[PC] 05/17 Maintenance Announcement (Build #1385)

[Ritual 629]

Hello, San Paro! 

 

Did you get your hands on one of many goods this week? We hope you did not sleep through it because it's now the time to wrap up the festivities and bring back the everyday conflict to the city's streets.

 

We will say farewell to the Little Orbit Day event and the 'Beacon' map with a new game patch for PC that will go live on Wednesday (05/17/2023). The maintenance will start at 9 AM (UTC) and last between 4 and 6 hours.

 

Patch Notes:

 

GENERAL CHANGES:

• The default track count for themes and songs has been increased from 6 to 8 in the Music Studio.
• The usable mod reminder HUD notification now positions itself on the bottom of the screen instead of the center.

 

BALANCE CHANGES:

• Med Spray

1. Cooldown (45s -> 90s)

• Fr0g & Fr0g-SD

1. Ramp Distance (1000 -> 1200)

• RSA

1. Radius at Ten Meters (16 -> 14)
2. Walk Modifier (1.5 -> 1.3)
3. Sprint Delay (0.73 -> 0.625)
4. Refire interval (0.88s -> 0.80s)

• ACT44

1. Radius at Ten Meters (20 > 18)
2. Walk Modifier (1.2 -> 1.0)
3. Sprint Delay (0.73 -> 0.625)

• Apocalypse Pistol (Harbinger)

1. Recoil changed from RSA's to ACT44's

• RFP9

1. Marksmanship Modifier (0.32 -> 0.64)
2. Health Damage (110 -> 133)
3. Ramp Distance (4000 -> 3000)
4. Minimum Damage Range (1500 -> 2000)
5. Ammo Pool Capacity (120 -> 105)
6. Magazine Capacity (24 -> 21)

• RFP9' Fang'

1. Mod changed from Improved Rifling 3 to Hunting Sight 3

 

BUG FIXES:

• Re-enabled bUseTextureStreaming and mitigated an issue with white texture characters appearing.
• We have removed a duplicate, non-functioning listing of the DMR-AV for 30 days from the Joker Ticket store.
• The Shredder SB now has a 30-day rental option in the Joker Ticket store!

 

KNOWN ISSUES:

• Stalls can occur upon entering the Clothing Kiosk with "NEW!" items.
• Tattoo layers are inversed: Tattoos lower on the list will cover the ones above.

 

As always, thank you for your patience during the downtime.

We hope you enjoyed the Little Orbit Day event! 

 

P.S: The thread has been cross-posted from Game Updates for convenience.

[Spillra 135]

nice

[MACKxBOLAN 431]

19 minutes ago, Ritual said:

We will say farewell to the Little Orbit Day

Cough, cough, so we get the Asylum back, or did they throw that under the bus too?

[Weaboos 89]

I'm assuming ramp distance means effective range?

 

Interesting changes. I see you have undid the last couple of changes to rfp and returned it to it's original state. An improvement over the current form but I doubt many people will use it as was the case before. A step in the right direction for sure. 

 

Nice to see that you improved the accuracy of heavy pistols although I'm a bit disappointed you did not undo the last nerf they received (-10 m of effective range).

[Frosi 722]

6 minutes ago, MACKxBOLAN said:

Cough, cough, so we get the Asylum back, or did they throw that under the bus too?

29 minutes ago, Ritual said:

We will say farewell to the Little Orbit Day event and the 'Beacon' map with a new game patch for PC

 

It says in the announcement that they are saying farewell to the Beacon map with this patch too so yes, Asylum is coming back.

 

4 minutes ago, Weaboos said:

I'm assuming ramp distance means effective range?

It does yes! And as you've already figured out, these changes to the RFP revert it back to its original state that was considered overpowered, however, there's two changes to prevent it from being OP this time around, one being the reduction in effective range from 40 to 30 meters and the other being that the Fang no longer has access to a mod that serves as a flat upgrade to the gun as this meant that the RFP's were borderline impossible to balance because in many cases the base RFP would've been useless compared to the Fang cause it has 7 meters more range with no downside. After this change the Fang is a little more accurate when aiming down sights at the cost of losing accuracy when hipfiring so if you prefer to hipfire the RFP then the regular RFP's are a better pick.

