Matt Scott, disappointment.

[Parolyzed 9]

Matt Scott, and his company Little Orbit, have allowed the game to get to an almost unplayable state, so much is common talk amongst the frustrated playerbase of APB.

Moreover he is placing so much of his attention on trying to deliver even a slither of that promise to "upgrade" APB, which has been almost comical in the way the promise keeps getting downsized.

All this is part of his failure to do his due diligence before acquiring APB: Reloaded, he failed not only to know the game and its deep rooted issues, but he also failed in knowing his team and their capabilities.

 

Currently a new player entering the game will be faced with players who — as they gained experience in APB over the course of thousands upon thousands of hours — also lost their basic decency and sportsmanship in the process. That is what APB does; it is a toxic wasteland, it grinds down a person's humanity if they aren't careful to preserve it.

The new player will get stomped out by pre-made teams of highly experienced veterans of APB, and if they should be so lucky that a highly skilled veteran should end up on their side, that veteran is likely to refuse to play in a team with a newbie, will not make an effort, in order to preserve their ego, or outright restart the game to get out of the team of the new or low-skilled player. You should be aware how highly developed the sense of fairness is in human beings, and none of this feels fair.

 

No technological breakthrough will make this better, LO could figure out how to make APB run on a quantum computer for all I care, and still the community would be defeating any possibility of the game's recovery.

If Matt Scott wishes, I can outline for him all of the toxic behaviours that I see in the game, I'll be a wasteland tour-guide if he needs me to, just so that he gets a grasp on the reality.

 

If you can not make the game feel fair, perhaps you should give players an escape. Those players who would outright quit APB because of how unfair PvP feels, might be kept in by further PvE options, if PvE were viable to avoid PvP, and to progress contacts.

I do not know what percentage of the APB community would be "pacifists" just looking to customise their characters and vehicles and do co-op activities, but I would say that already at least 10% of a district will have these wallflowers hanging out, who only occasionally will play missions, and not for long, as they are not able to be competitive. These wallflowers could be another source of cash-flow for this cash-starved game, perhaps a PvE district is in order, wherein you would flesh out these cooperative rather than competitive activities.

 

This would not negatively impact the players available to missions, since these "wallflowers" rarely actually participate in missions, and take up district slots. You could incentivise them to spend time, and money, and clear them out of mission districts with a PvE district.

 

I just can not stand the sense that so much hope is placed on a performance upgrade.

Then again, perhaps Matt Scott knows these deep-rooted issues, and he doesn't actually think he can get this game up to a viable orbit again, he just keeps it around as a training environment for his devs, as he claimed that R.I.O.T mode was, in the end.

[GabsS 10]

Well, apb is known by old people, for veterans. There is not publicity about the game, people do not stream, servers are dead so no one new is going to play.
Matt is taking care just to upgrade the game, because is better renew the game to show something "new" than repair a game that just a few veterans play.
If you want them to take care about the current state of the game, take a bunch of people, make publicity, streams, show the game for the new generation. I can sign that if you have a couple of servers full, like 300 pop playing at the same time they clearly will not lose em.

[AlienTM 138]

saw the title and didnt read..learn manners

[cowhorseman 441]

matt scott isnt FE or APBs daddy. hes a CEO trying his best to work with old defunct tech to improve the game play of two games g1 abused like a step child

 

I'm not sure why after several years this has not been beat into peoples head, you seem to all think your tech wizards remaking the same post over and over. fairly sure judging by how long most of you hold grudges talk as well as treat behave. That is that most of you are little gremlins dwelling in a cave somewere, and have not seen a human or worked a job in X years

 

Seriously if you ever went and screwed with code it isnt a drag drop copy paste boom done in 15 mins or less like your microwaved hotpockets. shit takes time, even longer when shit is broken.

and not everything needs to be public.

