Feedback: Escalation

[Noob_Guardian 418]

On 6/25/2024 at 12:32 AM, Bruhd101 said:

what if I am using a weapon that isn't really in the meta category but am trying

Then you are trying within limits.

 

Merged.

 

On 6/25/2024 at 7:17 AM, Nagletz said:

Looks like me as well lol... at the end still have to switch to meta, lord forgive me.

I've had people taunt me one match, i'd been using like Odin series against a meta comp (maybe 10 kills or so total with more deaths). Opp decided to taunt and call me bad. Next match, changed to meta, had the same ones crying hacker (20+kills and sub 10 deaths).

 

Look, if i'm "playing bad" its either been a while since I've played, an off day, or I'm using "fun" weapons to nerf myself so I can get weapon roles done, and not 100% pubstomp enemies. But when someone decides to push that button. Ooooh boooy!

 

 

[Hexerin 1140]

Only feedback I'd have for this kind of feature is: Remove the feature, because this game can't handle anything bigger than 4v4. It completely breaks balance, and makes missions effectively impossible to win as the attacking side. If people want to have large-scale team deathmatch, we already have a mode for that called Fight Club. People can go there and play that nonsense.

[TheMessiah 430]

Even if the matches are perfectly skill balanced-these attack/defend stages will always be frustratin.Removin them and keepin only the last stage can be a interesting change.Is radical but still..ofc even the last stages needs improvements(adjustin time,score points,balancing locations)

Edited June 27 by TheMessiah

[Noob_Guardian 418]

11 hours ago, TheMessiah said:

Even if the matches are perfectly skill balanced-these attack/defend stages will always be frustratin.Removin them and keepin only the last stage can be a interesting change.Is radical but still..ofc even the last stages needs improvements(adjustin time,score points,balancing locations)

Big blue truck tug of war

[BlatMan 711]

3 minutes ago, Noob_Guardian said:

Big blue truck tug of war

That mission wouldn't be so bad if the truck didn't respawn. Imagine if you had to repair the truck instead, but it can only be repaired moving below a certain speed. . Give everyone a blow torch. Instead of exploding, it catches on fire and quickly damages anyone inside it, to prevent people from hiding in it. Maybe only give points while the vehicle is moving.

[Revoluzzer 274]

On 6/18/2024 at 7:24 PM, R3ACT3M said:

In my time playing escalated missions I never really felt attacking or defending were at any advantage or disadvantage. If they are it's certainly not because there is 10 people now, it's because of the map designs not having good attack routes and flanks. That and way too many camping spots. That's not a 10vs10 problem that's a map problem.

The maps are designed for 4v4 at most. And I think most of the districts manage to find a good balance between authentic cityscape and tactical playground.

Of course all of this falls apart in a 10v10 situation, because coordination usually goes out the window and  respawns happen too frequently to keep the defending team away from objectives long enough to complete them.

 

 

On 6/20/2024 at 8:39 AM, Noob_Guardian said:

I have to try this, but my past experiences from the ooooold days are this:

 

1v1s - absolute garbage

2v2s - absolute garbage

3v3 fairly balanced

4v4 balanced

5v5 relatively balanced

6v6 unbalanced towards defenders

7v7+ just broken, no way to lose when defending unless you're all bad or the enemy team is just a bunch of coordinated tryhards or bots.

I agree with all but 2v2. That's peak competitive gameplay, as far as I'm concerned.

Weapon choice matters most, because you can't cover all bases. Focusing on / teaming up against one opponent at a time matters most in this setup (which is very reminiscent of the very old days). Saving a mission while your teammate is respawning is still very much a possibility, which keeps it interesting at all times.

Also I believe 2v2 is a sweet spot for balancing, because you get a lot of teams per district at that size.

 

4v4 is much more casual in comparison and 3v3 strikes a sweet balance between the two.

[Hexerin 1140]

8 hours ago, Revoluzzer said:

I agree with all but 2v2. That's peak competitive gameplay, as far as I'm concerned.