[LilyRain 674]

Thanks for pushing out another balance-patch rather quickly but this one in particular isn't exactly an improvement:



RFP's problem is that the 'Fang' variant was vastly superior to standard RFP. You have decided to go with the lesser-evil that is HS3 compared to IR3. However, not dealing with the actual problem (Tier 3 mod) will make it seem like you are squeezing the situation to further favor Fang with HS3 (when in reality you are trying to prevent HS3 Fang from becoming a literal laser).

 

You have SUBSTANTIALLY DECREASED the benefit of marksmanship modifier, which naturally makes HS3-Fang less problematic but it also makes regular RFP suffer because of it. Fang now having better accuracy and increased health damage will help it retain some power over the further increased minimum damage range... This part appears to be deliberately in favor of HS3. It isn't like hipfiring RFP within 30 meters will compete with Colby .45 and yes, it is fair to bring Colby .45 to the discussion because that weapon was touched literally previously to this so it should've been considered/remembered here, more so to how closely related half of the stats on it to RFP:

both weapons have the exact same accuracy of 20cm at 10m radius, the same shot modifier cap of 1.5, roughly the same per shot modifier but .45 actually recovers faster. Problem is that the walk modifier on RFP is HIGHER than .45.... literally the only point in favor of RFP is the fact that it has the potential to kill more than 1 target without reloading.

Why not just... KILL the Tier 3 Mod and replace it with Hunting Sight ONE, then make the overall changes less harsh?

Edited May 16, 2023 by LilyRain

[MACKxBOLAN 431]

31 minutes ago, LilyRain said:

Hunting Sight ONE

HS 2 would be nice.

 If a crooked aiming old man can comment here:

Fang has a stubby barrel, and formerly a shit wide site.

U want a long barrel for range.

Lets remember its a Pistol, if they are that far away, U need a bigger gun,

or your just harassing them.

[PingOVER9000 189]

 

WOW WOO WOOOOOW MORE PLEASE MORE, I WANT THE OTHERS BALANCED TOO! pleasee

1 hour ago, LilyRain said:

Thanks for pushing out another balance-patch rather quickly but this one in particular isn't exactly an improvement:



RFP's problem is that the 'Fang' variant was vastly superior to standard RFP. You have decided to go with the lesser-evil that is HS3 compared to IR3. However, not dealing with the actual problem (Tier 3 mod) will make it seem like you are squeezing the situation to further favor Fang with HS3 (when in reality you are trying to prevent HS3 Fang from becoming a literal laser).

 

You have SUBSTANTIALLY DECREASED the benefit of marksmanship modifier, which naturally makes HS3-Fang less problematic but it also makes regular RFP suffer because of it. Fang now having better accuracy and increased health damage will help it retain some power over the further increased minimum damage range... This part appears to be deliberately in favor of HS3. It isn't like hipfiring RFP within 30 meters will compete with Colby .45 and yes, it is fair to bring Colby .45 to the discussion because that weapon was touched literally previously to this so it should've been considered/remembered here, more so to how closely related half of the stats on it to RFP:

both weapons have the exact same accuracy of 20cm at 10m radius, the same shot modifier cap of 1.5, roughly the same per shot modifier but .45 actually recovers faster. Problem is that the walk modifier on RFP is HIGHER than .45.... literally the only point in favor of RFP is the fact that it has the potential to kill more than 1 target without reloading.

Why not just... KILL the Tier 3 Mod and replace it with Hunting Sight ONE, then make the overall changes less harsh?

 

Agree and better alternative, smash the LIKE button on LilyRain comment.

Edited May 16, 2023 by PingOVER9000
more pleasee

[Frosi 722]

42 minutes ago, LilyRain said:

Why not just... KILL the Tier 3 Mod and replace it with Hunting Sight ONE, then make the overall changes less harsh?