 

 

[Genobee 143]

1 hour ago, cowhorseman said:

matt scott isnt FE or APBs daddy. hes a CEO trying his best to work with old defunct tech to improve the game play of two games g1 abused like a step child

 

I'm not sure why after several years this has not been beat into peoples head, you seem to all think your tech wizards remaking the same post over and over. fairly sure judging by how long most of you hold grudges talk as well as treat behave. That is that most of you are little gremlins dwelling in a cave somewere, and have not seen a human or worked a job in X years

 

Seriously if you ever went and screwed with code it isnt a drag drop copy paste boom done in 15 mins or less like your microwaved hotpockets. shit takes time, even longer when shit is broken.

and not everything needs to be public.

 

 

Regardless that does still seem to be the most common public opinion. People haven't seen much in the way of forward momentum in the live service. Then what has been does is tainted by things like the APB IP being sold off to a no-name Chinese company.

 

I get that the guy is trying to turn around the game. I truly do, but I also get why people are upset. What they see doesn't look good. Even if progress is being made behind the scenes. Rarely does a customer care that there's a good reason for shit hitting the fan. Which I'm betting makes things a living nightmare. Having a good public image for any online service is crazy important. While a lack of one only serves to hurt things more, but LO isn't going to right that ship until he gets something out the door I'm betting.

[vsb 6171]

14 hours ago, Parolyzed said:

No technological breakthrough will make this better

14 hours ago, Parolyzed said:

If you can not make the game feel fair, perhaps you should give players an escape. Those players who would outright quit APB because of how unfair PvP feels, might be kept in by further PvE options, if PvE were viable to avoid PvP, and to progress contacts.

i think you're a bit confused bud, if fixing the code wont save apb then why are you suggesting stuff that requires fixing the code?

 

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

Instead of asking for APB to have PvE stuff, how about you just play a different game that caters to PvE stuff? Just go play the Division 2.

 

And how is the toxic community and Matt Scott/LO issue?

Edited October 15, 2022 by NotZombieBiscuit

[Gateron 267]

He had one job reimplanting EAC but, instead he downgraded to a anti cheat that already was compromised. With EAC the only thing cheaters could use was triggerbot and WH but, that is better than getting killed in 0.4 seconds by r70 with an edgy name.  Now they have both wh and aimbot. At this point i just want to see the game being declared closed so, all those psychopath cheaters lose meaning in life since there goal seems to just play blatant or closet all day long in a dead game.

[AlienTM 138]

well i read it anyway

If they make option to go only against players same threat as you when u go ready(K)even if u have to wait more-thats the only way i can think of with current amount of players and this mission system(for fair matches)This or u have to completely remove the current mission system for the big maps and replace it with another game mode where u can also get exp and progress the contacts.Maybe theres more ways to change things but if u keep the game without some major changes-new players will keep leavin(old as well)

What pve options?This game dont have..gonna be a lot of work to make some(if even possible)

The game need changes right now.This 64bit upgrade not gonna happen in next 1 year-thats clear.They are far from even loadin Social into the editor.Fixin and gettin ready the entire game will take another eternity.So even if u have to put a side the big thing-spend time on current game and think how to make things better

Edited October 15, 2022 by AlienTM

[Parolyzed 9]

No debate necessary. I hope LO devs give this a read and some consideration, and that is all I can hope for.

Whether something is viable or not is up to them, and I really just wanted to get my two cents out there, as you permanent forum dwellers have done countless times before I even considered making an entry of my own.

 

Perhaps soon the forum will be all you will have left of APB. Even if there are no further coding setbacks, and the game gets that 64-bit update, how far down the optimism well do you lower that bucket nowadays, to bring up any notion that this will turn things around for the game.

 

P.S.

6 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

Instead of asking for APB to have PvE stuff, how about you just play a different game that caters to PvE stuff? Just go play the Division 2.

 

And how is the toxic community and Matt Scott/LO issue?

 

I think the answers are obvious to both these points, and if they are not, or if you do not have the character strength to admit to understanding them, then I will leave you to hold that opinion of yours, surely it serves you somehow.