Weapon choice matters most, because you can't cover all bases. Focusing on / teaming up against one opponent at a time matters most in this setup (which is very reminiscent of the very old days). Saving a mission while your teammate is respawning is still very much a possibility, which keeps it interesting at all times.

Also I believe 2v2 is a sweet spot for balancing, because you get a lot of teams per district at that size.

 

4v4 is much more casual in comparison and 3v3 strikes a sweet balance between the two.

2v2 is not competitive. Assuming similar skill level, the moment someone goes down the other team automatically wins. It's effectively 1v1 with extra steps.

 

3v3 mitigates that issue, and allows for decent matches.

 

4v4 is literally what the game was designed around, which becomes extremely obvious once you reach the point that you can actually comprehend the map design of objective locations in Financial. Waterfront is a bit more hit or miss, which is unsurprising when you consider that Waterfront is an unfinished map.

 

5v5 and above just become more and more unbalanced, at an exponential rate. 5v5 already only technically works, and only in a handful of outdoor/open areas.

Edited July 2 by Hexerin

[R3ACT3M 489]

I feel like this discussion is only digging up that this game has more balance problems than just guns.

[MACKxBOLAN 431]

14 minutes ago, R3ACT3M said:

just guns.

Ya guns are worthless at this point, they only seem to work for certain people.

where as when I use one the shots are like bb's at best, need full mag in the belly 

to kill any of the Special people. n even with a super buff they still won't work at that 

power for a legit. So I'm saying if they special people they have full power op on the gun and 

have unlimited health, so its useless to shoot at em anyway. 

Lag spikes seem to only effect non special people.

Eastern NA servers run way too high ms. 60ms standing still up to 120 or even 200

in a mission or near other players. No reason for it to rise past 80 in a mission.

  The new MM is a breath of fresh air, if you like FC style play. 

Which I do, So I would be into the mission starting at 20v20.

The wait time to see when or if escalation will happen.

Ya know aside from the MM, were exactly where we were 2,3 years ago. 

[Hexerin 1140]

1 hour ago, R3ACT3M said:

I feel like this discussion is only digging up that this game has more balance problems than just guns.

Yes, the game suffers from many fairly severe balance issues in the map designs. Back in the first year or two when the game relaunched (2011-2012), G1/RG went into the maps and changed a bunch of stuff due to community feedback. Primarily removing access to some rooftops (because the unskilled couldn't comprehend how to throw a grenade and/or use the OPGL), but also changing the placements and adding/removing of various forms of cover (dumpsters, pillars, AC units, etc). In total, these changes massively reduced the game balance.

 

The intent was to reduce the strength of the defending team, by making various places easier to attack. However, because G1/RG didn't have a clue how to design themselves out of a wet cardboard box, they mostly just made things worse in most areas. Additionally, due to the removal of readily accessible defensible locations in many areas of the map, running with the objective became a more attractive way to "defend" it than it already was (which just devolved from there in the more casual end of the skill spectrum).

 

Unfortunately, because modern game devs are almost universally bad at dev, there was no archival of the old maps. Thus, we can never return to the actually properly balanced ones. For the same reasons, we can never return to the original balance of weapons, undoing the many years of damage that was done to them all.

[BlatMan 711]

5 hours ago, Hexerin said:

Yes, the game suffers from many fairly severe balance issues in the map designs. Back in the first year or two when the game relaunched (2011-2012), G1/RG went into the maps and changed a bunch of stuff due to community feedback. Primarily removing access to some rooftops (because the unskilled couldn't comprehend how to throw a grenade and/or use the OPGL), but also changing the placements and adding/removing of various forms of cover (dumpsters, pillars, AC units, etc). In total, these changes massively reduced the game balance.

 

The intent was to reduce the strength of the defending team, by making various places easier to attack. However, because G1/RG didn't have a clue how to design themselves out of a wet cardboard box, they mostly just made things worse in most areas. Additionally, due to the removal of readily accessible defensible locations in many areas of the map, running with the objective became a more attractive way to "defend" it than it already was (which just devolved from there in the more casual end of the skill spectrum).

