End of Year Update ("Showvember")

[Gento 0]

9 hours ago, MattScott said:

Hi everyone,

 

We're calling this an End of Year Update or "Showvember" to be cute, but it's really just a long overdue update on the game. https://www.gamersfirst.com/apb/news/2023/11/17/end-of-the-year-update

 

There wasn't really space in the blog to get into more details, so I'll also be on Twitch to talk and answer more questions. Tuesday Nov 21 - 7pm UTC / 11am PST. https://www.twitch.tv/littleorbit

 

Thanks,
Matt

Players are expressing frustration and skepticism, believing that recent updates are not delivering substantial improvements, and they question the game developers' sincerity in addressing concerns and providing meaningful new content.

[MattScott 15242]

Players have every right to be critical, frustrated, and skeptical. That's generally why I haven't given updates.

 

But, this time I'm going to stream a couple things and show where we are. Then players can make up their own minds.

[thrown. 11]

6 minutes ago, MattScott said:

Players have every right to be critical, frustrated, and skeptical. That's generally why I haven't given updates.

 

But, this time I'm going to stream a couple things and show where we are. Then players can make up their own minds.

I still have faith in you Matt, thanks.

[R3ACT3M 489]

16 minutes ago, MattScott said:

Players have every right to be critical, frustrated, and skeptical. That's generally why I haven't given updates.

 

But, this time I'm going to stream a couple things and show where we are. Then players can make up their own minds.

With the level of commitment proven to this game, I'm sure the new foundation your developers are giving this game will be enough for us all to laugh at the past this game once had.

Just wish the communication was better for all 300 players who still stick around.

[Nickolai 206]

You guys get a lot of flack. 

And I have given you a fair share of that flack, but I get it. 

World is in flames right now, nobody is sailing smoothly with everything happening. 

Yet you still soldier on despite all the shit you get and how bleak the future looks. 

There is some merit to that. Respect. 

Looking forward to the stream.

[Cuve 244]

New preset items in the store poggersssss

[cowhorseman 441]

2 hours ago, MattScott said:

Players have every right to be critical, frustrated, and skeptical. That's generally why I haven't given updates.

 

But, this time I'm going to stream a couple things and show where we are. Then players can make up their own minds.

Hey when are you going to do something about fallen earth? those guys would sure love a matince every sat and sunday. you know a tiny bit of attention for them? a few already got a bet running you won't respond to me here about this

[koenyboy500 36]

I've always been a believer.

Not out of ignorance, but out of willpower.

Having great patience, I simply see this as 'yeah we are waiting long, but we don't have to do anything.. And victory, will come". The waiting is annoying and inconvenient. But image in you would be working on this (it does appear to be quite the tricky nut to crack!).

If all I need to do is wait, then I can wait.

 

Hope does not win over my will. Hope is the first step on the road of disappointment. But when it does come, I'll be happy.

I think you're awesome for still working on this gem I love. Simple as that.

 

[R3ACT3M 489]

3 hours ago, koenyboy500 said:

I've always been a believer.

Not out of ignorance, but out of willpower.

I loose faith when they're on the hush hush, but when they drop something my faith is restored

[Temporal 21]

Years go by and we all still here.

[Therustee 9]

11 hours ago, MattScott said:

Players have every right to be critical, frustrated, and skeptical. That's generally why I haven't given updates.

 

But, this time I'm going to stream a couple things and show where we are. Then players can make up their own minds.

phasmophobia started with one dev: https://steamcharts.com/app/739630 players got what their wanted the steam charts are the hard proof of this simple concept! you had almost 6years to do something significant! okay sure lets give credit where credit due! JT store rework and actual trade system i guess? probably a couple weeks worth of work... dont you think coming back with a black friday deal post disguised as update post is a bit cheeky? putting a 45% discount on the most overpriced item on armas is kinda greedy in my opinion .___. but anyway i looking forward to that Q&A stream just to get banned again for asking a question that is uncomfortable by LO standards

[RodriguesPTF 11]

10 hours ago, Nickolai said:

You guys get a lot of flack. 

And I have given you a fair share of that flack, but I get it. 

