Matchmaking and Extiction of middle threat levels.

[Queen of Love 452]

How works the threat level system?
Score tabs indicate the first 2 highest scores, and they gain +1 threat level (1 to 10, every ten is a threat level more, i donT know if 100% correct but works in this similar way)
Then the lowest 2 scores decrease by -1, every -10 in a threat level less.

 

What happens usually in a district?

Usually, goldies stomps everything on sight. Score is about 20-1 or 15-0 ,a blatant unfair match, as we see.
This means: lowest score will be ALWAYS the silver or bronze threats. DoesnT bother if win or lose.

Results confirmed:

Silver is going to disappear , and Bronze more, to green, and also the Silver  in Bronze will be a green badge.
Gold will be always Gold cause hardly will be in lowest 2 scores.

Conseguences: 
A bad matchmaking, not only will carry new players away from APB to a safety distance until unistall, but also experienced and loyal players will see no motive for continue playing in mission districts.

Solutions:
There is no one, without including decent anticheat or a massive unreversable threats level (Gold= stay gold, for ever, no dethreating allowed), with MM getting insane opposition to goldies.

 

Q: Are you bronze now?
A: I will get green too in just 2 hours, with this MM. before unistall.

Edit: New Question:
Q: What you would do now? Stop Playing?
A: Nah, just stay in social for do something like this ->

 

 

 

 

Edited August 6, 2022 by Queen of Love
s3s spoiler

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

Good job having no understanding of Glicko rating system and APB's Threat.

[vsb 6171]

On 8/6/2022 at 10:07 AM, Queen of Love said:

How works the threat level system?
Score tabs indicate the first 2 highest scores, and they gain +1 threat level (1 to 10, every ten is a threat level more, i donT know if 100% correct but works in this similar way)
Then the lowest 2 scores decrease by -1, every -10 in a threat level less.

but this isn't how the threat system works

[Queen of Love 452]

7 hours ago, glaciers said:

but this isn't how the threat system works

I got this explaination years ago, neither sure if is true, but could be pretty near.
Which is Exactly the Threat System Working?

 

[R3ACT3M 489]

Threat shouldn't be telegraphed as it just creates more things for players to be toxic about.

A: There is pressure to keep your threat level if your gold cause anything less and you are a lesser player

and
B: New players who don't understand the game like someone who has played for 1000+ hours will assume that anyone who is gold is just a cheater

What people don't know is threat match making is actually a great idea....for a game with a population.....Once upon a time the Gold district was populated. Know what that means? Matchmaking was amazing. Bronze players can't join these districts which means the match making can very easily put together balanced matches. But since most of the time Silver is the only districts populated match making will try and put more enemies against gold players to try and make it fair. How ever this is totally unfair, as a person who has experience is going to be able to outplay all the bronze players they get thrown against. It's not totally their fault, they don't realize it's so important to not get shot in APB (which is why keeping mobile or in cover is so important which is why Waterfront is not a good map)

So, there's nothing to improve about the matchmaking system, but what can be improved is the pool from which this matchmaking system is taking from. This is what Matt had planned (which will be soon tm) The new plan was to allow the matchmaking system to match make across all districts and not just the one you're sitting in. Another easy fix for something like fightclub would be to allow the system to mix and match cops and criminals so that way the games always remain fair, similar to how events are handled.

Threat is not the problem with the matchmaking, it's the lack of population which comes down to lack of new content and some busted weapon balance choices that have been left unanswered for months if not years. With Easyanticheat making a return I guarantee you people are going to cry for BattleEye to come back because Easyanticheat is gonna "not banning cheaters" aka placebo, you think everyone is cheating instead of understanding the game so the anti-cheat must be bad (of course I hope I'm proved wrong)


When it comes right down to it, if APB is not fun right now, then step back and take a break. This isn't the only game around. Take a break and follow the updates surrounding the game and jump back into it to test out said updates. There is no point in getting upset at something that is going to take time to troubleshoot and resolve.

[Queen of Love 452]

20 minutes ago, R3ACT3M said:

Threat shouldn't be telegraphed as it just creates more things for players to be toxic about.

A: There is pressure to keep your threat level if your gold cause anything less and you are a lesser player

and
B: New players who don't understand the game like someone who has played for 1000+ hours will assume that anyone who is gold is just a cheater
---
When it comes right down to it, if APB is not fun right now, then step back and take a break. This isn't the only game around. Take a break and follow the updates surrounding the game and jump back into it to test out said updates. There is no point in getting upset at something that is going to take time to troubleshoot and resolve.

I agree with your entire argumentation.
When a game has no new contents is normal that the only thing to achieve (and focus to ) is a decent win-lose average.
Unlucky this is not easy for a lot of issues. Low population, Pc performance gap...
 