 

Unfortunately, because modern game devs are almost universally bad at dev, there was no archival of the old maps. Thus, we can never return to the actually properly balanced ones. For the same reasons, we can never return to the original balance of weapons, undoing the many years of damage that was done to them all.

Most of those changes were after the retail release. There's plenty of retail boxes floating around. The important parts can be extracted, like the old districts and weapon stats. G1 shipped the whole stat file with the retail version for years. LO have access to all of it if they feel like looking for 5 seconds, but like you said they can't get out of a wet cardboard box. It took them a year to release an "almost finished" vehicle, but it was still in the concept stage of development.

[R3ACT3M 489]

On 7/2/2024 at 3:43 PM, BlatMan said:

Most of those changes were after the retail release. There's plenty of retail boxes floating around. The important parts can be extracted, like the old districts and weapon stats. G1 shipped the whole stat file with the retail version for years. LO have access to all of it if they feel like looking for 5 seconds, but like you said they can't get out of a wet cardboard box. It took them a year to release an "almost finished" vehicle, but it was still in the concept stage of development.

Yea we need some kinda of massive revert to stat based stuff in the game. The game is just not fun to play because of their stat changes.

[Hexerin 1140]

8 hours ago, R3ACT3M said:

Yea we need some kinda of massive revert to stat based stuff in the game. The game is just not fun to play because of their stat changes.

They could start by simply removing the Curves system and going back to linear fall-off on all weapons. That doesn't require any knowledge of "how things were", because they'd simply set the start/end points of the linear fall-off to approximately the start/end points of the Curves (which were based on the original start/end points anyways).

[Noob_Guardian 418]

On 7/2/2024 at 11:27 AM, Hexerin said:

Yes, the game suffers from many fairly severe balance issues in the map designs. Back in the first year or two when the game relaunched (2011-2012), G1/RG went into the maps and changed a bunch of stuff due to community feedback. Primarily removing access to some rooftops (because the unskilled couldn't comprehend how to throw a grenade and/or use the OPGL), but also changing the placements and adding/removing of various forms of cover (dumpsters, pillars, AC units, etc). In total, these changes massively reduced the game balance.

 

The intent was to reduce the strength of the defending team, by making various places easier to attack. However, because G1/RG didn't have a clue how to design themselves out of a wet cardboard box, they mostly just made things worse in most areas. Additionally, due to the removal of readily accessible defensible locations in many areas of the map, running with the objective became a more attractive way to "defend" it than it already was (which just devolved from there in the more casual end of the skill spectrum).

 

Unfortunately, because modern game devs are almost universally bad at dev, there was no archival of the old maps. Thus, we can never return to the actually properly balanced ones. For the same reasons, we can never return to the original balance of weapons, undoing the many years of damage that was done to them all.

TBH i disagree here. While a few were removed (RIP) Most of the adjusted places only had 2 access points, and were extremely broken on VIP and item hold missions. Even with grenade launchers, breaking into some of them was really tedious. Most of the locations became much more balanced, some were removed, and other places ended up being discovered. (Most of which were glitch ones, that ended up getting removed with the OOB changes).

 

But, I do agree here, Map and spawn design have caused many balance issues. (Car spawner specifically imbalanced a lot before its repeated nerfs). Weapons also, and while weapons are a primary form of imbalance, they tended seem exponentially worse, when compacted with broken locations, car surfer, and spawner.

 

On 7/4/2024 at 10:27 PM, Hexerin said:

They could start by simply removing the Curves system and going back to linear fall-off on all weapons. That doesn't require any knowledge of "how things were", because they'd simply set the start/end points of the linear fall-off to approximately the start/end points of the Curves (which were based on the original start/end points anyways).