Because like I mentioned above these changes are a revert to the RFP that people liked and felt vastly superior to play and the first playtest of it immediately showed that its an insane improvement over the current RFP on Live, I understand your concerns but I think you should play it on Live and then report back on how it feels.

 

I was also given permission to record a video to show off the difference between the current Live RFP and the one on OTW that is using the changes mentioned above.

 

 

[vsb 6171]

2 hours ago, Ritual said:

• RFP9

1. Marksmanship Modifier (0.32 -> 0.64)
2. Health Damage (110 -> 133)
3. Ramp Distance (4000 -> 3000)
4. Minimum Damage Range (1500 -> 2000)
5. Ammo Pool Capacity (120 -> 105)
6. Magazine Capacity (24 -> 21)

• RFP9' Fang'

1. Mod changed from Improved Rifling 3 to Hunting Sight 3

so close, yet so far

 

 

[koenyboy500 38]

These changes are FIRE man! I absolutely love it!

Love the fr0g stuff! I always tried going for the 'all 5 shot under the 10m' for the increased ttk but having it to 12m is still short, but much more QoL when I try to play by the same manner.

Love the RSA and especially the ACT 44 stuff.

Having FAIR recoil for the Harbinger is also very nice!

:3

Oof, looking at that RFP comparison video there is a noticable 'ATAC' Cooling Jacket problem with the Fang version, where if you keep shooting at max RPM the accuracy-gain can't keep up.

Not saying it's a problem (I actualy think it's nice to see some balancing factor here), but ANY ATAC with ANY level of Cooling Jacket the gun becomes so much worse xD.

Edited May 16, 2023 by koenyboy500
saw video :P ^,.,^

[ninjarrrr 255]

lol all these pistols changes and you cant even buff the TG8, how dumb

[Frosi 722]

10 minutes ago, koenyboy500 said:

Oof, looking at that RFP comparison video there is a noticable 'ATAC' Cooling Jacket problem with the Fang version, where if you keep shooting at max RPM the accuracy-gain can't keep up

I think you're looking at the Live version? That version has noticeably more bloom and the Fang makes it worse since IR3 increases its max bloom where as the OTW versions seem to recover more accuracy before being fired again as well as the Fang starting out with slightly better accuracy so it helps mitigate bloom a tiny bit.

[LilyRain 674]

8 minutes ago, Frosi said:

Because like I mentioned above these changes are a revert to the RFP that people liked and felt vastly superior to play and the first playtest of it immediately showed that its an insane improvement over the current RFP on Live, I understand your concerns but I think you should play it on Live and then report back on how it feels.

 

I was also given permission to record a video to show off the difference between the current Live RFP and the one on OTW that is using the changes mentioned above.

 

 

Thank you for going through the hassle of recording some footage for this endeavor, much appreciated. I was hoping balancing efforts would attempt to make APB better in more ways than just to make it more functional (or revert it to functional again in RFP's case).

RFP being reverted is unquestionably better than the current butchered 1.5 seconds ttk version 'just because Fang was pocket OBIR & it simply pisses me off, please nerf, thx'.

But my concerns arise from Fang REMAINING vastly superior to RFP (which sucks for APB) and the fact that the current efforts clearly attempt at sanctioning its superiority.

The predicament lies at the higher-edge-range as RFP is going to be a ~30 meters weapon, with a slightly less harsh damage falloff, supplemented with the reverted damage output (higher). Therefore, comparing RFP and RFP Fang when marksmanning at 13 meters unfortunately shows nothing, this range is quite easy for RFP and many other weapons.

Please grab a fellow SPCT and have them be sacrificed, Dark Souls style. Compare the two weapons first at full-rate-of-fire at 25m, 30m, 35m, etc. Repeat without marksman, then compare both benchmarks to Colby .45 under the same conditions.

