An Open Letter from the APB community

[Todesklinge 143]

4 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

People want to play against other people. Not bots. APB is a pvp game, go play a pve game if you want bots.

 

I do agree some basic bots for players first few missions as a tutorial experience would be good. But is way too much dev effort for the reward it gives.

New Players left the game, because they got slayed by Veterans!

The bots help to fill the game with enemys they can be defeated and not with undefeatable players, like hackers or veterans.

I am mid skilled player and its horrible to play against other player they can make a huge ammount of kills without to die or many time.

I am using Kevlar 3 and this dont helps, also there are so much problems in the game.

 

-> There is no difference between a hacker or a veteran player, if they do the same K/D Ratio. <-

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

8 hours ago, Todesklinge said:

 

I am using Kevlar 3 and this dont helps, also there are so much problems in the game.

Kevlar 3 and this dont helps

[R3ACT3M 489]

18 hours ago, Todesklinge said:

The bots help to fill the game with enemys they can be defeated and not with undefeatable players, like hackers or veterans.

 

I don't want to fight bots thinking they are players. 

But I would be all for limited events that come out with some simple large scale PVE content. Like a simple horde shooter for a Halloween event. Letting players fight a common enemy might actually help reduce toxicity. I think the nicest I ever seen players was when those Free for all matches were being held in financial where everyone fought everyone and it was just fun chaos.

[Hexerin 1140]

Remember back when people laughed others out of the room when they suggested a PvE mode in Overwatch? Then the event Uprising was added, and it was one of the most well received events the game had ever had. Ended up starting a line of PvE content in the game that were all wildly successful.

 

Despite what toxic PvPers try to gaslight people into believing, PvE has a significantly larger consumer base. Additionally, PvE consumers (whether they realize it or not), would love the basic concepts of many PvP type games if there was a PvE version available. Case in point, Uprising.

 

Adding well designed AI opponents as an option, in their own districts so as to prevent any problems with the traditional PvP districts, would see a sizeable resurgence of interest in this game. No, it absolutely would not completely revive it, you'd be an idiot to think it would. However, the game doesn't need revival, it just needs a solid consumer base to keep the lights on.

 

That being said, the keywords there are "well designed AI", which is something Little Orbit couldn't manage by any stretch of imagination. So this is a pipe dream held by people who don't know when to just let go of this title, that has no future anymore (and hasn't for several years).

Edited December 16, 2022 by Hexerin

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

2 hours ago, Hexerin said:

Remember back when people laughed others out of the room when they suggested a PvE mode in Overwatch? Then the event Uprising was added, and it was one of the most well received events the game had ever had. Ended up starting a line of PvE content in the game that were all wildly successful.

 

Despite what toxic PvPers try to gaslight people into believing, PvE has a significantly larger consumer base. Additionally, PvE consumers (whether they realize it or not), would love the basic concepts of many PvP type games if there was a PvE version available. Case in point, Uprising.

 

Adding well designed AI opponents as an option, in their own districts so as to prevent any problems with the traditional PvP districts, would see a sizeable resurgence of interest in this game. No, it absolutely would not completely revive it, you'd be an idiot to think it would. However, the game doesn't need revival, it just needs a solid consumer base to keep the lights on.

 

That being said, the keywords there are "well designed AI", which is something Little Orbit couldn't manage by any stretch of imagination. So this is a pipe dream held by people who don't know when to just let go of this title, that has no future anymore (and hasn't for several years).

The real difference in your post is having an actual pve gamemode with bots designed around that content as opposed to jamming bots in a pvp gamemode that are trying to mimic the role of actual players.

[gremlen 18]

3 hours ago, Hexerin said:

PvE has a significantly larger consumer base.

According to steamcharts 7 games in top 10 of highest online daily are all heavily based on pvp. Fortnite became super popular when Epic games abandoned the first pve gamemode and turned the game into battleroyale. H1Z1, the first original battleroyale, started as an open world survival that was badly received by many players and then devs turned the game into battleroyale pvp. The most popular multiplayer mode in minecraft is bed wars, a pvp gamemode. For some reason Elden Ring devs didn't make a coop mode, instead they added a pvp mode. I can tell much more examples of many games from the past that succeeded only because it had pvp gamemode.

Last time when I saw PvE games getting a success was during mmorpg hype era when WoW on its peak had 10 millions subs. Right now I don't even know recent succeeded pve game with as big population as many modern pvp games.