Not a bad idea, it was fun standing just outside of enemy ranges like haha you cant hit me! Though i do enjoy the curves, they are a mess for some weapons balance wise for things like the NTEC and obeya

Edited July 11 by Noob_Guardian

[FakeBungo 248]

On 7/5/2024 at 2:27 PM, Hexerin said:

They could start by simply removing the Curves system and going back to linear fall-off on all weapons. That doesn't require any knowledge of "how things were", because they'd simply set the start/end points of the linear fall-off to approximately the start/end points of the Curves (which were based on the original start/end points anyways).

that would be a massive undertaking, especially considering they have no developers or anybody who knows the game inside and out (let alone is good at it/knows game design too). i misread, i thought it was referring to removing the dropoff entirely. WTF is 'curves', some new addition?

 

basically anything they add is just a meme. adding escalation without making ANY balancing adjustments is hilarious

Edited July 15 by FakeBungo

[R.chambers 0]

On 6/27/2024 at 11:19 AM, Hexerin said:

Only feedback I'd have for this kind of feature is: Remove the feature, because this game can't handle anything bigger than 4v4. It completely breaks balance, and makes missions effectively impossible to win as the attacking side. If people want to have large-scale team deathmatch, we already have a mode for that called Fight Club. People can go there and play that nonsense.

Literally this. Ever since that update, I've literally just stopped playing APB all together. 5v5 should be the ABSOLUTELY largest a game should ever be. 10v10 is way way too chaotic to actually have a coherent, fun match. I've not heard a single person I play with say they enjoy it, and was actually surprised to see a few people saying it's good.
I played on NA, and it was glaringly obvious how flawed 10v10 is. When there's low pop you are stuck waiting, IE in a 40-60 pop server there could be literally 3 games max at a time happening. I'm sure on EU it's a bit better, but then when you get to the actual gameplay it's horrid. If you're on attack you're stuck fighting large groups, and almost every single time you lose, because it takes a lot more coordination to push together than it does to sit and wait together. Without VOIP it's borderline impossible to get that coordination you need.
Even as a mid-tier gold, I can only push in, maybe kill 3-4 people with a good push, but there's still 6 other people who will just swarm you. This is especially noticeable in some spots, you spawn out in the open across the street from where you need to be and have to essentially go through D-day to get to cover, or a decent spot in general.
I've never made a forum post in my life, but this is something that I feel needs to seriously be rolled back or changed. Again, 5v5 at MOST otherwise it's way way too much.

[DumSAS 5]

Escalation is one of the best things happened to this game! 1v1 and 2v2 are quite boring for mid-tier players like me. But making 4v4 6v6 or even 10v10 lobbies on normal maps are really fun. Sure, some missions might need rebalance considering they were made for 4 player team but overall it is a great decision, well done, team!

[ShaiShai 130]

On 6/18/2024 at 10:58 AM, MageLO said:

Hello everyone,
 

Escalation has been out for some time now and we would like to hear your feedback on the System.
 

Here are some things that we are specifically looking for feedback on:

 

• How common are Escalation missions and do you think their frequency is going to decrease over time?
• Are Escalation missions common enough to warrant an in-game option that lets you opt out of being called into Escalation missions via their Escalation calls?
• What could we do to help the attacking side as they seem to be at quite a disadvantage in those larger missions?
• Do you think 10vs10 is a good spot for Escalation or should we lower/increase the cap?
   

Please provide us with all of your feedback, even if it is about things that are not listed above, we want to hear from you so we can start improving the system based on your feedback.
 

Please compile all of your feedback into one structured post and avoid cluttering the thread with messages that aren't feedback posts and most importantly please stay respectful to other users who may not see things the way you do.

Escalations are a joke , worse then the old backup system. hear me out

yesterday i was in a match, it was 2v3

my side had 1 Bronze and 1 silver (me) 

Their side had 3 golds

I called for escalation, and they ignored it (why would they accpet anyway, they are on the winning side) so the new system favors the winning side , at least with backup we had a chance to get some gold help, now its guarenteed to make the losing side lose as the other side doesnt have to accept the escalation. 

