Cross district matchmaking

[MattScott 15240]

This is yet another huge thing that the game needs but communication on this front has been completely silent for a while. This is one of the things on this list where most of the responses were understanding of the fact that this is a large undertaking and could possibly not even be possible to do until 64Bit, however with the shift away from 3.5 but rather updating to 64Bit it has become unclear whether or not the tools required to make this work would be a part of the 64Bit upgrade and whether or not this is still something LO wants to do.

 

“Would be really really good, but also takes a lot of engineering effort. Understandable that it would not come before 64bit. But I hope the topic has been explored internally for how this could be implemented as it would be huge for the game.” -Community Member

[R3ACT3M 480]

40vs40 is not as big as ~vs~

Something like this would be huge for the game. 

Edited December 16, 2022 by R3ACT3M

[AlienTM 138]

This cross district matchmaking gonna puts you often against players from another regions(if dats good for NA-is not for EU)and you gonna be forced to load in and out the map for every mission.Things dat im definitely not trilled about.Also lets not forget dat gold players dont want to play vs another golds all the time(actually main reason many players are dethreating)

Instead if the game have many players after the update you can just return the removed threat districts and maybe do some tweaks-like reevaluating them more precisely(also the threat progression itself)Players will be able to move down a threat district if they want to and if theres enough players-on green dist. theres gonna be mostly greens and bronzes and new players gonna be left in peace.Also rename "green" with lets say "iron" cause is another metal and make sense(green is dumb)

This is where he talks about the cross dist. matchmaking 2.5 years ago(from this minute till next min and a half)

 

 

Edited December 17, 2022 by AlienTM

[gremlen 18]

1 hour ago, AlienTM said:

This cross district matchmaking gonna puts you often against players from another regions(if dats good for NA-is not for EU)and you gonna be forced to load in and out the map for every mission.Things dat im definitely not trilled about.Also lets not forget dat gold players dont want to play vs another golds all the time(actually main reason many players are dethreating)

Instead if the game have many players after the update you can just return the removed threat districts and maybe do some tweaks-like reevaluating them more precisely(also the threat progression itself)Players will be able to move down a threat district if they want to and if theres enough players-on green dist. theres gonna be mostly greens and bronzes and new players gonna be left in peace.Also rename "green" with lets say "iron" cause is another metal and make sense(green is dumb)

It's in LO's hand to decide to allow or not to allow players from different regions meet up in the match. I doubt they will allow that function unless NA stays dead but it means that NA will be forced to play in EU region and not vice versa. I have no doubts that if cross district system will be implemented someday APB servers will be merged into one big server with district instance being located in different regions and cross district matchmaking will work inside one region. It means that if you join NA district, you will be matched against other NA districts even if EU districts exist on the same world server.

 

The current threat system was made with the vision of how limited possibilities of current matchmaking are. It's not possible to make a proper rank system with a wide rank ladder when players are always limited to 40v40 where in reality they usually have 5-10 players on opposite side free to get matched with them. If we get a cross district matchmaking system there won't be a problem of low golds not wanting to play against other golds because low golds will have infinitely more chances to have an opposition of low golds. This system also makes threat district unnecessary. In fact APB has a hidden rank system that was diminished by visual look of gold, silver, bronze threats. In reality each threat has 10 levels. So 10 level gold and 1 level gold are both gold players in terms of current threat system

Edited December 17, 2022 by gremlen

[AlienTM 138]

21 minutes ago, gremlen said:

I doubt they will allow that function unless NA stays dead but it means that NA will be forced to play in EU region and not vice versa

I hope so and overall for what u sayn..to go dat well

Edited December 17, 2022 by AlienTM

[Mikiy 10]

With less then 300 players on peak or so, cross district matchmaking likely wouldn't even make much of a difference anymore when it comes to the quality of the matchmaking, its kind of wasted developer time to chase that at that point. Good and timely matchmaking (you'd not want to wait 10 minutes between each game) needs way more players then the game even has at this point. They'd be better off to just bring threat districts back and hope a bunch of the more casual silver/bronze players this game used to had before threat districts were axed to come back to it.

[Revoluzzer 269]

On 12/18/2022 at 5:42 PM, Mikiy said:

They'd be better off to just bring threat districts back

In no scenario is this a better option than cross-district-matchmaking.

Walled-off districts have done nothing but exacerbate the matchmaking-issues which plague this game.

Edited December 24, 2022 by Revoluzzer

[ObeyaCR 1]

It's my first post, but I had to on this topic, I'm a bit worried about the direction apb could take in the future.

