My thoughts on 2023 roadmap

[Daarin 19]

This has been the most interesting and most ambitious roadmap so far, however it has a lot of things that personally seem contradictive or are either changing the core design of the game - which is why people have played it for over a decade now. Forum announcement asked for feedback on the ideas, so here are mine from a veteran player.

 

I will briefly go over every topic and explain my view on it:

 

1. Hosting Upgrade #1 – 64-bit, Easy Anti Cheat, Epic Online Services Support, Prerequisites for other hosting code upgrades

 - Im all up for getting better anticheat protection, as long as it doesnt have any hindrance on the performance. Hopefully it works with minimal performance downside with new build

 - Releasing on Epic Games launcher is an interesting decision, i dont personally mind it that much, i just hope it is well timed so the marketing for that works out well

2. New Car
 - Im really excited for it and I hope the new vehicle is fun and balanced, and i wouldnt even mind you guys testing something new out, i hope it adds more flavor to gameplay in a good way and that it is easily accessible to everyone (Coywolf wasn't a good move imo, huge gamebreaking bug and 20$ per character to own it)
 - It would be interesting seeing some vehicles that have feather weight get more weight, especially cars like Cisco and Kurai

3. Hosting Upgrade #2 – New Mission Queueing System, Improved Matchmaking, Phasing
 - This is the make or break for APB to me and a HUGE red flag, and i think for huge part of community too, if not all veterans. Before even thinking about getting rid of districts (yes, there will still be districts, but you are effectively getting rid of them), think why do people play this game? Is it just for pure shooting? Is it just for pure competition? For customization? For lively feel of the map and world? Its all of those together in a weird but functioning symbiosis which kept people playing the game to this day. You are taking away the core feature of the game. There is so much to be said about the way how districts work and how it makes the game more interesting.

I understand that you are trying to make the compromise for matchmaking but from my perspective this simply isn't it. Firstly, even considering that you might have to change district multiple times is taking a huge load on already very compromised performance of the game - while x64 helped a lot, it is still nowhere near stable. FPS starts dropping very easily unless extremely minimalistic config is running with very low res, and even then the game still has issues in certain spots. If i changed the district twice or thrice during one session i'd already feel inclined to restart the game to get its performance back up since once FPS drops, there is no way of getting it back without restarting.

 

Secondly, this clashes with design in Hosting Upgrade #3, players will be automatically matched vs players across different regions as well? This creates issues with many things. Let me give you a hypothetical scenario. There are 300 players online queued up for a match, all of them are different ranks, threats and from different regions. How does the game match them up? If you match them with "mission queuing" matchmaking, they would either be playing against same group of 10-15 people from the nearby regions who are matched well with them or they would have to compromise where they get bigger playerbase to play against, but they have to settle for very high ping, where one side will likely be in huge detriment -- maybe you could fix this by letting people play one match on server closest to them, then next match give their opponents a benefit of better server, even with concepts like these it would still require massive reloading of maps which is something this game simply cant handle in its current state imo.

 

In non-mission queuing matchmaking (if this were to be implemented beforehand), you would be splitting already split playerbase further. Instead of having 2 regions, you would put up 5, further diluting already small playerbase. Im all up for more players playing and everyone being able to play in their own region and others, but if it ends up being 6 20v20 servers because everyone is going for best ping and their community, instead 3 40v40, it makes things much worse.

 

Thirdly, why would anyone be actively in a district and whats even the purpose of them if players are gonna be moved all the time? There isn't a single reason besides just driving around, doing events, or robbing - which puts people even at higher risk.

 

Fourthly, how are people supposed to evade players they don't want to play against? District system made this pretty easy, especially considering there are factions. However, groups and factions already extremely limit the matchmaking system, so putting more constraints is just very difficult. It seems like the choice is stuck between scenarios where you play against 2-3 same sets of enemies all the time, or the matchmaking just goes haywire and makes a completely unbalanced match.

 

There are just so many things to consider here, and so many of them break core design of the game. I could suggest some ideas that could perhap work if playerbase was much bigger, but regardless, it would be really sad for me if you traded the core experience and purpose of districts and just turn game into purely a match based shooter that has no regard for district presence

 

However, on other hand, im open to and anticipating merge of EU and NA servers in their current state, it would be nice being able to hop on server once ones in your region go silent during late night, but adding any additional regions will just dilute the playerbase like i've said above, at least with current player count.