Edited December 17, 2022 by gremlen

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

33 minutes ago, gremlen said:

According to steamcharts 7 games in top 10 of highest online daily are all heavily based on pvp. Fortnite became super popular when Epic games abandoned the first pve gamemode and turned the game into battleroyale. H1Z1, the first original battleroyale, started as an open world survival that was badly received by many players and then devs turned the game into battleroyale pvp. The most popular multiplayer mode in minecraft is bed wars, a pvp gamemode. For some reason Elden Ring devs didn't make a coop mode, instead they added a pvp mode. I can tell much more examples of many games from the past that succeeded only because it had pvp gamemode.

Last time when I saw PvE games getting a success was during mmorpg hype era when WoW on its peak had 10 millions subs. Right now I don't even know recent succeeded pve game with as big population as many modern pvp games.

Top 10 is a little slim sample. If you go to at least the top 50 it is about even for pvp and pve games, and most have mixed modes.

[gremlen 18]

Just now, NotZombieBiscuit said:

Top 10 is a little slim sample. If you go to at least the top 50 it is about even for pvp and pve games, and most have mixed modes.

I don't think that it's a little sample because modern gaming community is used to get together in the most good projects with an active dev support. For example most of battlefield community moved to COD because it has a better life support and games are better. Decade ago we used to have debates what is better bf or cod and community mostly was divided. Also twitch shows what majority of viewers desire to watch and top 10 on twitch includes 7 pvp based games. No doubt that pvp gets more support by a gaming community worldwide.

[Yapopal 168]

On 12/13/2022 at 3:37 AM, Frosi said:

 

I authored the letter and intentionally made the decision to make it anonymous, this way players aren't afraid to give their unfiltered feedback to some of the serious topics at hand. The overall amount of toxicity in the game coming from some players will also make players not want to put their name on something they don't know the outcome of.

Here you go this was also entirely authored by me, almost all of these changes are my ideas and opinions, nothing is set in stone and this is nothing more than a passion project of mine.

The changes in the document are balancing around the current state of the game and primarily focus on buffs to underused guns or some that were recently over-nerfed.

 

Both, its usually easier to buff guns without taking mods in mind considering many of them don't exactly have a set of meta mods to use on them especially when it comes to red mods which tend to change a gun the most. For Meta guns, nerfs shouldn't entirely kill a certain mod on a weapon (I am aware that was the case with CJ N-tec as well as HB2 N-tec back in the day) but in many cases there's also not a huge amount of room for nerfs in areas in which a gun is over-performing, again using the N-tec as an example, lowering the RoF would've been an option rather than nerfing its bloom / jump accuracy although this change was tested in a public test environment previously and was received with even more negative response than a simple max-bloom nerf. Balance is so incredibly subjective and guns like the Oblivion or even DMR-AV existed in that very state for the longest time before people have figured out just how strong they are after another part of the game has been touched.

With the exception of the DMR-AV nerf I want to say that none of the changes in the document cater specifically to one type of play, this is also largely helped by the fact that its almost all buffs to weapons that never see any use in high level play anyways.

I honestly think that higher mechanical skill already wins you fights, aiming, knowing how to play around cover and so on, I know the suggestion of overall lowering the bloom / increasing base accuracy exists but that'd require a rework for more than half the weapons in the game so I personally don't see that as an option, if balancing a hand full of guns is an issue then I don't see how this is a possible path.

Thanks for the email to the developers. When changing the characteristics of weapons, you should think about ordinary players, this is the main resource for the existence of the game. You suggested increasing the characteristics of weak weapons, which is good, but. Consider the fact that the players are located in different parts of the world. Accordingly, the ping is different for everyone. I'm having trouble with my high ping. In the game, the time to kill is too short, especially with meta weapons. Perhaps the question should be looked at differently? Maybe lower the stats of the meta weapon? And perhaps it is worth removing the rate of fire from the game, which can be constantly used by resorting to a macro?

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

9 hours ago, Yapopal said:

Thanks for the email to the developers. When changing the characteristics of weapons, you should think about ordinary players, this is the main resource for the existence of the game. You suggested increasing the characteristics of weak weapons, which is good, but. Consider the fact that the players are located in different parts of the world. Accordingly, the ping is different for everyone. I'm having trouble with my high ping. In the game, the time to kill is too short, especially with meta weapons. Perhaps the question should be looked at differently? Maybe lower the stats of the meta weapon? And perhaps it is worth removing the rate of fire from the game, which can be constantly used by resorting to a macro?