[MACKxBOLAN 430]

4 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

And how is the toxic community and Matt Scott/LO issue?

First let me say You all make valid good points, in a way he is preaching to the choir.

Any addition or change in the game mechanics would require someone to write the programs in.

This would take allot of time and LO resources n to tell the truth they'd probly mess it up n then we'd be stuck 

with a days of down time or more while they fixed it.

   @NotZombieBiscuit People were already Toxic/Angry when LO got here.

Ranging from mistrust or issues with G1, ff false bans, to player v player hate.

All that rage is still here, never went away, although not Matts fault, things that he has changed since the take over

such as weapon balance, voice, no-threat district, MM, ect have.

Including a whole new slew of player on player grief due to them putting us all together.

Matt is CEO and Owner, and he is also the one writing the new games code, in addition to 

other outside obligations he tends to. He doesn't delegate any other Executive or General Staff

to run APB and deal with issues, nor does he delegate the coding while he is out of town.

In the end He is ultimately responsible regardless of delegation.

  Allot of it is not directly Matts fault or doing, but re-directed anger by those that see Him as one 

at fault for their having to deal with what ever the issue may be.   

  

[OliverB 4]

It has been nearly a decade since I last played, but I think the vitriol isn’t nearly as present as it used to be. Probably the result of the lack of players and how this game’s death has never been so close due to said lack of players. It feels like nothing really matters anymore, so why develop or maintain an ego when it might be all over tomorrow? My recent experience is limited to half a dozen missions, but I have yet to encounter cheaters (though I’m sure some are still out there), tryhards that could match the Japanese opp on Colby West or even disagreeable players. There are still hackusations in chat, though I’ve played against the players who had been targeted, and really didn’t have a problem against them despite not playing anything other than FF14 for the past 9 years.

 

Regarding the engine upgrade, there’s no way anyone here actually believes it is gonna come out. Just look at the average joined date of forum members. Finding someone who’s been a member for less than 2 years is nearly impossible and most have been here since 2015 or even further back. We’ve all seen the empty promises and if the people managing the game previously didn’t succeed after all these years, what makes you think the new management can do it with even fewer resources? Money would have been better spent nurturing this game’s community, but the big hand is about to bury the twelve. 

 

I wish there were organized Bayland sessions on the weekend or something.

 

Here's a banger straight from the vault for Colby players.
 

 

[VanilleKeks 736]

You know part of my job is to write technical specifications for software. I had already been relatively merciful on LO because while it's not for games, I did and do work in a comparable industry which gives me some good insight.

 

Half a year ago I started working for a big player with decades of history. We have some old software, and I mean OLD software that is our own, with even some of the team left that created it decades ago. Whenever we have to work with these old versions it's horrendously tedious and time consuming and we created the damn thing.

 

Now to imagine working on old software and code, when you haven't even written it yourself and you have (most likely) limited documentation from the previous owner:

 

At this point I respect LO for even being at it after all these years. Working with APB probably sucks patootie.

Edited October 16, 2022 by VanilleKeks

[Parolyzed 9]

My profile picture was removed for violating community standards. And as I wrote in response to the person who removed it, I appreciate them doing so.

It depicted some symbology on a player's car that should be inexcusable, considering the horrors that it supports. I had used that screenshot as my profile picture as an illustration of some of the toxicity that is rife in the game itself.

 

If we only had someone to take care of these matters in the game, as they take care of them on the forums. And this is one way that the toxicity of the community falls within the responsibility of Little Orbit, and by natural extension Matt Scott. That these kinds of things are commonplace in the game, is my evidence that nobody really has eyes on the realities that drive players away.

 

Often there is more of a fight happening outside of missions, with abusive messages or griefing as its methods. And one of the features that make APB so magical, has become one that makes it a breeding ground for the worst of human online behaviour: the way you are perpetually in the same room as your opponents from the previous missions, and the missions to come. Once that mission ends, frustrations, resentments, and pure malice demand their release.

One of my disappointments has been with the GMs, and here I go again with some demand that you can easily say is not viable: GMs should not be volunteers from within the community.