There was a time when W/L was not really important, cause the game was fun. 
With more things to do.
Now is just a Red vs Blue, with a blue able to stun and the Reds Not. 
 

[Weaboos 89]

Silver is the new gold

[JsGangster 5]

There is a solution, because they removed threat districts. They should have added a matchmaking system similar to any other game (MMR depended). A low-gold should only be matched against a high-silver to  low and mid gold. Thus, smoothing the learning curve of a player and not drive new or less experienced people away. There's 1000 of ways implemented in APB to track how well a player performs, but since the last update Matt Scott gave us. I'm convinced they can't even read how the Code works for anything in APB, especially matchmaking, as it is unique and the coder who coded it 10 years ago, is long gone. If they make the decision to recode the whole module for that, a lot of people will come back.
 

If they want to get it fixed, they should start listing priorities and executing them in favor of the customers/players. Giving an update once in a while does not suffice, the game is on constant decline.
At this point the Engine update is just an expensive time consuming marketing campaign by LO, which is not performing well. 

I regularly check on these Forums just to see what progress has been made. It feels like nothing is changing, and we keep getting the same essays without plagiarism.

[TzickyT 212]

no leaderboard no mmr in my opinion ... we can't see what the future brings but this can be a possibile outcome

[CookiePuss 5378]

5 hours ago, JsGangster said:

A low-gold should only be matched against a high-silver to  low and mid gold

and if none are in the district? you dont get to play?

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

On 8/10/2022 at 5:21 PM, JsGangster said:

They should have added a matchmaking system similar to any other game (MMR depended).

 So what they already have now?

[BlatMan 711]

From my perspective we never had middle threat. Even at APB's peak population, gold threat was basically the skill floor. I got to gold the first day I played, and I had no idea what I was doing. I've seen many players do the same. During threat segregation the bronze district was basically the training district. I went in it on a smurf account. It felt like everyone was stoned off their ass. They all just stood in the open and complained when they died.

[Yapopal 168]

The boiler with mash was boiling for 13 years. All the alcohol that gives joy has long flown out of it. All that was left was a foul-smelling goo that caused vomiting. I feel uncomfortable when I play this video game. It all came down to the Vegas, the NTEC, the fast-shooting rifle or pistol. There is no variety. It's a shame that the game has become shit.

Edited August 14, 2022 by Yapopal

[Revoluzzer 274]

On 8/9/2022 at 5:48 PM, R3ACT3M said:

Once upon a time the Gold district was populated. Know what that means? Matchmaking was amazing.

The only time I remember gold districts having any noteworthy population, was when they restricted golds from entering anything else. Which didn't last long, because lots of people stopped playing for that reason.

[Preme 35]

Regardless of if this is how the threat system works you made a good point. It does indeed push the silvers out either by rage quiting or just not wanting to play to get stomped on and also the gold indeed get bored when they are matched against silvers and show no real will to play and contribute to the mission.

 

Im with you 100%

 

Merged.

 

On 8/8/2022 at 11:25 PM, NotZombieBiscuit said:

Good job having no understanding of Glicko rating system and APB's Threat.

And you do? 

[R3ACT3M 489]

On 8/15/2022 at 11:24 AM, Revoluzzer said:

The only time I remember gold districts having any noteworthy population, was when they restricted golds from entering anything else. Which didn't last long, because lots of people stopped playing for that reason.

Once upon a time like I said :3

It still was one of the more fun times I had playing APB and I would call myself decent among the player-base

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

18 hours ago, Preme said:

And you do? 

The difference here I was inferring is that I actually know what the rating uses/how it works and not just assuming like they are.

 

Also the glicko system is easily viewable and there to understand if one wants.

[Revoluzzer 274]

On 8/16/2022 at 8:37 PM, Preme said:

And you do? 

As the link in my signature suggests, I had made a (at least I think) fairly good write-up how threat and matchmaking work in APB and what could be done to improve them. Unfortunately those links are dead, because LO seems to have taken the old forum-contents offline. Guess all those posts are lost in time... like tears in rain...

 

So the short version of my post is this:

At the end of a mission everyone's performance (i.e. your score) is put - individually - against everyone else's score. Each of those results in you either gaining threat or losing some.

There's more to it, though. If your threat level is high and you scored better than someone who's threat is low, that doesn't automatically mean you gain threat if your score is higher. It needs to be significantly higher for that. How much exactly? That I don't know. But the game expects you to perform at least some degree better than a lower threat player and if you don't meet that expectation, you might actually lose some threat, while the other gains some.

But wait, it get's more complex. As you play more and - at some point - improve less, you will meet the expectations of the threat-system more regularly. As this happens, it builds up a confidence-value. And what this does, is slowing down your threat-"progression". In other words, as confidence increases, threat-mobility decreases. A new player will have a confidence-value of 0, thus their threat swings up and down rapidly. A long-lived player will have a high confidence value and their threat moves like molasses. If the value reaches 1, you have to lower it before your threat starts moving again at all. This confidence value is also the reason why it is difficult to de-threat at first and then becomes very easy to gain threat again.