 

Dear LO, Matt Scott and APB Community,

 

I believe the Creators of APB had a clear Vision about the "Soul" of this Game, I don't think they had no other options the time they coded it they wanted a such deep community driven experience which APB is.
They did introduce the threat district system for a reason, in my eyes to regulate matchmaking and to form deep bonds in its community, like friendships and rivalries.
To my APB is meant to be a fun chaotic experience where you get deep In merged in its Gameplay and in its Community.
If it's a good or bad experience is regulated by other factors.

 

Take WoW for an example, they did go with a system called sharding.
Is it a good system? Well, for Server performance yes, but for the Community that's a no.
It doesn't felt like a whole community anymore, more like a "sharded" one.

 

I name this example because cross districts, remind my of that sharding system, which was also a reason I did lose interest in games with similar or related systems.
I bet not so few remaining APB players have the same feelings about cross districts.
If cross districts are enabled, it would scatter known people, which are not in the own group across districts making the possibility of running into them rare it would feel pretty isolated.
The Cross District would at least weaken if not shatter the bonds in its Community, other problems like loading between matches and so on, were already addressed before, so I don't want to go deeper into them.
We have enough games that aren't any fun anymore nowadays, apb is thankfully in how is feels unique, that's not only thanks to its customization but also the way how it handles its community concept, it's more old school, then modern isolated life sucked out every man for them self stuff.
If a player comes online and sees their many known people in that one district, lets joins for a fun experience with them, but cross district will destroy such things and yes then for example a streamer could say they're harassing me when they can choose the district. As sayd it's not the fault of the threat districts more like the lack of effective measures against cheating, griefing  and toxicity.
A system that weakens a such fundamental thing as society is not a solution for a problem.
And think over it when the cross district system decides which player should be matched with another one, what prevents a good player playing poorly til the system decides to let him battle against weaker players, there will be always a way to bypass a system.

 

If LO updated APB to 64bit so that a server-side Anti Cheat System can be reintroduced and did penalize toxic behavior and griefing more intensely by Moderators or programs that watch over the chat activity/life gameplay and offer a support in which cheaters and toxic people are reported and efficiently punished,
what would make apb a very fun experience again and would attract new players to and former players back to APB, if that goes hand in hand with Advertisement campaign to bring
new people in, I would bet only a very minor part of the community or even no one would even want something like cross districts.
Especially not if LO would, improve the threat district system.
Here are some possibilities, if they are good, is debatable.
Make it harder to assume how high a threat of a player is, give dethreating a cooldown in time and/or played matches, like after a player went from silver to gold they cannot dethreat before some time is passed and an x ammount of matches are played.
Options could be, the dethreat timer could then for example only start to go down if that ammount of games are played or the timer will only partially goes down and stop when no x amount of games are played for a time period.
Like, a 7-day detheat timer stops to go down if not at least 3 matches are played every day or a 30-day timer stops if less than 7 matches are played in a week.
The dethreat process can be set up to be very mild or very hardcore depending on the current need for it.

Even if they make multiple accounts they wouldn't be able to play with their main account for endgame progression on lower threat districts and even those new accounts would then become gold and at that point those would be also locked out from bronze or green districts too.
If the parameters of dethreating are set up correctly, it would become a very annoying and tedious process to dethreat an account and would significantly decrease the timespan high skill players would be able to play on low threat districts, which could become an afterthought.
I really care for apb and I hope LO will carefully think over implementing cross districts and see the possibilities of the system what the creators had decided for and in case we would have a healthy player base again how it could be improved further if it is still necessary.

[AlienTM 138]

Theres even bigger problem i see with this type of matchmaking besides the often loadin in and out from districts which gonna be annoyn plus the matches against other regions(which is worse)The fact that golds gonna be vs other golds mostly-not very good scenario.Theres some players so good like u think they are hackin and we may see then golds leavin the game(things may flip around)Golds are like 50% of the population.It may turn out similar like how G1 tried to lock them to gold districts.In the end we may get into some fundamental problem with this game-which is the mission system itself.We need plan B.Like another game mode for financial and waterfront for 40 vs 40 where u also progress contacts and stuff.Idk if mechanics from Riot,Anarchy or final stage regular missions must be mixed or what but we need some alternative way to play on this districts.Mode dat gonna involve bigger amount of players with mission objectives not locked to some campy locations

Edited January 18, 2023 by AlienTM