Can Jericho Merge with Citadel already?

[Shimmer 49]

Lets face it. We all know its coming.  Jericho on a good night has MAYBE 20 people on total in mission districts.  That's it.  Its a literal graveyard, with most nights no active districts at all.  The pop on Jericho has been dwindling for months and its finally just crashed.  Ive been playing some on Citadel which has a much more active player base, but all my stuff isn't over there   When can we expect a merge? because it really needs to happen.

 

 

[LilyRain 674]

Globalization is integrated into the upcoming New Client.

[Hexerin 1140]

12 minutes ago, LilyRain said:

Globalization is integrated into the upcoming New Client.

In the meantime, it'd be nice to have people to play against.

[PANTHER74 2]

I fully support the need for migration, as there is simply no one to play with

[MonkaS 215]

no.

[Deadliest 385]

Peak time for EU and NA are different due to timezone, So if you were to join EU during the night for you it's probably going to be dead.

 

likewise of course NA population is going to die out the game lacks content, what are you suppose to do after you max rank? there's literally nothing going on for them to progress next. Once they log in and face the same players over and over again to the point it becomes so repetitive and boring players lose interest they just quit or rarely play. It seems pointless to continue playing. 

 

APB Reloaded is a decade game and over those years it rarely changed, not even a new Map or at least expand the current maps for WF or FN. Engine update? looks poorly done and long way to go, nothing extra came with the engine update other than new contacts...

 

They not getting enough growth from new players so they could be a potential long time APB player and these days it's harder to attract new players to continue playing.

 

There's probably still some low lifers from NA still playing the game 24/7 they literally don't sleep.

 

If you merge NA to EU, 80% of the Jericho player base would have quit. Only the guys who play the game 24/7 will benefit them and the others cannot play during EU peak time or unbearable latency.  They already Lost 90% of the Asia player base when they merge Han to EU, Oceania player base is somewhat extinct there's probably only 2-8 active players atm, they probably got more Brazilian players than NA players in Jericho lol. 

 

Edited June 15, 2021 by Deadliest

[Nagletz 215]

Citadel have same kind of issues already. There was like 2 - 5 pop this morning, totally unplayable at this point. So you guys maybe want to do something...

[MACKxBOLAN 431]

11 hours ago, Shimmer said:

Its a literal graveyard

Yep, n I've already restarted two chars in EU just for insurance, and getting my name registered over there.

Ya they have hax n trolls, and you have to pick the right time for EU, but there are People there.

You all know me, I do joker jobs, and will till i have all the guns i want on all 5 USA characters. 

Most jobs require a mission and or opp to tag, jam, kill ect. And most of the favorable jobs are in Financial. 

So when the 'Carriers decide to play WF for two weeks I have nothing to do but steal.

 Players should be able to play in either EU or USA and joker jobs should be able to be done in either district Fin/WF

[LilyRain 674]

11 hours ago, Hexerin said:

In the meantime, it'd be nice to have people to play against.

"play" is the problem.

 

OCA-meta was done before, player counts declined and was reverted. And now, history is repeating itself again. APB is a distance-loadout dominated game, which makes OCA 'Whisper' variant at the sweetest spot despite it being objectively the easiest weapon to use and subjectively the most boring. It works most of the time and where it doesn't, one can simply car-gameplay to get within range. Gentle reminder that this is effective since Nov. 25, 2020 (over half a year ago). Add to that the fact that most players are at max rank (many have multiple characters as well)... The game-balance is at a state where anyone who has something better to do (or simply another game where they have some progression to do) won't login to APB, period.

 

Most people won't "play" when the game 75% literally plays itself out. They went too hard on the ideal 'every weapon must have its role and absolutely nothing else (also nerfed some weak weapons, funnily enough LTL included)' and this is the result. In any serious-mission, you choose a meta-loadout and once you do, you are only in control of your distance [and bloom in some weapons], the panic button that is the unnecessarily buffed Med Spray and simply enjoy the show. Moreover, players would abandon missions that are relatively long or severely unbalanced in offensive/defensive areas... There are simply too many gates of bother to deal with even Kempington (SPCT AND most viewed APB-streamer) quit.

 

They made the game more bland & comical than it was and surprisingly they think it is okay to keep it like this with the excuse of 'working on New Engine' (which is currently declared that ONLY MattScott the C.E.O is solely working on it, so there are in fact free hands to work on balancing the game alongside SPCTs). Additionally, objectively speaking, game balance is as important as the New Engine (and even slightly more in some perspectives). Balancing is on a parallel line & must be visited, regardless of whether it happens before/after the client update. If LO was intelligent, it would increase game balance priority as there is no better time to do it than now, they're literally doing nothing but waiting on MattScott's progress (else, they'll do it after the new client goes live with marketing, then most people would be disappointed with the better-looking-but-still-bad state of the game).