4. New Contacts
  - Not much to say here besides i hope that weapons will be implemented in good way, Im really looking forward to Scout being available as contact weapon... is it gonna have an Open slot? What will happen to all scout variants on Armas, JT store, and probably most importantly Sitting Duck / Reaper? Wouldn't they go obsolete? Definitely an interesting choice of weapons to give to Contacts.

5. Hosting Upgrade #3: Multi-World District servers

 

  - I've said some of the points from here above, so i'll focus on others. I think that integrating console players with PC players is a really interesting decision, even more interesting considering the fact that you are planning to have them roam around together, but not being able to play missions together? Its a half-baked idea, and i understand what the goal is behind it, and that crossplatform is huge nowadays and that it would be unfair towards console players to be matched vs PC ones, but i dont see how this could work out well. Just imagine the excitement of 2 people, one on PC and other on Console, hearing that they can roam around together, share their designs and items but... can't play missions together? Seems very misleading and rude towards players in a way, and this also gives more potential for griefing each other since neither side can play missions together... or do you plan to turn off the collision here completely? What is even the point then, it would be like playing a racing game where you see a "ghost" of other players. Not to mention that districts will be filled up for people who cant play together, making it far less likely for 2 teams to be matched on that same district.

6. Anti-Griefing Options / Streamer Mode

 - I havent thought much about this as i havent really seen many people have issues with this. Maybe if there are some really big streamers trying to promote the game and enjoy their time without being streamsniped you could make exceptional rules for them to have the ability to turn off the collisions. The nature of the game is for newbies to try and bash each other, and it is fun for them, and i say let them, at worst they'll ruin someone's mission, but i think everyone is used to this already happening once in a while. There are many ways and ideas to implement this but it isnt the priority now.

7. Upgraded Tutorial / First Time User Experience (FTUE)

 - In my opinion, i would simply put this as highest priority. Newbies need better everything, i would offer them far more gear, even a half-baked new newbie system would be better than the current thing. All these other updates will take time to roll out, but you'll always benefit from having more players and they will have higher chance of staying so after a good tutorial and better gear choices for start. Going crazy on marketing the game in current state is unwise, but you will always benefit from better tutorial system - and it has zero downsides and doesnt require particular timing. Dont get stuck doing other less important things since keeping the player retention and leaving better first impressions is one of most important things.

8. Server-side anti-cheat alongside EAC

 - While some people did cheat on purpose just to get their name out there, i think the relief of seeing actual cheaters which were high rank getting banned publicly did two very important things: ruined their reputation so they would be seen as a cheater and it would be harder for them to get back into the community, and give players relief by showing them that anticheat actually bans people and that /report wasn't useless - so they can take action against cheaters and see that they actually get punished. It was always a great motivation to keep playing once you realize that high rank player you've lost against wasn't better than you / certain guns being broken / game being broken (by not loading all shots/sounds properly, teleporting etc), but that the enemy was simply a cheater. Players who played purely to cheat for ego will keep cheating regardless because of the size of community and its nature.
 - I have a slight worry about how this anticheat works, since i've heard a lot about of false bans, personally i never had any issues or fairfight bans, besides few weird kicks at times iirc(?), so i'd assume those people are most likely lying and were cheating

9. Premium Revamp

 - Premium was always extremely unfair for any kind of creators besides theme/music. This kind of locking of the most unique feature The progression in the game is also already slow enough, with both money and experience from premium. With addition of trade system and premium earnings, i thought there would be huge inflation for legendaries. However they havent changed in price drastically, a lot of them fell down in price instead as well, its a really interesting turn of events.. Besides few most expensive ones, and everything feels actually somewhat affordable eventually in the game, and game doesnt feel like every other F2P game with rent/repair system that literally leaves you with nothing after you've paid for all the leases and things. Although i still think game is pretty tough on newbies considering how little equipment they get and how huge the hurdle to unlock it is for them.
 - I think rewarding premium players with extra tickets is a decent concept, especially considering they could buy legendary gamble rolls if they already had everything else unlocked.
 - Premium matchmaking is a hard no from me, at least with current playerbase counts. What you would end up doing is splitting the playerbase in two, which further complicates matchmaking. However, on top of that, you will make F2P players far more likely to face cheaters now that Premium players wont be facing them. Also one more thing to consider about APB is that cheaters aren't completely invincible, any experienced and well equipped player can potentially handle playing vs newbie/inexperienced cheater, since there are many mechanics to cheese them with, cars, distance, magazine size, car explosives, bricks and many more etc..