[Frosi 722]

20 minutes ago, LilyRain said:

But my concerns arise from Fang REMAINING vastly superior to RFP (which sucks for APB) and the fact that the current efforts clearly attempt at sanctioning its superiority.

Looking at the video the accuracy difference between the Fang and base RFP isn't major, in my testing I actually had to go back and double check if HS3 even has any effect on the marksman accuracy cause it wasn't immediately obvious since its such a small difference.

 

20 minutes ago, LilyRain said:

The predicament lies at the higher-edge-range as RFP is going to be a ~30 meters weapon, with a slightly less harsh damage falloff, supplemented with the reverted damage output (higher). Therefore, comparing RFP and RFP Fang when marksmanning at 13 meters unfortunately shows nothing, this range is quite easy for RFP and many other weapons.

The goal wasn't to show its effectiveness within 13 meters but rather compare the accuracy and bloom of the two versions, the latter plays a huge part in how burst guns end up feeling to use. The goal of the video was to show that the OTW version of the RFP can be refired faster without blooming out to absurd levels (for a burst weapon) while providing better accuracy on the move too, this version feels a lot better to play.

 

20 minutes ago, LilyRain said:

Please grab a fellow SPCT and have them be sacrificed, Dark Souls style. Compare the two weapons first at full-rate-of-fire at 25m, 30m, 35m, etc. Repeat without marksman, then compare both benchmarks to Colby .45 under the same conditions.

When the patch goes Live tomorrow we'll see how it does against the .45, in my experience it did quite decent due to being able to do quick lean peeks and going back to using cover between bursts (Marksman corner popping). I don't think it'll be as good as the .45 overall but I do think that it has a much better time fighting .45's than the current RFP does.

 

The goal of these changes is to put the RFP back into a place where it feels good to use and it certainly achieves that, whether it is good enough to be meta within its effective range is something that will show in the coming weeks and then LO can decide whether they want to keep it where it is or do a follow-up buff like they did with the Fr0gs in this patch.

Edited May 16, 2023 by Frosi

[Reprimand 98]

Great updates, thank you! 

 

Can we please have some clarification on the following:

 

Radius at Ten Meters

Walk Modifier

Ramp Distance

Minimum Damage Range

 

Changes are always welcome but it may be beneficial to explain what these terms mean so everyone understands. 

 

Edited May 16, 2023 by Reprimand

[Frosi 722]

Just now, Reprimand said:

Radius at Ten Meters

Walk Modifier

Ramp Distance

Minimum Damage Range

Radius at Ten Meters is the base accuracy of the gun but also affects the marksman accuracy as the marksman modifier is a negative multiplier to the value set as the Radius at Ten Meters.

 

Walk Modifier decides how much accuracy the gun loses / gains when walking, this primarily affects accuracy when moving while in marksmanship mode, anything above 1 means it loses accuracy, anything below 1 means it gains accuracy when moving while in marksmanship mode.

 

Ramp distance is the effective range of the weapon in which it deals its maximum amount of damage every 100 equals 1 meter.

 

Minimum damage range is how many meters it takes for a weapon to have its damage fall off to its minimum value outside of its effective range. So if the Ramp distance on a weapon is 1000 and the Min damage range is 1500 it means that the gun deals its maximum damage within 10m and by the time it hits 25m it has reached its minimum damage value which is usually 30% of the base damage.

[Reprimand 98]

9 minutes ago, Frosi said:

Radius at Ten Meters is the base accuracy of the gun but also affects the marksman accuracy as the marksman modifier is a negative multiplier to the value set as the Radius at Ten Meters.

 

Walk Modifier decides how much accuracy the gun loses / gains when walking, this primarily affects accuracy when moving while in marksmanship mode, anything above 1 means it loses accuracy, anything below 1 means it gains accuracy when moving while in marksmanship mode.

 

Ramp distance is the effective range of the weapon in which it deals its maximum amount of damage every 100 equals 1 meter.