People laden with biases and allegiances, should not have this role that demands impartiality. This role should be staffed by full-time employees, who will be experts in the community standards, will record and file evidence, and act with fairness and decisiveness against those who now seem to firmly believe (and rightfully so) that their actions will not have consequences.

 

Merged.

 

P.S. a good option would be to make it so that when a player is muted, their customisations would no longer be visible to the person who muted them. Avatars would become the default that we see as we load into a district, and the vehicles would be the default form. Again demanding some coding, isn't that cheeky?

[CookiePuss 5378]

41 minutes ago, Parolyzed said:

This role should be staffed by full-time employees

honestly, I'd be surprised if LO has the budget for that

37 minutes ago, Parolyzed said:

P.S. a good option would be to make it so that when a player is muted, their customisations would no longer be visible to the person who muted them. Avatars would become the default that we see as we load into a district, and the vehicles would be the default form. Again demanding some coding, isn't that cheeky?

an interesting idea, to be sure
but I'd be shocked if something like this was even possible

 

 

Edited October 16, 2022 by CookiePuss

[vsb 6171]

1 hour ago, Parolyzed said:

Again demanding some coding, isn't that cheeky?

mostly just silly, considering you started out the thread bashing the attempts to fix the game's code

[Drischa 6]

The initial post seems like your main problem is that new players have to face experienced ones because there is little to no separation in the matchmaking to account for the different skill levels in the game, and you have put this down to LO's decision to make the game run on no-threat districts where all players mix.

While this is true, I don't think it is fair at all to place this on LO. The game simply does not have the population to support multiple districts or a wider array of skill levels in matchmaking. If the game's popularity picks up in the future then it might be possible to look at other solutions to this such as returning to threat-based districts or MM, but with the population as small as it is (at least when I've been playing recently) I think it's the only solution for now.

The problem you described is not one with LO or Matt - it's one with old low-population pvp games such as this.

[Parolyzed 9]

1 hour ago, glaciers said:

mostly just silly, considering you started out the thread bashing the attempts to fix the game's code

Well, that was your interpretation of it. See, I don't really get why we are discussing this. That is a part of the problem with the permanent Forum folk, you appropriate to yourselves the role that is really not yours to play. And I am supposed to set you right? Explain myself to you? To what end?

[R3ACT3M 489]

On 10/14/2022 at 1:16 AM, Parolyzed said:

Matt Scott, and his company Little Orbit, have allowed the game to get to an almost unplayable state

Funily enough I think the game is in a better state than it ever has been. Most guns are usable albeit I wish some were buffed to level out the competition but I understand not wanting to buff weapons you have to pay for. Currently the "unplayable" part for me is how often the game stutters especially in engagements when you you really need the smoothest gameplay.

 

On 10/14/2022 at 1:16 AM, Parolyzed said:

Moreover he is placing so much of his attention on trying to deliver even a slither of that promise to "upgrade" APB, which has been almost comical in the way the promise keeps getting downsized.

Honestly I'm impressed with the devotion to understanding this game. He identified that trying to switch APB to a new engine was not going to be feasible, It started with trying to finish what GamersFirst started (Which was probably a lie just to get LO to buy G1) and after was it 2 years or so they realized that a lot of corners were cut in G1's efforts. So they decided they would try to start from scratch. They got a lot done. So after realizing that it was just not going to be possible to migrate engine they took a step back, and worked on some Work for Hire projects. Then it was finally understood that APB does not simply run on Unreal Engine 3, but an early version of Unreal Engine + A lot of Core code rewrites Real Time Worlds made to get the features they wanted into the game. So with this identified Matt has so far come to the conclusion that upgrading the current engine would make sense. And not all is loss as when working on the engine upgrade a lot of the code can work for apb 1.2 which when this 64bit upgrade is done will become apb 1.3 iirc.