World is in flames right now, nobody is sailing smoothly with everything happening. 

Yet you still soldier on despite all the shit you get and how bleak the future looks. 

There is some merit to that. Respect. 

Looking forward to the stream.

Just came here to say, respect!

[Yapopal 164]

Matt, you're pushing an old Cadillac stuck in the clay. And you've been doing it alone for five years. You are pelted with dirt from under the wheel.  And you understand that you alone will not push the car out, but you persistently continue to try without changing approaches.  I assure you that the old Cadillac is not worth your nerves, time and effort. The reputation of the game is at zero, the body is rotten, 300 cockroaches are running around in the trunk. Leave him alone, and go to the bright horizon. You have an understanding that this game has no analogue, so you are working on it. But there is no future for her either.

[Y2Venom 219]

19 hours ago, MattScott said:

Players have every right to be critical, frustrated, and skeptical. That's generally why I haven't given updates.

 

But, this time I'm going to stream a couple things and show where we are. Then players can make up their own minds.

Would rather you be here a little more, even if you dont have an update. Even if its just to listen to players vent....

[TzickyT 212]

here is my recap of it ... just me talking fully about it

 

[N66 97]

For the new matchmaking, will you be able to queue up for the map you want? and more importantly, what will it look like, will there be a frequent loading screens before missions to join players into the same instance?

[FakeBungo 248]

On 11/18/2023 at 6:54 PM, Y2Venom said:

How exactly will the "world server" help the matchmaking ? Considering all the good players will still group together and will not team with the new players ?? You cant say that it will have more of a pool to pull from. Simply because when we had 2000 people on a server to pull from, we had the same issue.

it simply won't. nobody in all my years playing this game did i ever, or did anyone ever think this was something that was needed.

 

Merged.

 

On 11/18/2023 at 9:26 PM, MonkaS said:

New content requires employees to make you only have 1-1.5 devs. Do you guys even still have 3d/2d artists or animators or map designers on staff? How are you supposed to release new content on such an ancient game engine especially one that still uses such outdated tech like scaleform. Think about how long the on boarding process will take to get these ppl up to snuff to actually start working. How are you going to pay these ppl to do that work when you guys aren't really making any money except on small projects that game devs/publishers sub contract out to you? what's the plan when these steps don't revive the game because the game is so old no one wants to come back? how is apb 2 supposed to happen when you sold the apb ip to unit game? sorry if you can't elaborate but honestly these are very real questions you should be asking yourself. 

the same way they have been releasing content for the past 5 years, by constantly trolling you guys into believing they will add content and then never actually doing anything.

 

there is absolutely zero reason to believe that mattscott is not going to continue to con you guys and grift off armas sales. there is zero reasons to trust LO to do anything.

 

Merged.

 

On 11/18/2023 at 9:34 PM, CommandantSteele said:

 

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I have severely mixed feelings on this. I understand the intent: Allowing for more people to get into more matches, but it feels like this will kill the spirit of the game. Part of the magic of APB, for me at least, has been the quasi-open world nature of the game. Everyone exists on the map at all times. This makes the city feel like it lives and breathes in a way that a lot of other games fail to capture. Now, it is undeniable that this leads to problems like people taking dump-trucks and ramming cars around or blocking off streets with massive piles of stolen vehicles, but I think that there are more elegant and focused solutions to those problems that don't affect the feel of the game as a whole.

 

Going back to having everyone existing on the same map, I've made a number of friends by noticing someone on a mission had a cool outfit that I liked. So I sent them a message saying that I liked their outfit, followed up by a friend request when their mission was done or they were otherwise not in a gunfight for a minute. It was nice. These changes feel like they'll cripple this social aspect of the game, because who would I see anymore? The ability to queue for games in the social district means that there's basically no reason to ever leave it. It also means that if I'm playing with a group of friends I can't go and be AFK for a moment by hopping over to the social district, because if I can queue or be queued for games in that district, I can never get up for a moment and allow the rest of my group to keep playing.

 

Not to mention that if you're not running on a powerful computer + high speed internet that can handle loading and reloading into districts all the time, your enjoyment of the game is going to plummet.

