You guys are changing my opinion.

[MrLek 35]

I honestly have mixed feelings about APB's issues. I can't have a concrete opinion about his problems.

There are so many things, you are right to complain about so much time without anything, matchmaking, hackers, toxicity, among other things. However, the company has reasons for not having done anything all this time, few employees, problems with old codes, failed attempts (APB 2.1, APB 2.2), among other things.

I hope this next year will be a good one, according to what was discussed at the AMA with Matt Scott.
But some of you here on the forum are changing my opinion about this company. We could play in peace if "simple" problems were solved quickly like matchmaking, chat toxicity, active GM's, hackers, among other things.

Edited April 20, 2023 by MrLek

[LilyRain 674]

Correct. There are things that don't really need the x64 Engine Environment.

 

The exception being matchmaking because of the way LO wishes to address it, Phasing (cross-district matchmaking). The only quick-alternative to waiting for the x64 engine is for LO to increase district caps, because 40v40 is quite low for matchmaking to shine. A slower alternative would be to either revise scoring or skew how threat changes, because anyone who can press F at an objective can be Gold.

 

But yes, things like balancing should happen NOW. Even if LO delays its advertising of the x64 Engine, players and Game Bloggers WILL BRING the World's attention back to this game. They will re-try it, see that it indeed performs better, RTX-Cards don't crash, etc but the game is still the same unbalanced mess.... then they will leave. Plus, weapons are hit-scan. There are no physics involved with bullet travel time because that doesn't exist in APB. Also, the efforts later will naturally revolve around finding bugs in the x64 environment rather than balance the game. If balancing gets delayed, that would be the ultimate mistake.

[Gateron 267]

The only thing they had to do was have a proper anti cheat and moderation and we would have still had 1-2k population playing.

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

We should stop before we destroy him........

[Y2Venom 219]

I always tried to be optimistic when it came to LO, but a little burned out now. I know their heart is in the right place. I asked questions in the AMA 2 years ago about really really simple changes for quality of life, nothing happened.  Right now if you look at the game and weapons, you can see the biggest Overpowered weapons are handguns for many top players. They are also a go to for cheaters and should have been nerfed 2 years ago. What was done ?  Nerf explosive weapons.....

 

I know Matt is excited about the car EMP, but again this is at the detrement of newer players. This will be used by PMG's (Pre Made Golds) against PUG's (Players UnGrouped) to stop them from getting away. MAking the game go from Fish in a Barrell to Fish in a Bucket

[R3ACT3M 489]

11 hours ago, LilyRain said:

The exception being matchmaking because of the way LO wishes to address it, Phasing (cross-district matchmaking). The only quick-alternative to waiting for the x64 engine is for LO to increase district caps, because 40v40 is quite low for matchmaking to shine. A slower alternative would be to either revise scoring or skew how threat changes, because anyone who can press F at an objective can be Gold.

will 64bit allow for higher player counts in districts? And wasn't it in a RTW trailer that 100 people could be in a district at once?

[LilyRain 674]

1 hour ago, R3ACT3M said:

will 64bit allow for higher player counts in districts? And wasn't it in a RTW trailer that 100 people could be in a district at once?

Districts in APB were 50v50 when I started playing it. At one point in time the district cap got lowered to 40v40 due to server performance: https://apbreloaded.blogspot.com/2015/02/new-apb-servers.html

 

If servers can benefit from the x64 environment then that is a solid yes as that will help with the benchmarks that happened years ago against district population. If not, x64 with Cross-District matchmaking will allow the matchmaker to consider those in a ready-state across other districts, it will then move them all to an appropriate district. I never came across in-depth details of how that will happen (will there be loading screens? will players phase inside civilian traffic? no clue atm).

 

[neophobia 216]

1 hour ago, LilyRain said:

Districts in APB were 50v50 when I started playing it. At one point in time the district cap got lowered to 40v40 due to server performance: https://apbreloaded.blogspot.com/2015/02/new-apb-servers.html

 

If servers can benefit from the x64 environment then that is a solid yes as that will help with the benchmarks that happened years ago against district population. If not, x64 with Cross-District matchmaking will allow the matchmaker to consider those in a ready-state across other districts, it will then move them all to an appropriate district. I never came across in-depth details of how that will happen (will there be loading screens? will players phase inside civilian traffic? no clue atm).