 

Minimum damage range is how many meters it takes for a weapon to have its damage fall off to its minimum value outside of its effective range. So if the Ramp distance on a weapon is 1000 and the Min damage range is 1500 it means that the gun deals its maximum damage within 10m and by the time it hits 25m it has reached its minimum damage value which is usually 30% of the base damage.

Thank you for the clarification. 

 

Praying for:

 

The long promised bug fix on the RFP Talon

 

A well deserved buff on the ALIG base accuracy and accuracy while walking modifier

 

Some balancing for the STAR (with mods attached)

 

A buff for the percussion grenade

 

A buff for LTL weaponry (particularly the pistol) 

 

A buff on the range (and potentially spread) on the Raptor 45 catalogue

 

Bullet tracers.

Edited May 16, 2023 by Reprimand

[Divait 1]

Damn, didn't even know this guns.

[Hexerin 1140]

1 hour ago, Frosi said:

Because like I mentioned above these changes are a revert to the RFP that people liked and felt vastly superior to play

The ridiculous sprint penalty (which you conveniently didn't showcase) that was slapped on the gun to neuter its hipfire wasn't removed though.

 

Ya'll need to stop making changes to the RFP by only looking at the Fang. Like holy shit.

 

EDIT: Also, adjust the change to IR1 instead of HS3, or refund the G1C to everyone who owns Fang because fundamental changes aren't something you can just push like this. I purchased the Fang for it having IR, not for it having HS.

Edited May 16, 2023 by Hexerin

[SweetToothiwe 3]

2 hours ago, Ritual said:

The default track count for themes and songs has been increased from 6 to 8 in the Music Studio.

Wow, finally. Glad to see some changes to theme making stuff. Tbh, would be cool, if you allow us to make themes (not songs) with more than 5 sec length, so anyone could do long ones legally. And ofc they should work as usual long themes, when you die they play for 5 seconds as usual but on inspection they play longer.

[Reprimand 98]

13 minutes ago, Hexerin said:

The ridiculous sprint penalty (which you conveniently didn't showcase) that was slapped on the gun to neuter its hipfire wasn't removed though.

 

Ya'll need to stop making changes to the RFP by only looking at the Fang. Like holy shit.

 

EDIT: Also, adjust the change to IR1 instead of HS3, or refund the G1C to everyone who owns Fang because fundamental changes aren't something you can just push like this. I purchased the Fang for it having IR, not for it having HS.

I have very much been of the mindset that they should add one slot secondaries. This could all be prevented. 

[Hexerin 1140]

1 minute ago, Reprimand said:

I have very much been of the mindset that they should add one slot secondaries. This could all be prevented. 

Only reason we don't have them is because the current UI can't support it, from what has been said in the past. That being said, secondaries should absolutely be limited to only a single slot, and that slot should only accept T1 mods. Otherwise, every secondary becomes a pocket primary, which is just dumb and breaks the already tenuous game balance.

[LilyRain 674]

47 minutes ago, Frosi said:

The goal wasn't to show its effectiveness within 13 meters but rather compare the accuracy and bloom of the two versions, the latter plays a huge part in how burst guns end up feeling to use. The goal of the video was to show that the OTW version of the RFP can be refired faster without blooming out to absurd levels (for a burst weapon) while providing better accuracy on the move too, this version feels a lot better to play.

But how? The marksmanship modifier is getting nerfed while the fire interval, burst interval, per shot modifier, shot modifier cap, recovery delay, recovery per second and run/walk modifiers remain untouched. How does that make RFP more accurate? Is some information ommitted/forgotten to be listed?

But that's exactly the core concern. Making accuracy and bloom ultimately better adds a lot of usability and enjoyment. It just happens that such a thing is the core function of Hunting Sight, making Fang again substantially better to use compared to regular RFP. There is just no escaping the drawbacks of a prime Tier 3 Mod on this weapon. Either Fang is great and regular-RFP sucks, both suck (current Live iteration) or both broken above-meta weapons (won't happen with this much conservatism on changes).