This was partly an issue that G1 went down the road of too. TTK was lowered not on purpose (besides the main switch from RTW), but because they would continue to buff weapons more than nerf weapons. And this compounding on itself over years moved the TTK lower.

 

Widespread buff to everything like Frosi implies is just yet another addition to this lowering of TTK.

[Darkzero3802 611]

@MattScott Glad your finally starting to listen to the community but its abit too little too late. All of these problems that we have voted on and have said countless times in this forum over the last 5 yrs could have been adressed long ago, like on day 1. Unless you guys can pull a rabbit out of your hat to resurrect the game most have moved on already. Its only those few of us dedicated who even pop up on the forums and log into the game. But even we get tired of the same bs thats been going on since 2014. Were going on 9 yrs since the last major content update and APB is stale. Very stale.

[yourrandomnobody74 106]

On 12/17/2022 at 11:34 PM, NotZombieBiscuit said:

This was partly an issue that G1 went down the road of too. TTK was lowered not on purpose (besides the main switch from RTW), but because they would continue to buff weapons more than nerf weapons. And this compounding on itself over years moved the TTK lower.

 

Widespread buff to everything like Frosi implies is just yet another addition to this lowering of TTK.

Exactly. To add to this, the game wasn't designed for this low/short TTK and huge bloom gameplay, resulting in this mess of so-called 'weapons' we have in the game.

When will we get high/long TTK and low bloom/no bloom, so we can finally have a proper TPS skill-based game?

Edited December 20, 2022 by yourrandomnobody74

[Strau 2]

Hey guys,

 

Recently I decided to re visit gamersfirst forums maybe to have a trip down memory lane, and I was struck by this post. It is amazing to see that someone with what it seems good intent, is trying to take this game that many of us love, to the next level. I've been playing the game for the last couple of days, and it is nice to see that atleast, some quality of life stuff is already being implemented into the game, this defenitely feels refreshing for APB players for sure, since the game was never touched by years by G1. Now, I will talk about what were the things, that for me, and many of the other top players at the time, think that killed the game. Take into consideration that I haven't played the game since 2013 , something around that time, but I've been playing for the last couple days and alot of the stuff is still repeating.

 

Cheaters: This is a no brainer. After watching the AMA, It's nice to see this is being adressed as it was a pain in the bum back then to fight a couple max rank cheaters for atleast 3 months before their bans.

 

 

Server FPS: I don't even know if many of you remember, or if this is still even a thing, but, when the level cap was 195, Server FPS was 30, it was then changed to 25 when they released the new contacts, causing ghost shots, in alot of weapons, NTEC, Shotguns, SMG's. This is been a problem that was never adressed and made the game feel kinda clunky and RNG at times.

 

 

Weapons: Sensitive topic, as people's gameplay differ and not everyone wants to play on hardcore level, but still think, some of the additions and weapon TTK is just off the hook. The main problem with adding weapons to a base game is obviously the balance, with these Armas additions, I think weapons should really be carefully looked at, I think we all remember what OCA Nano did back then before the nerf.  No one wants to feels they died to a credit card warrior, but instead that maybe Armas weapons just has some quality of life to it? Idk just an idea.

 

 

1 - .45 - Where to even begin. This is like an FBW on crack. Faster ttk, more damage, more range, really pathetic weapo imo, and everyone seems to be forced to use it, otherwise you can't really pistol duel. this makes it so, FBW or ACT/RSA or whatever are not even picked anymore as a sidearm, since .45 works for both range and cqc. Lack of diversity

 

2 - Osmaw / OGPL - I wanna say these weapons wouldnt be a problem if there wasnt for some mission type , but I dont think this is interely true. These weapons just don't belong in the main disctrict game, anti fun, anti game. I think these weapons are fine for other districts, like fight club or christmas events or stuff like this.

 

3 - PMG - Pretty op weapon, makes no one want to use the OCA if they have to pick.

 

4 - Obir - TTK

 

5 - Percs - Why is this a thing in a game where you have people with insane grenade skill. Percs were always looked as panic nades.