 

On 10/14/2022 at 1:16 AM, Parolyzed said:

Currently a new player entering the game will be faced with players who — as they gained experience in APB over the course of thousands upon thousands of hours — also lost their basic decency and sportsmanship in the process. That is what APB does; it is a toxic wasteland, it grinds down a person's humanity if they aren't careful to preserve it.

The new player will get stomped out by pre-made teams of highly experienced veterans of APB, and if they should be so lucky that a highly skilled veteran should end up on their side, that veteran is likely to refuse to play in a team with a newbie, will not make an effort, in order to preserve their ego, or outright restart the game to get out of the team of the new or low-skilled player. You should be aware how highly developed the sense of fairness is in human beings, and none of this feels fair.

You clearly weren't around for that ask me anything stream a while back. But the new player experience is stuff they have already thought about and have ideas for. Also I do kinda agree with: "also lost their basic decency and sportsmanship in the process." even though I also think that's crap. I think you have to be a pretty deprived person to only care about winning but it's not APB's fault you're like that.
 

On 10/14/2022 at 1:16 AM, Parolyzed said:

No technological breakthrough will make this better,

IIRC the netcode improvements will allow for phasing to become a thing. What's that? Well APB's matchmaking is not actually that bad. Part of it is you can see how strong opponents are which is not a good thing for anyone. Seeing your threat puts you in a position where you feel like you have to defend that rank. Cause if you're not gold you're bad at the game to which does confirm your point about only caring about winning. So the sooner threat is hidden from player eyes the better. Next back to phasing, the matchmaking currently can only match players Enforcer vs Criminal (duh) districts only hold a max of 80 players. So what does that have to do with match making? well the matchmaking only matches people in that district, so it can only pull people from those 2 groups of maximum of 40. So this leads to repeat matches and poor match making simply because the game can't do better. I personally think Fight Club should matchmake crims mixed with enforcers to keep the matches fresh and balanced.

So the plan with Phasing is to allow the matchmaking to pull people from other districts to play with or against you. This in theory should massively increase the amount of people matchmaking can use to put against you and with you. So this WOULD be a technological breakthrough that will help the game out massively.
 

On 10/14/2022 at 1:16 AM, Parolyzed said:

If you can not make the game feel fair, perhaps you should give players an escape

Then people would be doing that all the time, /abandonmission allows you to leave an empty game (which should be removed) . Granted if you punished players for leaving matches then I suppose that match quitting would be acceptable. (like leaving too many matches, have a matchmaking cool down)
 

On 10/14/2022 at 1:16 AM, Parolyzed said:

further PvE options,

Matt stated before he does not want to bog down the game with more advanced AI. How ever I think a stepping stone they could try for halloween could be a simple mass scale zombie survival mode. Where everyone has to team up to defeat waves of the undead. The ai would not have to be complicated and it could be a generally fun event to test out PVE related content.

 

On 10/14/2022 at 1:16 AM, Parolyzed said:

I just can not stand the sense that so much hope is placed on a performance upgrade.

 I dont think anyone thought the engine upgrade would save APB, it's the stepping stone that should allow future updates to be easier to implement.

You NEVER want to add features to a code base that doesn't easily allow that as you could end up adding one thing then breaking 7 other things in the process.


In the end ill keep saying this. If you don't like the game just don't play it. A lot of other games are available, join the APB discord and watch for notifications on news and info. Then come back when you think the game is in a better spot

[vsb 6171]

50 minutes ago, Parolyzed said:

Well, that was your interpretation of it. See, I don't really get why we are discussing this. That is a part of the problem with the permanent Forum folk, you appropriate to yourselves the role that is really not yours to play. And I am supposed to set you right? Explain myself to you? To what end?

because you posted a public forum thread

if you didn't want discussion maybe next time DM mattscott directly with your passive aggressive complaints and poorly thought out suggestions

 

 

[proxie 271]

Please help collect data on your dissatisfaction in the poll here: 

 

Edited October 17, 2022 by proxie

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

On 10/16/2022 at 6:36 AM, MACKxBOLAN said:

First let me say You all make valid good points, in a way he is preaching to the choir.