 

Why is LO specifically against placing a Tier 1 Mod or even a Fang-shaped Tagger on RFP-'Fang'? What are they hoping for, for people to fall into the trap of buying a sub-meta weapon?

I know, 'don't tell us what to do' but the situation calls for it. LO should focus its income on their future-revampment of Premium as well as more cosmetics, etc. They should stop rigging the game to oversell weapons. A good game never involves gameplay into monetization. G1 did that, many other games failed at it, LO should move over from it.

 

47 minutes ago, Frosi said:

The goal of these changes is to put the RFP back into a place where it feels good to use and it certainly achieves that, whether it is good enough to be meta within its effective range is something that will show in the coming weeks and then LO can decide whether they want to keep it where it is or do a follow-up buff like they did with the Fr0gs in this patch.

This doesn't even need testing. A 30 meters weapon that needs 1 full-second to kill at perfect execution doesn't have what it takes to be meta even if it is made Little-Orbital-Satellite-levels of beam accuracy. There are weapons that kill faster with reliable accuracy while also featuring substantially more range.

[Frosi 722]

3 minutes ago, LilyRain said:

But how? The marksmanship modifier is getting nerfed while the fire interval, burst interval, per shot modifier, shot modifier cap, recovery delay, recovery per second and run/walk modifiers remain untouched. How does that make RFP more accurate? Is some information ommitted/forgotten to be listed?

Honestly a good question, I know for a fact that these are all the changes done to the gun, my only guess would be that the marksman modifier has a weird interaction on burst weapons but no, to my knowledge nothing is being ommitted/forgotten here.

 

5 minutes ago, LilyRain said:

But that's exactly the core concern. Making accuracy and bloom ultimately better adds a lot of usability and enjoyment. It just happens that such a thing is the core function of Hunting Sight, making Fang again substantially better to use compared to regular RFP. There is just no escaping the drawbacks of a prime Tier 3 Mod on this weapon. Either Fang is great and regular-RFP sucks, both suck (current Live iteration) or both broken above-meta weapons (won't happen with this much conservatism on changes).

I disagree here, the hipfire penalty from HS3 is much more noticeable than the max bloom of IR3 ever was, not to mention that the benefit gained from HS3 is extremely minimal and sorta puts the Fang in a niche where those who always fire it in marksman may prefer the Fang over the regular RFP while those that still occasionally hipfire it may prefer the regular RFP. But I seriously want to emphasize how minimal of a improvement HS3 is to the marksman accuracy, you'd have to actually pay really close attention to spot which one uses HS3 and which doesn't if that sort of info was not given to the player as part of a test and I do think that is a good thing for a premodded Pistol as in this case it creates a niche and choice between the regular RFP and the Fang where as even IR1 on the Fang would be a direct upgrade to the base RFP and while much less extreme would run the same issue the RFP had when it was nerfed into an unusable state.

 

9 minutes ago, LilyRain said:

This doesn't even need testing. A 30 meters weapon that needs 1 full-second to kill at perfect execution doesn't have what it takes to be meta even if it is made Little-Orbital-Satellite-levels of beam accuracy. There are weapons that kill faster with reliable accuracy while also featuring substantially more range.

Whether it requires testing or not releasing something potentially overpowered is never a good move, especially for a game with a P2W stigma, its best to undershoot the goal and do a follow up buff rather than overshoot and end up having to nerf it, not to mention that the dev doing these changes only has 5 hours a week so there's little room to iterate meaning that if the goal was to make the RFP really strong and fit right into the meta then no RFP changes would've made it into this patch. This way they can make the gun better instantly without running the risk of it becoming overpowered and then observe its performance in the Live game and consider a small, risk free buff that may be squeezed into next weeks 5 hours dedicated to game balance. I also want to seriously emphasize the risk of only paying attention to a weapons stats to determine how effective it'll be, by that logic the OBIR with its very long ttk would be one of the worst guns in the game but we all know that that isn't the case because of how effective one can play around the burst interval when there's cover involved.