 

 

The threat-level-scale is four colours (visible next to player names) split into ten levels each (nowadays these are hidden), or 40 threat levels in total. But that doesn't really matter, it's just a visual representation of the underlying glicko-values which the system uses. So a Silver 10 and a Gold 1 player can be rated at 1500 and 1501 respectively. For the matchmaking system, that's virtually identical. For players, it's worlds apart.

As such, it does neither make sense to show players at which threat they are, nor to restrict districts to certain colours. Both undermine the entire point of such a rating system and make it either easier for players to manipulate it or harder for the matchmaking system to find appropriate opponents. The latter was supposed to be solved by dynamically moving players into other districts when they get matched with others (LO called this "phasing").

[Preme 35]

On 8/17/2022 at 2:41 PM, NotZombieBiscuit said:

The difference here I was inferring is that I actually know what the rating uses/how it works and not just assuming like they are.

 

Also the glicko system is easily viewable and there to understand if one wants.

How does it work

 

Merged.

 

On 8/20/2022 at 2:02 PM, Revoluzzer said:

As the link in my signature suggests, I had made a (at least I think) fairly good write-up how threat and matchmaking work in APB and what could be done to improve them. Unfortunately those links are dead, because LO seems to have taken the old forum-contents offline. Guess all those posts are lost in time... like tears in rain...

 

So the short version of my post is this:

At the end of a mission everyone's performance (i.e. your score) is put - individually - against everyone else's score. Each of those results in you either gaining threat or losing some.

There's more to it, though. If your threat level is high and you scored better than someone who's threat is low, that doesn't automatically mean you gain threat if your score is higher. It needs to be significantly higher for that. How much exactly? That I don't know. But the game expects you to perform at least some degree better than a lower threat player and if you don't meet that expectation, you might actually lose some threat, while the other gains some.

But wait, it get's more complex. As you play more and - at some point - improve less, you will meet the expectations of the threat-system more regularly. As this happens, it builds up a confidence-value. And what this does, is slowing down your threat-"progression". In other words, as confidence increases, threat-mobility decreases. A new player will have a confidence-value of 0, thus their threat swings up and down rapidly. A long-lived player will have a high confidence value and their threat moves like molasses. If the value reaches 1, you have to lower it before your threat starts moving again at all. This confidence value is also the reason why it is difficult to de-threat at first and then becomes very easy to gain threat again.

 

 

The threat-level-scale is four colours (visible next to player names) split into ten levels each (nowadays these are hidden), or 40 threat levels in total. But that doesn't really matter, it's just a visual representation of the underlying glicko-values which the system uses. So a Silver 10 and a Gold 1 player can be rated at 1500 and 1501 respectively. For the matchmaking system, that's virtually identical. For players, it's worlds apart.

As such, it does neither make sense to show players at which threat they are, nor to restrict districts to certain colours. Both undermine the entire point of such a rating system and make it either easier for players to manipulate it or harder for the matchmaking system to find appropriate opponents. The latter was supposed to be solved by dynamically moving players into other districts when they get matched with others (LO called this "phasing").

Good to know, thanks for explaining

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

On 9/28/2022 at 5:23 AM, Preme said:

How does it work

 

Merged.

 

Good to know, thanks for explaining

Short answer: Like Elo or MMR. There is a hidden number that goes up and down based on how well you do.

 

Long answer: Math

 

APB uses Glicko 2 behind the scenes with some modifications (likely just adjustments to get it to work in APB, display, team adjustments).

[Preme 35]

14 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

Short answer: Like Elo or MMR. There is a hidden number that goes up and down based on how well you do.

 

Long answer: Math

 

APB uses Glicko 2 behind the scenes with some modifications (likely just adjustments to get it to work in APB, display, team adjustments).

Cool, is the hidden number also limited to a certain point of going up? 

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

9 hours ago, Preme said:

Cool, is the hidden number also limited to a certain point of going up? 

Nope. 

[CookiePuss 5378]

19 hours ago, Preme said:

Cool, is the hidden number also limited to a certain point of going up? 

Like is there a point where your ELO stops going up? Yes. Once you hit “gold 10” you can’t go any higher.

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

14 hours ago, CookiePuss said:

Like is there a point where your ELO stops going up? Yes. Once you hit “gold 10” you can’t go any higher.

He means the hidden number. That keeps going.

 

(Though G1 could have actually capped that behind the scenes when interpolating them to coloured numbers but that would be kind of weird.)

[proxie 271]

So many ignorant people, OP is 100% correct in the post.

 

PS. Also add horses and volleyball into the game!