 

x64 is regarding the client though. not a serversided upgrade (yet) if i understood it correctly. why would it, anyway? i guess a new ue version would come with upgrades to the framework on the server side as well - buuut... it would be surprising if the statements from your article (which i also remembered) wouldnt still hold true - the console version doesn't have better servers and already had some newer parts of the framework (right?)

Edited December 31, 2022 by neophobia

[R3ACT3M 489]

15 hours ago, LilyRain said:

Districts in APB were 50v50 when I started playing it. At one point in time the district cap got lowered to 40v40 due to server performance: https://apbreloaded.blogspot.com/2015/02/new-apb-servers.html

 

If servers can benefit from the x64 environment then that is a solid yes as that will help with the benchmarks that happened years ago against district population. If not, x64 with Cross-District matchmaking will allow the matchmaker to consider those in a ready-state across other districts, it will then move them all to an appropriate district. I never came across in-depth details of how that will happen (will there be loading screens? will players phase inside civilian traffic? no clue atm).

 

 

13 hours ago, neophobia said:

x64 is regarding the client though. not a serversided upgrade (yet) if i understood it correctly. why would it, anyway? i guess a new ue version would come with upgrades to the framework on the server side as well - buuut... it would be surprising if the statements from your article (which i also remembered) wouldnt still hold true - the console version doesn't have better servers and already had some newer parts of the framework (right?)

I can only imagine making the servers 50v50 a thing they could do for now if the x64bit upgrade allows for it. If not the cross-district matchmaking is still the better way to go. But I wonder how 20 more players in the district would feel. Would it be too chaotic? Or would it bring more life?

[LilyRain 674]

On 1/1/2023 at 12:48 AM, neophobia said:

x64 is regarding the client though. not a serversided upgrade (yet) if i understood it correctly. why would it, anyway? i guess a new ue version would come with upgrades to the framework on the server side as well - buuut... it would be surprising if the statements from your article (which i also remembered) wouldnt still hold true - the console version doesn't have better servers and already had some newer parts of the framework (right?)

 

Good chance Console-servers are handled by Sony and Microsoft, so upgrading them should be more straightforward.

 

But for PC-servers, some upgrades/changes can surely prove to be beneficial due to servers having similar trends to client-demand (core-clock rather than multi-thread). Current APB servers are confirmed to be single-threaded: 

 

"The clear winner here is the SoftLayer 1270v3 at 3.9Ghz (TURBO). That's a bit surprising, since technically it's the "smallest" of the three processors types (AWS C3 is a E5-2680v2 with 10 cores at 2.8Ghz, and the SoftLayer E5-2690v2 is an 8 core 3.0Ghz processor) and by far the cheapest.

However, Unreal eats processor clock for breakfast, and does not properly use multiple cores for its processing tasks. So the smaller processor actually wins out.

For the 1270v3 even with each district at full 100 capacity, frame rate remained close to 30 FPS, and dropped only very occasionally to 25 FPS. This is higher than the current servers’ frame rate of 25 FPS under the best conditions (down to 18 FPS at 80 capacity), and actually better than the US based Overkill servers which run closer to 22 FPS under the same 100-player load!"

 

Which makes sense because servers receive information from clients, so there have to be some similarities. Because of this, there is also a good-chance cheaper servers were used because having more threads at the moment doesn't matter. Luckily though, multi-threaded CPUs are now very affordable for servers compared to the past.

 

23 hours ago, R3ACT3M said:

 

I can only imagine making the servers 50v50 a thing they could do for now if the x64bit upgrade allows for it. If not the cross-district matchmaking is still the better way to go. But I wonder how 20 more players in the district would feel. Would it be too chaotic? Or would it bring more life?

I remember it to be more lively (till players block-roads on purpose with green planet trucks)

 

 

[R3ACT3M 489]

3 hours ago, LilyRain said:

I remember it to be more lively (till players block-roads on purpose with green planet trucks)

 

If it's just a straight up road block randomly placed, sounds funny af. But if it's intentional......