Any addition or change in the game mechanics would require someone to write the programs in.

This would take allot of time and LO resources n to tell the truth they'd probly mess it up n then we'd be stuck 

with a days of down time or more while they fixed it.

   @NotZombieBiscuit People were already Toxic/Angry when LO got here.

Ranging from mistrust or issues with G1, ff false bans, to player v player hate.

All that rage is still here, never went away, although not Matts fault, things that he has changed since the take over

such as weapon balance, voice, no-threat district, MM, ect have.

Including a whole new slew of player on player grief due to them putting us all together.

Matt is CEO and Owner, and he is also the one writing the new games code, in addition to 

other outside obligations he tends to. He doesn't delegate any other Executive or General Staff

to run APB and deal with issues, nor does he delegate the coding while he is out of town.

In the end He is ultimately responsible regardless of delegation.

  Allot of it is not directly Matts fault or doing, but re-directed anger by those that see Him as one 

at fault for their having to deal with what ever the issue may be.   

  

I didn't read your post.

 

 

[Parolyzed 9]

19 hours ago, glaciers said:

because you posted a public forum thread

if you didn't want discussion maybe next time DM mattscott directly with your passive aggressive complaints and poorly thought out suggestions

 

 

Have you ever considered how mostly pointless your nearly 14,000 posts on the forum have been? As I already said, it's not your role to play; you are not the protector of Little Orbit, or APB, the company or the game do not need it. There are moderators on the forum to take care of anything that is hateful or inappropriate. And the devs can look at complaints and ideas and draw their own conclusions.

 

All these people on here saying what is and is not viable, flashing their experience in coding this or that, or whatever else they should rather put on their LinkedIn profiles, and not here.

What for? Just because it gives you a sense of purpose, and some satisfaction? Or just habitually doing something to kill time?

[MACKxBOLAN 430]

On 10/15/2022 at 5:44 AM, NotZombieBiscuit said:

And how is the toxic community and Matt Scott/LO issue?

 

7 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

I didn't read your post.

sending full version of post to pm so you can read the whole thing 

7 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

 @NotZombieBiscuit People were already Toxic/Angry when LO got here.

Ranging from mistrust or issues with G1, ff false bans, to player v player hate.

All that rage is still here, never went away, although not Matts fault, things that he has changed since the take over

such as weapon balance, voice, no-threat district, MM, ect. Have caused mass rage

You asked the Question, maybe you should block my posts, then people wanna wonder why people are so toxic.

Cuz LO lets people like U Run things, n I don't mean like U work for them, No They let people of your caliber do n say 

what ever, cuz they scared of you sweatys. They know if they don't cater to your kind they get ddos.

You sweatys got Matt by the Jewels. He turned off the anticheats, His staff turned off segregation after you sweatys 

begged n cried to be let into bronze, n regardless of the staff persons insanity, anger toward bronzes, conspiresy, you name it.

 It is still Matts responsibility and fault

[AsgerLund 1271]

55 minutes ago, Parolyzed said:

Have you ever considered how mostly pointless your nearly 14,000 posts on the forum have been? As I already said, it's not your role to play; you are not the protector of Little Orbit, or APB, the company or the game do not need it. There are moderators on the forum to take care of anything that is hateful or inappropriate. And the devs can look at complaints and ideas and draw their own conclusions.

 

All these people on here saying what is and is not viable, flashing their experience in coding this or that, or whatever else they should rather put on their LinkedIn profiles, and not here.

What for? Just because it gives you a sense of purpose, and some satisfaction? Or just habitually doing something to kill time?

I guess this is what happens when you post in a forum literally titled (bolded for clarity):

SOCIAL DISTRICT (GENERAL DISCUSSION)

Discuss all things APB Reloaded related here!

 

Unfortunately, there hasn't been a dev Q&A in a long time, where you could address this directly to Little Orbit.

 

I appreciate your effort in keeping the forums alive, tho.