hacks take an unreasonably long time aswell.

I've also noticed and managed to clip crims getting unreasonably close spawns to the objective to the point where it feels like were fighting 5-6 guys instead of 3-4.
This spawn discrepancy is even more noticeable when killing a crim near their previous attack spot grants them a spawn 300-400m away right outside their new attack objective.
This spawn system segment falls into the "I feel" category so feel free to not take it into consideration.
 

[Hexerin 1140]

1 hour ago, RatedX said:

This spawn system segment falls into the "I feel" category so feel free to not take it into consideration.

You are absolutely correct on the subject of the game's actual design heavily favoring the criminal faction.

 

However, as you clarify in the segment I left in the quote, the spawn system is just a simple case of perception bias. I've raised a multitude of characters in both factions over the 10 years I've been playing this game, and I can confirm that both sides are relatively equal on spawns. They spawn system just simply sometimes gives you good ones, and sometimes fucks you over.

 

That being said, there are certain sections of the two maps that kinda break the spawn system. The most well known of these is of course the warehouses on the shoreline in Waterfront. One side will pretty much 100% of the time get fucked over with spawns on the other side of the artificial river. Which while only like 50-200m from bird's eye, is more like 300-500m in actual travel that cannot be hoofed on foot for shortcuts like most bad spawns can be.

[EMilika 41]

1 hour ago, Hexerin said:

You are absolutely correct on the subject of the game's actual design heavily favoring the criminal faction.

 

However, as you clarify in the segment I left in the quote, the spawn system is just a simple case of perception bias. I've raised a multitude of characters in both factions over the 10 years I've been playing this game, and I can confirm that both sides are relatively equal on spawns. They spawn system just simply sometimes gives you good ones, and sometimes fucks you over.

 

That being said, there are certain sections of the two maps that kinda break the spawn system. The most well known of these is of course the warehouses on the shoreline in Waterfront. One side will pretty much 100% of the time get fucked over with spawns on the other side of the artificial river. Which while only like 50-200m from bird's eye, is more like 300-500m in actual travel that cannot be hoofed on foot for shortcuts like most bad spawns can be.

are you sure? i as criminal always spawn 150 or more from the item or whatever
when i see enfos spawn next to it. literally.

[RatedX 16]

19 minutes ago, EMilika said:

are you sure? i as criminal always spawn 150 or more from the item or whatever
when i see enfos spawn next to it. literally.

Like hexerin said, the spawn system might be a matter of perception bias, as an enforcer main I notice the crims getting better spawns you notice the other way around.

But one thing is certain, the spawn system is completely busted when you fight on the edges of the map or around locations without possible spawns.

For instance, if you're fighting on the crim money laundry in financial you can effectively only spawn South or South-er, or West and West-er regardless of crim or enf.

Waterfront is plagued with busted spawn locations given that its essentially a hallway with 3 playable lanes with the spawns in the docks to the north being horrendous.

[Queen of Love 452]

No segregations scenario:

Team A: SuperGold not dethreating plus average player and a total noob.
Team B Gold, another Gold, not dethreating ,average player, maybe a noob worst than the one in oppo.

 

Result: Team A vs Team B play both for win and do what they can.

Segregation scenario:
Team A: same superGold dethreat or no, we will never know. average player stomped cause the total noob already left due to facing Gold oppo alone.
Team B: both gold dethreat or no, is random, average bored for easy kills, or stomped due to SuperGold  is NOT dethreating but own team is, unistalled game after 2 stages, supernoob still trying to understand what is going on. then realizes that community is full of toxic dethreaters or tryhard, depends.

Result : Team A and/or Team B will never play again.

Which scenario you will prefer? (if you play legit, obvius)

[succubatty 0]

10 hours ago, R3ACT3M said:

Lemme tell you from my experience. Criminals are fucking cancer, XD

I was mainly a criminal until I hit 255, then began leveling up my enforcer. There have been times where criminals can be so outrageously toxic that it makes sense that enforcers don't exactly roll over.

I would think that if fightclub was matchmaked to be enf+crim against enf+crim it would be a more fair. People in general would probably play it more as well. 

Big agree with this, I think they totally missed out on fight club being a truly unique experience by not mixing factions in it.

 

I think there are one or two LTL weapons that are a little overpowered unless you waste mod slots building purposefully against them, and that feels kind of cheap to me. I assume more skilled players tend to trend towards Enforcer simply because your primary motivation of making money is.. well, hunting people. As criminals you can farm in empty districts.