I more or less agree with other topics and dont see many issues with them

 

 

Closing notes:
 

There are a lot of interesting ideas here, but they require a much bigger playerbase to be implemented well, otherwise they are just taking away far too much from the core game experience with little to no return. If you are trying to change the APB from its core to get one shot to appeal to new players (by actually further subverting the initial appeal to begin with) and earn some more cash from it i understand that, its your game at the end of the day. I wouldn't like to load in different map / server every mission and having to wait extra time for everyone to load in, then have us spawned at equally fair distances, etc.... Game being unfair is part of the game (even the players have rules what is honorable or not), and i don't mean this by matchmaking, i mean this by all the circumstances happening around in the district, different missions, different locations, different missions other players are playing around those locations where you can bump into other people, have a noisy and confusing surrounding or props on map broken, NPC cars from the road gone... and more.

Sorry for the big ramble and wall of text, i just felt like i needed to speak about this, especially considering that game would be redesigned from core. Hope you can gather some useful info from here.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Daarin

[MrLek 35]

2 hours ago, Daarin said:

"mission queuing"

Instead of putting a mission queuing, they should put a queue to enter the district and not a mission queuing. I think there are conflicts of players joining the same district at the same time, then one is thrown back to the login screen and Battle Eye announces it as "client is slow".

[vsb 6171]

4 hours ago, Daarin said:

Thirdly, why would anyone be actively in a district and whats even the purpose of them if players are gonna be moved all the time? There isn't a single reason besides just driving around, doing events, or robbing - which puts people even at higher risk.

is that any different from how it is now?

 

the “open world” aspect of apb outside of missions has been relegated to essentially a matchmaking lobby for almost a decade, even longer if like many people you consider ramraiding useless

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

9 hours ago, Daarin said:

3. Hosting Upgrade #2 – New Mission Queueing System, Improved Matchmaking, Phasing

You're going to be dragged through the mud by a lot of people here for the points on number 3 despite being correct.

[iRawwwN 282]

phasing sucks and is not the solution that should have been chosen.

 

also when i leave one district to join another, then another, then another my UI ends up all fucked. matt you gonna solve that issue or?

Edited March 8, 2023 by iRawwwN

[Krapler 36]

I had strokes while reading the new roadmap, I do not know who thought of such stuff to be added, but more important is who accepted them? There are some really useless ideas that makes no sense at all and implanting them, will make the game even worse than it was previously. I do hope they pay some attention to topics like this one before starting working on anything from that list.

Edited March 8, 2023 by Krapler

[Frosi 722]

I think Daarin is making a couple of good points and is pointing out some obvious flaws that LO will have to take into account especially when it comes to phasing. I don't think LO wants to take away from the current social experience APB has right now, it would feel bad seeing ppl just disappear as they're moved to a different district, however, Matt has also already stated that the new system could simply sort players into a district with players of similar MMR which would then mean they could stay on said district to get missions much like segregation worked in the past but working like a rubberband where matchmaking gets stricter and more accurate the more players are in the pool where as threat segregation simply made the game unplayable at off-peak times for a lot of players, especially on NA.

 

15 minutes ago, Krapler said:

I had strokes while reading the new roadmap, I do not know who thought of such stuff to be added, but more important is who accepted them? There are some really useless ideas that makes no sense at all and implanting them, will make the game even worse than it was previously. I do hope they pay some attention to topics like this one before starting working on anything from that list.

It'd help if you were to mention the things you feel iffy about.

 

29 minutes ago, iRawwwN said:

phasing sucks and is not the solution that should have been chosen.

 

also when i leave one district to join another, then another, then another my UI ends up all fucked. matt you gonna solve that issue or?

Obviously that'd have to be fixed first, so would any sort of performance degradation coming from swapping districts, although in my experience it tends to be less when swapping between the same type of district rather than going from WF to Fin.