 

6 - DMR - Did they buff this or they nerf car HP ? Seems kinda ridiculous now

 

7 - Joker Weapons - I don't have enuff experience to talk about all of the weapons in the list, but I've played vs 1 that seems pretty ridiculous, felt like a PMG on crack.

 

 

 

Missions - Theres alot of missions that need to be adressed.

 

Vehicle missions - people pre griefing the objective, making it nearly impossible to have a chance of doing the task.

Capture Item missions - dont think anyone plays this game to drive around for 5 minutes chasing a guy in a truck being boosted by a vegas with 2 guys on top shooting you. Just make it so you touch the item and leave it as is

Griefers - People still griefing objectives nonstop and having even people outside their group do it for them

Late Backup - This also needs addressing, make it so you can't call backup with 2 minutes left? or something like that

 

Monetization (this are just ideas for Armas Market) - Imo, cars / clothing / weapon models / skins / Clan's Hideout or stuff (Probably later on) /  . Any thing that gives you a game advantage, most competitive players will always frown upon this and eventually just get tired of it..

 

Imo, x64 will be good and refreshing, Alot of people will try it hopefully, even old players I feel like, I just think alot of other things needs to be adressed at the same time. This game always had a unique gameplay to it, and it defenitely should stay this way, if we wanna retain the players, and hype this to become a populated game again.

 

 

 

Edited December 22, 2022 by Strau

[Hexerin 1140]

On 12/20/2022 at 7:37 AM, yourrandomnobody74 said:

Exactly. To add to this, the game wasn't designed for this low/short TTK and huge bloom gameplay, resulting in this mess of so-called 'weapons' we have in the game.

When will we get high/long TTK and low bloom/no bloom, so we can finally have a proper TPS skill-based game?

This one gets it. Go back to the days when one could sprint across the street in line of sight of the enemy, yet have a reasonable chance of actually surviving. Make tactics matter more than twitch reflexes.

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

4 hours ago, Hexerin said:

This one gets it. Go back to the days when one could sprint across the street in line of sight of the enemy, yet have a reasonable chance of actually surviving. Make tactics matter more than twitch reflexes.

It's not even just tactics. It is just far more fun to actually have 'duels' with people.

[Hexerin 1140]

13 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

It's not even just tactics. It is just far more fun to actually have 'duels' with people.

Yup. The most fun experiences related to TTK that I've had in this game over the years are those times that me and an opponent are duking it out. Hopping in and out of cover, between different covers, moving around to try and circle to the other's flank or avoid letting the other do so. Meanwhile CA3 is slowly trickling in health from regen, increasing the total number of shots we each can take (especially if using high STK guns like OCA etc).

 

I wasn't around in the RTW days, but I can imagine based on such experiences what it would've been like back then with a longer TTK. It's not a hard thing to imagine, and it creates a longing for it that still lives in a part of me to this day. There was such potential for this game...

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

3 hours ago, Hexerin said:

Yup. The most fun experiences related to TTK that I've had in this game over the years are those times that me and an opponent are duking it out. Hopping in and out of cover, between different covers, moving around to try and circle to the other's flank or avoid letting the other do so. Meanwhile CA3 is slowly trickling in health from regen, increasing the total number of shots we each can take (especially if using high STK guns like OCA etc).

 

I wasn't around in the RTW days, but I can imagine based on such experiences what it would've been like back then with a longer TTK. It's not a hard thing to imagine, and it creates a longing for it that still lives in a part of me to this day. There was such potential for this game...

Unfortunately that kind of gameplay was already niche and is only getting even more niche. Everyone wants quick 2-3 shot kills like CoD. Obviously APB doesn't need multi-second long ttk (even though some of the best dueling games I've ever played were multi second long fights or even longer) but it really does benefit from being on the longer side. Especially in a third person game. 

 

Don't even get me started on the people that will somehow make the argument that GUNS KILL PEOPLE QUICK. ITS NOT REALISTIC TO TANK MULTIPLE SHOTS. I hate to keep ragging on CoD because honestly the games aren't as bad as the rep they get from people that don't play them, but they really were the start of the sort of casino slot machine ttk. Games that don't ascribe to the lane map design, mercy of spawns, and short ttk that promotes just pulling the slot machine over and over and everyone gets some micro wins constantly to keep them engaged are almost always the ones that fall to the side. I'm just rambling now even though I could go for days.