Arresting as a concept is also insanely powerful, and I think it's kind of silly to me that the criminals in this game wouldn't have decided to also use tazers and cuffs or zip-ties for taking cops hostage. I think LTL & Arresting are a really boring and cheap way to make the factions different.

[vsb 6171]

1 hour ago, succubatty said:

Big agree with this, I think they totally missed out on fight club being a truly unique experience by not mixing factions in it.

 

I think there are one or two LTL weapons that are a little overpowered unless you waste mod slots building purposefully against them, and that feels kind of cheap to me. I assume more skilled players tend to trend towards Enforcer simply because your primary motivation of making money is.. well, hunting people. As criminals you can farm in empty districts.

Arresting as a concept is also insanely powerful, and I think it's kind of silly to me that the criminals in this game wouldn't have decided to also use tazers and cuffs or zip-ties for taking cops hostage. I think LTL & Arresting are a really boring and cheap way to make the factions different.

apb was designed for the factions to be asymmetrical, ltl is just one of the last elements to still exist currently

 

ltl is definitely not overpowered in any way but i have no issue with allowing criminals to use it as well 

[yourrandomnobody74 106]

On 2/11/2021 at 3:41 AM, Aeronaut said:

unless someone is able to come up with documented evidence of why they think a faction has more of an advantage over the other, i can already see that this is going to become a "i feel" type of thread.

nade damage leveling up prestige, thus being a essentially a wallhack?

Edited February 12, 2021 by qb

[CookiePuss 5378]

Back in the FF days 55% of cheaters were enforcers compared to just 45% crim. 

I wonder if that's still true and if maybe it effects the perceptions expressed by some in this thread. 

[vsb 6171]

2 minutes ago, CookiePuss said:

Back in the FF days 55% of cheaters were enforcers compared to just 45% crim. 

I wonder if that's still true and if maybe it effects the perceptions expressed by some in this thread. 

considering fairfight's lack of upkeep, repeat offenders, and questionable ban practices in general, who even knows if those percentages are accurate

[Shui 225]

8 minutes ago, CookiePuss said:

Back in the FF days 55% of cheaters were enforcers compared to just 45% crim. 

I wonder if that's still true and if maybe it effects the perceptions expressed by some in this thread. 

Thats a lie dude.
More like 90% Enf, thanks to my boy Film.
Funny he griefed his own main faction since his main was a Crim lol

[Hexerin 1140]

On 2/12/2021 at 4:28 AM, succubatty said:

I think there are one or two LTL weapons that are a little overpowered unless you waste mod slots building purposefully against them

How to show that you have no clue what you're talking about in one simple sentence.

[BlatMan 711]

1 hour ago, Hexerin said:

How to show that you have no clue what you're talking about in one simple sentence.

Stun grenades are a bit op since they can 1 shot stun, but you sacrifice your regular grenades so there's a trade off. PIG used to be op, but the reduction in stun damage balanced it out. NL9 is a bit OP compared to the other stun weapons since it can 3 shot stun up to 50M and deals 200HP damage a shot. It deals more HP damage than the lethal variant the 'Corsair' after 35M.

 

But, I get what you mean since LTLs can't be modded.

 

Even then, it's not the capabilities that are an issue, it's the long wait time after being stunned and then arrested. It's usually new players getting farmed so experienced players can unlock their cop stuff. I think the cop items like lights and clothing should unlock at a lower level.

Edited February 13, 2021 by SquirrelFace

[Hexerin 1140]

13 hours ago, SquirrelFace said:

-snip-

Go create an enforcer, and then rank up the cop role to cap. When you've done that, come back and try making the same post again with a straight face.

[BlatMan 711]

7 hours ago, Hexerin said:

Go create an enforcer, and then rank up the cop role to cap. When you've done that, come back and try making the same post again with a straight face.

I have, on multiple characters. It's why I can understand were the other person was coming from, but also know the trade offs and that overall it's annoying to rank.

[isaac-the-dad 41]

4 hours ago, SquirrelFace said:

I have, on multiple characters. It's why I can understand were the other person was coming from, but also know the trade offs and that overall it's annoying to rank.

 

12 hours ago, Hexerin said:

Go create an enforcer, and then rank up the cop role to cap. When you've done that, come back and try making the same post again with a straight face.

Hey guys why is cop role annoying to rank?