[Hexerin 1140]

11 hours ago, Daarin said:

 - Im all up for getting better anticheat protection, as long as it doesnt have any hindrance on the performance. Hopefully it works with minimal performance downside with new build

EAC is the only anticheat this game has had (out of the many it's had over the years) that didn't have any performance impact. That, along with it also being the only anticheat this game has had that has actually done anything significant to deal with the cheating population, are why so many have wished for (and are hyped about) its return.

[Daarin 19]

20 hours ago, glaciers said:

is that any different from how it is now?

 

the “open world” aspect of apb outside of missions has been relegated to essentially a matchmaking lobby for almost a decade, even longer if like many people you consider ramraiding useless

A matchmaking lobby where you start and finish 10+ matches if you want to without a single loading and seamless gameplay, always having something to do, watch other players play, interact with them in some way, while you are getting matched vs people in the same lobby, which feels alive and consistent, as people leave the district periodically, not instantly after they finish the mission. Also, people can join the district and just idle in there if they want to, sure it ruins the matchmaking to some extent, but its mostly newbies who do it on purpose and its most likely 5-10% of players on the map, otherwise people reserve an empty place for.

 

I dont get the reason why would APB get turned into a hardcore competitive game because it literally isn't designed as one. You can by all means play it competitively - and this the true beauty of the game. Guns are balanced extremely well in my opinion, and there are strict rules you can use or setup matches to play competitively, even the tournaments were setup by CET, however it is designed in a foundation as a casual game.

 

With phasing, and especially if you turn off collision and similar things, because apparently people abuse it that much to the point where its such a huge issue as blogpost says, it really leaves this game with nothing. It becomes just a third person shooter a big map and no headshots. Why would being with other people in district matter at all at that point? Why even have district chat? Why even have other players AT ALL and why not reserve an empty map for every single match? Lets take it further, the huge map isnt balanced, so why not just have everyone play vs each other at Baylan or some other cut off part of map? You need to realize that phasing and turning collisions off just completely ruins any purpose of districts, and changes the game from the core.

 

The way the districts are designed is for a casual game, which can be competitive if both teams choose to see each other as a target they have to play their best against and win at all costs (to use the term, tryharding). And this works because community is small and you don't want to seem weak to people you usually beat in matches because down the line you get ostracized in the community and seen as bad player. In my opinion, this is the exact reason why you see so many low level alts which are playing well and have account wide weapons and vehicles available, because they don't want their competitive character associated and nickname with them all the time. Now if you consider that as an issue, phasing will make it even worse, since people would even have to create new accounts since i assume phasing matchmaking would be account wide.

 

If the game had thousand+ of concurrent players on each region, gold and silver district segregation would work somewhat good enough, it isnt the perfect system because of dethreating, but that can be worked around in different ways.

 

However, i would say that game can be a different experience each time even if the threats on both sides aren't matched up. 3 golds could lose to 3 silvers if silvers get a good spot, they use unfair mechanics such as running away, camping with snipers, explosives, etc, golds are undergeared for the occassion, etc... This game is foundationally unbalanced and unfair, and you are expected to lose matches just because of random stuff happening around. To make it truly balanced everyone would have to always get a good spot and always defend, because matches are always defender sided no matter what. Taking these things away just ruins the experience in my opinion, but maybe im biased because im a long time player, albeit there are still cases where i lose to newbies from time to time for all kinds of reasons, and i see it happen to other players as well.

 

 

APB simply has no casual and competitive game modes. Fight clubs are simply deathmatch. You can either make the game be an always competitive shooter, make a split into competitive and casual districts - which was already attempted and people didn't like it, and in reality needs a lot more players to work out otherwise you are just further splitting the playerbase up; or leave it designed as it is, where people see matches as competitive, as long as they are played against well known players who see each other as competition or unacceptable to lose against.

 

 

On another comment, extreme SBMM in itself is a big trap, because you would literally just end up playing vs players of similar skill all the time, and eventually it just turns into an ultra competitive wrestle where no one really ever gets to have fun and matches to relax. I agree that current matchmaking system doesn't work well, but changing it to phasing design ruins everything this game stands for.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Daarin

[Connor 6]

I agree with a lot of the points made here.

 

Think this needs to be implemented carefully as risk of turning it a generic 3PS is quite high which would be a big negative change imo.