[Revoluzzer 274]

22 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

It's not even just tactics. It is just far more fun to actually have 'duels' with people.

Who doesn't enjoy a healthy balance of 3 second fights, 10 second respawns and 15 seconds running back to the objective? That's two whole fights per minute!

 

5 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

Unfortunately that kind of gameplay was already niche and is only getting even more niche.

It's not like APB is a top contender for a great number of players. Should fully lean into its strengths.

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

33 minutes ago, Revoluzzer said:

Who doesn't enjoy a healthy balance of 3 second fights, 10 second respawns and 15 seconds running back to the objective? That's two whole fights per minute!

 

It's not like APB is a top contender for a great number of players. Should fully lean into its strengths.

I unironically do enjoy 3 second long fights. Most of the games I like have fights that go for 10+ seconds.

 

And one of its strengths is a longer TTK than most games.

Edited December 26, 2022 by NotZombieBiscuit

[Revoluzzer 274]

1 minute ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

I unironically do enjoy 3 second long fights. Most of the games I like have fights that go for 10+ seconds.

I don't mind a 3-second-fight if it doesn't take me much longer than that to get into the next one.

But when I spend 80-90% of my time waiting for or getting back into that fight, I quickly lose interest.

[MonkaS 215]

5 hours ago, Revoluzzer said:

I don't mind a 3-second-fight if it doesn't take me much longer than that to get into the next one.

But when I spend 80-90% of my time waiting for or getting back into that fight, I quickly lose interest.

this. many br's suffer from this problem of not enough action per time invested who wants to wait minutes for seconds of action.

[gremlen 18]

On 12/26/2022 at 8:25 AM, NotZombieBiscuit said:

Unfortunately that kind of gameplay was already niche and is only getting even more niche. Everyone wants quick 2-3 shot kills like CoD. Obviously APB doesn't need multi-second long ttk (even though some of the best dueling games I've ever played were multi second long fights or even longer) but it really does benefit from being on the longer side. Especially in a third person game. 

 

Don't even get me started on the people that will somehow make the argument that GUNS KILL PEOPLE QUICK. ITS NOT REALISTIC TO TANK MULTIPLE SHOTS. I hate to keep ragging on CoD because honestly the games aren't as bad as the rep they get from people that don't play them, but they really were the start of the sort of casino slot machine ttk. Games that don't ascribe to the lane map design, mercy of spawns, and short ttk that promotes just pulling the slot machine over and over and everyone gets some micro wins constantly to keep them engaged are almost always the ones that fall to the side. I'm just rambling now even though I could go for days.

Back in the days G1 hosted districts with RTW ttk and none really liked long ttk. It just doesn't work in apb and it only makes the game feel clunky and stupid. People had been asking for longer ttk and G1 gave it a try and when these people realized how bad it is in apb suggestions about long ttk was gone on forums. Now I see these suggestions coming back

[No 12]

8 minutes ago, gremlen said:

Back in the days G1 hosted districts with RTW ttk and none really liked long ttk. It just doesn't work in apb and it only makes the game feel clunky and stupid. People had been asking for longer ttk and G1 gave it a try and when these people realized how bad it is in apb suggestions about long ttk was gone on forums. Now I see these suggestions coming back

I never tried G1's RTW high TTK attempt but as I recall they kept the huge recoil/RNG bloom which didn't exist back in RTW.

Edited December 27, 2022 by No

[gremlen 18]

Just now, Shrub said:

I never tried G1's RTW TTK attempt but as I recall they kept the huge recoil/RNG bloom which didn't exist back in RTW.

I tried it, I clearly remember that bloom and recoil weren't a thing on that attempt because obeya, for example, felt the same way as on rtw, a laser gun with small bloom

[vsb 6171]

1 hour ago, gremlen said:

Back in the days G1 hosted districts with RTW ttk and none really liked long ttk. It just doesn't work in apb and it only makes the game feel clunky and stupid. People had been asking for longer ttk and G1 gave it a try and when these people realized how bad it is in apb suggestions about long ttk was gone on forums. Now I see these suggestions coming back

g1 rolled almost everything back to rtw, they didn’t just lengthen ttk

 

so guns were massively unbalanced and there were tons of old bugs and exploits available - obviously no one wanted to play in a district like that, and g1 used that to pretend no one wanted longer ttk