I came back thinking the game has changed, but i see i came back too soon, guess ill stay away again  sad cuz i miss this game and the fun i had in it, now its just not fun anymore

[nachokushara 2]

On 6/20/2024 at 2:39 AM, Noob_Guardian said:

I have to try this, but my past experiences from the ooooold days are this:

 

1v1s - absolute garbage

2v2s - absolute garbage

3v3 fairly balanced

4v4 balanced

5v5 relatively balanced

6v6 unbalanced towards defenders

7v7+ just broken, no way to lose when defending unless you're all bad or the enemy team is just a bunch of coordinated tryhards or bots.

agree with this i think missions should start 3v3 at least

[Darkzero3802 611]

Honest review? Matchmaking is still complete trash and escalation only further points out this obvious game flaw that LO refuses to fix. I hadent played since valentines day event and while I notice no bronzies in my matches anymore I notice there is still a very big imbalance. The rule of thumb that everyone has always used is one gold equals 2 silvers and escalation can bring one side 3 golds and a silver and all silvers on the other side. This creates a one sided game instantly that escalation doesnt fix and that one side can further be stacked while the other doesnt get balanced. I have been in afew big matches since returning where one side is more then 50% gold while the other only has one or 2 gold threats.

I have had a mission that was 2 golds and a silver vs 2 silvers and a R9 trainee to begin with and calling backup yielded a 3rd gold for them and another silver for us, least to say this was a completely one sided game and we got steamrolled on. This doesnt promote competitive matches and then people stop playing cause its not fun in constant one sided games. While there are no bronzies on one side the end result is still a steamroll all the same cause silvers dont equal golds and matchmaking still doesnt create balanced matches.

I was also noticing since coming back that I always face the same exact people over and over. This doesnt make things more fun when you constantly face the same 5 or 6 people, 40 people in a server and its vs the same ones each time. This can be atributed to the servers needing a higher max pop count and matchmaking being so broken. There needs to be a server pop increase and a deeper look into matchmaking and threat in order to get more balanced and fun matches.

[Mitne 724]

I gave my points to escalation before. In current form it's need serious rework. The problem is that it doesn't address problems properly. Escalation are also voluntarly which basically kills their intended intially purpose.

[Y2Venom 219]

Simple solution and have been saying it for years ....

 

Servers for pre-made teams. Clan wars.

 

Servers for Players ungrouped.

 

Usual players will not like this as they want to team with their friends to stomp silvers and think of every excuse why this is a bad idea.

[CookiePuss 5379]

11 minutes ago, Y2Venom said:

Simple solution and have been saying it for years ....

 

Servers for pre-made teams. Clan wars.

 

Servers for Players ungrouped.

 

Usual players will not like this as they want to team with their friends to stomp silvers and think of every excuse why this is a bad idea.

Maybe one day when we have the pop
also, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to play with your friends, it’s kind of the whole point 

[BlatMan 711]

I didn't notice until now. Your team get backup when the opposing team calls for backup. I didn't call for backup, yet it gives me another teammate. Then the mission grows infinitely because the opposing team's threat is low enough to keep calling backup.

 

 

[Darkzero3802 611]

7 hours ago, Y2Venom said:

Simple solution and have been saying it for years ....

 

Servers for pre-made teams. Clan wars.

 

Servers for Players ungrouped.

 

Usual players will not like this as they want to team with their friends to stomp silvers and think of every excuse why this is a bad idea.

If only we had about 100k players actively playing. Maby this could be an option. But alas we are but afew hundred in a game that has been dying for the better part of a decade

 

1 hour ago, BlatMan said:

I didn't notice until now. Your team get backup when the opposing team calls for backup. I didn't call for backup, yet it gives me another teammate. Then the mission grows infinitely because the opposing team's threat is low enough to keep calling backup.

 

 

Thats not how it works. In escalation the only way backup is called is if both party leaders call for backup. If one side requests it and the other side doesnt nothing happens and neither side gets more ppl