 

I agree with removing threat, as it's become an extensively problematic aspect of the game that is only used to support elitism and generally toxic behavior. One of the big reasons why I stopped playing is that I would get into a mission and immediately have teammates start leaving, either because they were gold and didn't want to play with a silver/bronze, or they were silver/bronze and wanted a team of golds to carry them to gold, and so on and so forth. At the end of the day, it's something that personally should've been gone long ago.

 

But, for the main point, I understand why Cross-District Matchmaking is appealing, but I worry about it killing the social aspect of APB, the living city aspect of APB, and making APB feel more like every other lobby-based shooter. I'm sure there's tons of things that I don't know about because I'm not a designer, but this is a strong aspect of APB that I am severely worried about being erased. Why bother customizing my character or my car if nobody's going to passively see it? 

 

I beg of you, Little Orbit: Consider letting people matchmake from anywhere carefully. I don't want to have two-thirds of what makes APB special deleted because the population's a bit low.

 

P.S. because I don't know where to put this: Fight Club might be a fun aspect of the game, but please don't turn the entire game into Fight Club with CDMM.

" But, for the main point, I understand why Cross-District Matchmaking is appealing, but I worry about it killing the social aspect of APB, the living city aspect of APB, and making APB feel more like every other lobby-based shooter. I'm sure there's tons of things that I don't know about because I'm not a designer, but this is a strong aspect of APB that I am severely worried about being erased. Why bother customizing my character or my car if nobody's going to passively see it? "

yeah exactly, roaming around the city in between missions. driving to the missions. etc. is like half of the enjoyment of APB.

[Frosi 722]

11 hours ago, N66 said:

For the new matchmaking, will you be able to queue up for the map you want? and more importantly, what will it look like, will there be a frequent loading screens before missions to join players into the same instance?

For now that's up in the air as cross-district matchmaking is not part of this Phase of matchmaking, they previously however talked about eventually not wanting there to be loading screens and to seamlessly phase you from one district to the other.

 

As for the map question, I would assume that it won't yoink you from Waterfront to play a mission on Financial. As for when you queue up on social, I would assume it will let you choose which district you want to queue for or it will queue for the same type of district your group members are part of

[Hexerin 1140]

Can't wait to see what complete joke of a weapon you add to ARMAS this time, since the previous two have both been literally worthless.

[VanilleKeks 734]

You know, I wish you all the success you could possibly have, but it's really hard to see a future for this game without substantial resource allocation. Even if you have competent and well meaning staff.

I write technical specifications for a living and I have a good idea of what is achievable in a 40h work week for each of my developers.

 

The amount of work that I personally consider needed on APB is monumental compared to the (outwards visible) representation of your resources. It doesn't help that your team was also recently referred to as "our developer" in an official forum post. Although, word of mouth is that it is the truth.

 

It would really help to settle expectations if we had any information about what form of investment we can count on seeing for this game. I am aware that revealing such information would have an impact on your business, but the players are really searching for breadcrumbs at this point.

[SK4LP 62]

for matchmaking...

one thing we could try

gold -> -20% HP

silver -> 100% HP

bronze -> +20% HP

[Chabbo 19]

29 minutes ago, SK4LP said:

for matchmaking...

one thing we could try

gold -> -20% HP

silver -> 100% HP

bronze -> +20% HP

bruh

[N66 97]

On 11/20/2023 at 11:21 AM, Frosi said:

For now that's up in the air as cross-district matchmaking is not part of this Phase of matchmaking, they previously however talked about eventually not wanting there to be loading screens and to seamlessly phase you from one district to the other.

 

As for the map question, I would assume that it won't yoink you from Waterfront to play a mission on Financial. As for when you queue up on social, I would assume it will let you choose which district you want to queue for or it will queue for the same type of district your group members are part of

Thanks, the intent is what I meant to ask about, and from what you describe it's the ideal

[Hexerin 1140]

An hour later, still no new weapon on ARMAS.

[CookiePuss 5373]

1 hour ago, Hexerin said:

An hour later, still no new weapon on ARMAS.

I wanna say ARMAS updates  happen after LO staff are at work for their day.