APB Roadmap 2023 (03/08)

[Ritual 629]

Hello everyone,

 

After a very productive start of the year for APB, where do we go next? Read everything about the goals for 2023 in the new APB Roadmap article that addresses previous issues, current achievements, and plans arranged by relevance and priority.

 

Article topics:

- Addressing the success of the 64-bit upgrade

- APB Roadmap 2023 with updated plans ranked from the highest to the lowest priority.

 

Have a comfortable read, and keep giving us your invaluable feedback!

[Weaboos 89]

Heres to a productive 2023 and revival of APB!

 

Regarding new matchmaking, it is known that currently switching districts deteriorates performance and people with older/weaker PCs feel it first. I wonder how new matchmaking will affect this if players are constantly being loaded from: random district > lobby > mission district. After the mission again: current district > lobby > mission district. I really hope I won't have to restart my game after a mission or two just to keep the game somewhat playable...

 

Also regarding new contacts: in the past Matt mentioned that he planned for the contacts to unlock no longer obtainable R-A-F weapons: CAP-40 and VBR, now he mentioned NSSW, Nano and Scout with no mention of previous weapons. Can someone clarify this?

 

Thanks 

 

Edit: Also I did not see anything regarding future optimisations to make the game run better. Surely the minimal improvements we got from 64-bit upgrade isn't the end of it? Current performance is still abysmal for anyone not running latest state of the art CPUs.

Edited March 8, 2023 by Weaboos

[Motka 0]

Is the server ready to join?

[nndrei 129]

finally

[Connor 6]

Looks really promising albeit ambitious.

 

Thinking pragmatically, I do wonder how useful the cross-region matchmaking will actually be. If it were me and I was in a low-pop server and had two options - either play with 150+ms or not play at all - I'd probably choose the latter, but I suppose that is just one opinion and it's nice to have the option.

 

FairFight back is a big positive too, I just hope Reloaded's implentation and use of the tool is learned from.

Edited March 8, 2023 by Connor

[StunStick 140]

41 minutes ago, Connor said:

Looks really promising albeit ambitious.

 

Thinking pragmatically, I do wonder how useful the cross-region matchmaking will actually be. If it were me and I was in a low-pop server and had two options - either play with 150+ms or not play at all - I'd probably choose the latter, but I suppose that is just one opinion and it's nice to have the option.

 

FairFight back is a big positive too, I just hope Reloaded's implentation and use of the tool is learned from.

A good point of reference:

 

I had an internship in Germany a few years ago where I stayed for 3 months. I played APB during my time in Germany on the NA server. I genuinely didn’t notice a difference.

I wouldn’t worry about it much.

[MACKxBOLAN 431]

very confusing mm outlook 

Eac asap 

games unplayable so many cheats

Edited March 8, 2023 by MACKxBOLAN

[Kast2 29]

A very interesting Roadmap, I hope to see finished at least by 2023 all the points under "Highest and High Priority" which are the most important aspects.

[Rade 54]

1. How is the mission queue system going to work if you are playing in a group of  2- 4 players and each players so called skill rating ranges from one end to the other?
2. What happens when people in your team quit during the match and the backup option pops up? The added delay of finding players to fill the gap seems unreasonable?
3. What are you going to do to prevent players from the losing team quitting a match before it ends (so that they dont lose their threat level)?
4. What are you going to do to prevent players from manipulating their threat level?

 

[vsb 6171]

56 minutes ago, StunStick said:

A good point of reference:

 

I had an internship in Germany a few years ago where I stayed for 3 months. I played APB during my time in Germany on the NA server. I genuinely didn’t notice a difference.

I wouldn’t worry about it much.

what was your average latency? i find anything over 100ms extremely noticeable, especially on actions that already have a delay like driving 

 

 

 

roadmap looks nice, but like matt said it also seems very aspirational 

 

guess we’ll see

[WaIeed007 65]

Even if you accomplish 30% of that roadmap it will be the best year for apb

[Connor 6]

1 hour ago, StunStick said:

A good point of reference:

 

I had an internship in Germany a few years ago where I stayed for 3 months. I played APB during my time in Germany on the NA server. I genuinely didn’t notice a difference.

I wouldn’t worry about it much.

Having played on the NA server myself from EU I completely disagree. It's very noticeable. 

[Roxl 120]

Here's to a productive 2023 then I hope!

 

Also I'm sure you're already aware, but the new contacts already have their voice over, subtitles, and non-email lore done. I just hope you don't double up on an unnecessary workload

 

Though I'll be interested to see what kind of changes these plans will bring, so good luck to the team

[Reprimand 98]

I'm manifesting good things for all of you.

[yourrandomnobody74 106]

Quote

We also want to use the release of a new car to do some balancing on all our vehicles to make sure each one has a solid use case. The goal is to use a series of small buffs and adjustments to improve less utilized cars.