 

So while indeed it would be nice, your optimism is higher than your realism. You'd be lucky to play once or twice a week in NA's Fightclub or whatever because with the current mindsets, changes to make people "play" (or at least communicate a description of the new "baseline" of weapon balance) aren't foreseeable very soon.

[Shimmer 49]

12 hours ago, Deadliest said:

Peak time for EU and NA are different due to timezone, So if you were to join EU during the night for you it's probably going to be dead.

 

likewise of course NA population is going to die out the game lacks content, what are you suppose to do after you max rank? there's literally nothing going on for them to progress next. Once they log in and face the same players over and over again to the point it becomes so repetitive and boring players lose interest they just quit or rarely play. It seems pointless to continue playing. 

 

APB Reloaded is a decade game and over those years it rarely changed, not even a new Map or at least expand the current maps for WF or FN. Engine update? looks poorly done and long way to go, nothing extra came with the engine update other than new contacts...

 

They not getting enough growth from new players so they could be a potential long time APB player and these days it's harder to attract new players to continue playing.

 

There's probably still some low lifers from NA still playing the game 24/7 they literally don't sleep.

 

If you merge NA to EU, 80% of the Jericho player base would have quit. Only the guys who play the game 24/7 will benefit them and the others cannot play during EU peak time or unbearable latency.  They already Lost 90% of the Asia player base when they merge Han to EU, Oceania player base is somewhat extinct there's probably only 2-8 active players atm, they probably got more Brazilian players than NA players in Jericho lol. 

 

ive been maxed out on multiple characters for years.   The game has the FUN factor  right, and you dont need progression to want to play.  I do agree lack of NEW maps or content is making it a tad stagnant but having literally noone to play against makes it just not worth it.  

 

Also ive been logging in throughout the day and never had issues getting op on EU but NA is just dead.  

 

I havent had any latency issues thus far.  Been working fine for me. 

21 hours ago, LilyRain said:

Globalization is integrated into the upcoming New Client.

Are you referring to the mythical engine upgrade?  I wouldnt hold my breath, theyve been promising it to us "next quarter" since 2012.  The new engine isnt going to magically save the game either im not sure why people are under the impression its going to do some sort of voodoo and bring this game back to life.  With the pandemic, and all the issues the current team is having with the engine upgrade (they cant even do it and they have to outsource it to find someone that CAN make it work) im not too optimistic that it will ever see the light of day.  They could have built an entire new APB game in the amount of time theyve worked at trying to make that engine work with APB.   So Matt said he was only going to market the game AFTER the engine upgrade, and hes already stated his team cant handle it...so....in the meantime something needs to be done or this game will quite literally die.  There arent enough players currently and im not sure how theyre even staying afloat.  Im sure theyre bleeding money on this.

 

 

Edited June 16, 2021 by Shimmer

[LilyRain 674]

16 minutes ago, Shimmer said:

Are you referring to the mythical engine upgrade?  I wouldnt hold my breath, theyve been promising it to us "next quarter" since 2012.  The new engine isnt going to magically save the game either im not sure why people are under the impression its going to do some sort of voodoo and bring this game back to life.  With the pandemic, and all the issues the current team is having with the engine upgrade (they cant even do it and they have to outsource it to find someone that CAN make it work) im not too optimistic that it will ever see the light of day.  They could have built an entire new APB game in the amount of time theyve worked at trying to make that engine work with APB.   So Matt said he was only going to market the game AFTER the engine upgrade, and hes already stated his team cant handle it...so....in the meantime something needs to be done or this game will quite literally die.  There arent enough players currently and im not sure how theyre even staying afloat.  Im sure theyre bleeding money on this.

LO wasn't close to owning APB back in 2012, the Developers are different but you make valid points.

Yes, the Engine Upgrade on its own won't save the game but it'll save the wills of those who do not wish to start over with a new character in another server. The integration of Global Merge is real and was verified in the series of open beta tests. Those who downloaded the client saw it. It should be up day 1 with the client update.

Hopefully they pull some good game balancing by then or at least admit to their faults and revert some of the recent changes they've been doing 'just because they can'.

[OCrazyGuyO 22]

No, cause LO don’t care about current player  base, just find a new game and move on

[Uhtdred 238]

can we all play east forever so citadel players can actually play?

if we keep playing west, nobody of citadel will ever play US servers.

[EVInezca 81]

Come all to citadel 

[Zyswen 15]

refugees welcome 

[Uhtdred 238]

38 minutes ago, Eviltara said:

Come all to citadel 

the point is to fill US servers not the other way around

[Queen of Love 452]

They can't be so bad, or worst than... Them.

Ok for merge, also if I don't like the idea.