[BlatMan 711]

On 1/2/2023 at 3:51 AM, R3ACT3M said:

If it's just a straight up road block randomly placed, sounds funny af. But if it's intentional......

Unless they're intentionally blocking your access to objectives I don't think you can count it as griefing. At least I wouldn't count it.

[R3ACT3M 489]

8 hours ago, BlatMan said:

Unless they're intentionally blocking your access to objectives I don't think you can count it as griefing. At least I wouldn't count it.

Neither would I, if it's all in the name of fun I put it alongside the rest of the chaos that happens in APB.

 

[tuktukdriver 15]

It was so much fun to block a random street way back in the day, it's not the same as griefing.

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

28 minutes ago, tuktukdriver said:

It was so much fun to block a random street way back in the day, it's not the same as griefing.

I agree. Though I rarely did it myself I wouldn't want to take that away from people that did. Having streets blocked, random other people and cars around, etc is part of the fun chaos of APB that makes it unique. Sure it can be a little annoying in missions sometimes, but as long as you're not pro-actively trying to grief someone I think it is a positive overall to the feel of the game.

[safdfsgkjhdgsjkhs 140]

they should bring back training districts again with some differences. 

available for green, bronze silver players till level 85 (where they can buy level 3 mods) if you reach gold you cant enter again even if you dethreat back to silver. you cant enter a real district till either you hit gold or 85.

i feel like this would help the brand new players slightly and be a bit balanced since everyone in the baby server will be similar skill level and/or new to the game.

[Bellenettiel 232]

On 12/31/2022 at 3:08 PM, NotZombieBiscuit said:

We should stop before we destroy him........

im stuck on the gold empire comment

 

sounds hella metal
like some sort of army of midas touched warriors marching to waterfront to take our boats

 

jokes apart, i think this project is cursed at this point, still think LO are alright... its just that the guys before were too greedy and too late.

Edited January 18, 2023 by Bellenettiel

[BlatMan 711]

7 hours ago, safdfsgkjhdgsjkhs said:

they should bring back training districts again with some differences. 

available for green, bronze silver players till level 85 (where they can buy level 3 mods) if you reach gold you cant enter again even if you dethreat back to silver. you cant enter a real district till either you hit gold or 85.

i feel like this would help the brand new players slightly and be a bit balanced since everyone in the baby server will be similar skill level and/or new to the game.

Adding threat to the training districts will screw over new players more than help them. It will assign higher threat values than what they should be, due to not having any veterans in the district. Then those players will move to the normal districts with their inflated threat and get stomped. Gold threat is so damn easy to get in the game's current state. We don't need to it to be even easier to reach for new players.

[MrLek 35]

8 hours ago, Bellenettiel said:

im stuck on the gold empire comment

 

sounds hella metal
like some sort of army of midas touched warriors marching to waterfront to take our boats

 

jokes apart, i think this project is cursed at this point, still think LO are alright... its just that the guys before were too greedy and too late.

When I say "gold empire", i mean hackers who are evidently mostly in gold.

[Bellenettiel 232]

On 1/18/2023 at 7:59 PM, MrLek said:

When I say "gold empire", i mean hackers who are evidently mostly in gold.

wouldn't it make more sense to call what it is?

[MrLek 35]

On 1/20/2023 at 11:14 AM, Bellenettiel said:

wouldn't it make more sense to call what it is?

There are other things involved. Also for example, when beginners come to the apb and play against several golds.

[Mercedeez 7]

On 1/23/2023 at 7:26 PM, MrLek said:

There are other things involved. Also for example, when beginners come to the apb and play against several golds.

matchmaking is fine

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

1 hour ago, Mercedeez said:

matchmaking is fine

This picture shows nothing.

[AlienTM 138]

4 hours ago, NotZombieBiscuit said:

This picture shows nothing.

no only dat hes/shes gold and in a win streak of 9

[BlatMan 711]

At least post a recent screenshot. We haven't had large resupply boxes in a long time.