This is probably the most important bit in the blog to me (along with anti-griefing measures, district phasing and DX12 even though it's very far down the list), cars needed a major overhaul ages ago and I'm glad at least this is getting tackled.

I don't see anything on the roadmap in regards to weapon/mod balancing though, which is VERY concerning...

Also, nothing mentioned about the UI mismatch we have in right now in form of a conjuction between Kismet and Scaleform. Is this planned to be streamlined into a unified UI? I haven't tried out the recent supposed performance changes to the UI, so I can't verify if there has been any difference.

Nothing in regards to balancing out missions either. Seems like gameplay related features (most important aspect) are getting ignored. 

Edited March 8, 2023 by yourrandomnobody74

[LVolf 0]

wish you showed us a pic of the new vehicle

[StunStick 140]

1 hour ago, glaciers said:

what was your average latency? i find anything over 100ms extremely noticeable, especially on actions that already have a delay like driving 

 

 

 

roadmap looks nice, but like matt said it also seems very aspirational 

 

guess we’ll see

I didn’t measure because it was working fine. I would say it was definitely under 100ms. Didn’t feel any lag, no worse hitreg then usual.

 

I usually play at 1ms on NA when in NA, so it couldn’t have been that crazy high ping if I didn’t really notice.

[koenyboy500 38]

Man.. I love you guys LO.

Keep at it. The new queue-system and the contact look very exiting! I hope the work on that goes smoothly ^^

(Also: is anyone else having trouble with getting the 'window capture' of some streaming services (Streamlabs) to focus on APB? I can't get APB to appear on screen ;__;)

[Rolhen 9]

Thank you, looks like this year I will be back to play again. If they really manage to pull off these upgrades, it will be the best year the APB has ever had.

[Senodus 49]

-"If two players from different regions are on the same district server, then they will temporarily display their region suffix appended to their name (@NA-West, @EU-East, @SA-North, @AU-East, etc) and players can use those to distinguish between the players."

Honestly, not that happy about this as it will just look bad e.g. "Senodus@EU-West" or whatever. Wish you could come up with a way that's less intrusive on the name. Maybe only have a different color of the name for out of region characters? Or something else, just that it's not intrusive on the name itself. 

 

-"Premium will also be able to queue in ‘Premium Only’ matches that we hope will free of reroll cheaters."

 

This is imo a REALLY BAD idea. For example I don't think I ever bought premium in this game and I doubt I ever will, but vast majority of players that take this game seriously would most likely do that to avoid cheaters, so people like me would be stuck with those cheaters AND not be able to play with/against other serious players to have nice close matches. It also unnecessarily splits our already small player base even more. Even if it was not a separate matchmaking but a variable in it that places a bias on matching premium players with themselves, it would still be just as bad as I still would be matched with them only as the last resort. Just overall a REALLY BAD idea imo as negatives for the community just outweigh the positives.

 

Overall tho the roadmap looks promising and I'm looking forward to the future of apb. =D

[SkittyM 287]

I'm guessing the new matchmaking thing means the current matchmaking will just be gutted?  My main issue has always been with Phasing being kinda marketed as a fix to matchmaking but throwing more people at the problem wont fix it, just look at the American highway system.

 

The post mentions a new system but i feel it'll ultimately be the current system with a larger pool of players which simply isn't going to solve anything.

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

I'm gonna be pessimistic as fuck. But a quick glance over these give me a strong worry about degrading the chaotic social nature of APB and it gives me some instant flashbacks to how servers were also ruined in WoW. 

 

The disabling of out of mission collisions, phasing of districts, hiding players in other missions, etc. Even the prior change to p5/n5 added to that too.

 

 

The devs even mentioning PvE in this really is just the capstone to all the stuff over the years that LO has no idea what APB is the entire time they have had the game.

 

Inappropriate language removed.    - Azukii

 

"Premium will also be able to queue in ‘Premium Only’ matches that we hope will free of reroll cheaters."

I don't think you realise how much cheaters willingly spend on accounts. This just splits the player base, which is in exact contrast to your attempt to district phase and increase matchmaking population pool. Most premium people will just play in non-premium queues for the largest player base anyway, thus defeating the point of even introducing this.
 

Please don't even try to bother with PBR. You'll just ruin the aesthetic of APB further.

[TheMessiah 430]

Cant wait for this new matchmaking when they start forcin golds vs golds only and even the veterans who keep this game runnin for so many years-start quitin the game as well..

Edited March 8, 2023 by TheMessiah

[iRawwwN 282]

meh tons of changes in the pipeline to make apb feel less apb-y. okay thanks matt

 

 

edit;

can i see who my opp is before i accept the match? i dont wanna play vs some people... if not, can i packet sniff character names so I can decide if i want to waste my time or not?

Edited March 8, 2023 by iRawwwN

[Hexerin 1140]

7 hours ago, StunStick said:

I usually play at 1ms on NA when in NA

That's literally not possible for an NA<->NA connection. The lowest you could theoretically go under ideal conditions as an end user is something like 10-20ms.