[byMeny 0]

On 6/15/2021 at 8:56 AM, Deadliest said:

Peak time for EU and NA are different due to timezone, So if you were to join EU during the night for you it's probably going to be dead.

 

likewise of course NA population is going to die out the game lacks content, what are you suppose to do after you max rank? there's literally nothing going on for them to progress next. Once they log in and face the same players over and over again to the point it becomes so repetitive and boring players lose interest they just quit or rarely play. It seems pointless to continue playing. 

 

APB Reloaded is a decade game and over those years it rarely changed, not even a new Map or at least expand the current maps for WF or FN. Engine update? looks poorly done and long way to go, nothing extra came with the engine update other than new contacts...

 

They not getting enough growth from new players so they could be a potential long time APB player and these days it's harder to attract new players to continue playing.

 

There's probably still some low lifers from NA still playing the game 24/7 they literally don't sleep.

 

If you merge NA to EU, 80% of the Jericho player base would have quit. Only the guys who play the game 24/7 will benefit them and the others cannot play during EU peak time or unbearable latency.  They already Lost 90% of the Asia player base when they merge Han to EU, Oceania player base is somewhat extinct there's probably only 2-8 active players atm, they probably got more Brazilian players than NA players in Jericho lol. 

 

Look, I'm Brazilian and you're 100% right, in Jericho 75%+ are Brazilian players, we pray for this globalization to happen and have a Brazilian server so we can play with low latency in the EU. I left Jericho months ago, playing with 210 ping, but happy.

[Jilleroo 349]

4 hours ago, Uhtdred said:

the point is to fill US servers not the other way around

The point is to have someone to play with, period. Then when the game isn't out-dated and meme trash it'll fill up naturally.

[iRawwwN 282]

gold rush 2.0 event when

[Delete884943468320878423 172]

Merging by now would mean more work than this game can afford anymore for just 20 ppl lol.

[BlatMan 711]

At least give us functioning servers. NA is all about who gets the least packet loss. EU had high latency but at least when you get a hitmarker it means you hit the player.

 

Seriously though. You're paying for 16+ servers in the US, when only 2 are populated at most. Replace East and West with a central location, like in Kansas, Oklahoma, or Texas. This will cut it down to 8 servers (2 per threat level). You can cut it down to 4 by removing green and gold districts. Those districts are rarely used. Fight club really doesn't need new server spin-up with the current population. You can get it down to 7 servers (4 action, 2 fight, 1 social). This means less cost per server, or more importantly, better servers at the same cost.

 

If you can't change the current infrastructure, removing east or west and upgrading to servers with higher CPU core clocks and more memory bandwidth would cut out a lot of the packet loss issues. Right now the /latencytest shows server tickrate spikes worse than G1's test on AWS. Those tests were done 4+ years ago. Hardware has only gotten better, yet the current servers are somehow worse.

Edited June 20, 2021 by SquirrelFace

[Shimmer 49]

18 hours ago, SquirrelFace said:

At least give us functioning servers. NA is all about who gets the least packet loss. EU had high latency but at least when you get a hitmarker it means you hit the player.

 

Seriously though. You're paying for 16+ servers in the US, when only 2 are populated at most. Replace East and West with a central location, like in Kansas, Oklahoma, or Texas. This will cut it down to 8 servers (2 per threat level). You can cut it down to 4 by removing green and gold districts. Those districts are rarely used. Fight club really doesn't need new server spin-up with the current population. You can get it down to 7 servers (4 action, 2 fight, 1 social). This means less cost per server, or more importantly, better servers at the same cost.

 

If you can't change the current infrastructure, removing east or west and upgrading to servers with higher CPU core clocks and more memory bandwidth would cut out a lot of the packet loss issues. Right now the /latencytest shows server tickrate spikes worse than G1's test on AWS. Those tests were done 4+ years ago. Hardware has only gotten better, yet the current servers are somehow worse.

There are never 2 populated servers on jericho.  At max its barely 1 half full district.

[BlatMan 711]

13 hours ago, Shimmer said:

There are never 2 populated servers on jericho.  At max its barely 1 half full district.

Yup. 1 server populated but there's 16+ running. I don't know who their current provider is but I doubt they're saving money running 16+ when only 2 at max are needed.

 

Going by G1's old requirements, they only need 1 core per district, with high single thread performance. A single server with 4 cores at or over 3.5Ghz can handle NA's current requirements. Social doesn't need to be low latency for the players, so it could be hosted in EU if latency isn't an issue with their character databases.

 

I bet Matt's workstation could run the districts better than what is barely running them currently.

[Sniperturtle 65]

I have copies of my Citadel characters on Jericho. In general i consider Jericho to be less toxic and more fun to play on by the player base resident there. Yet my characters on Jericho are all still below R60. Because playing with 140ms Ping is just no fun. And that's why merging Citadel and Jericho is probably not a good idea.