Feedback: Escalation

[BlatMan 711]

23 hours ago, Darkzero3802 said:

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

 

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

I'm not talking about escalation, I'm talking about the one sided backup when the team threats are unbalanced. It calls in backup for both teams. It's broken.

[Anella 70]

2 hours ago, BlatMan said:

I'm not talking about escalation, I'm talking about the one sided backup when the team threats are unbalanced. It calls in backup for both teams. It's broken.

True

[Darkzero3802 611]

On 9/9/2024 at 11:58 PM, BlatMan said:

I'm not talking about escalation, I'm talking about the one sided backup when the team threats are unbalanced. It calls in backup for both teams. It's broken.

Yea. That part they changed to keep the number of players even on each team. Bad idea when theres an imbalance

[Y2Venom 219]

On 9/9/2024 at 5:16 AM, Darkzero3802 said:

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

 

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

We all know that if this were to happen, the PUG servers would be full.

 

 

 

 

[Darkzero3802 611]

Playing another hundred matches or so I can def say that games are more imbalanced now then they were before. You get any sort of 2v2 where one side has a player with a threat lower you cant call backup to even it out. You can only requesrt escalation and if the other side doesnt agree to it you remain at a disadvantage and pretty much have a guaranteed loss. A silver and gold vs 2 silvers. 2 silvers vs a silver and bronze. These are imbalanced matches that you cant call backup on to balance them out. If its mismatched like that there should be a 3rd silver or bronze on the imbalanced side to even it out.

[Berkshire 38]

Anyone else experiencing excessive waiting times for missions? Its really putting me and my mates off. 

[Hexerin 1140]

4 hours ago, Darkzero3802 said:

Playing another hundred matches or so I can def say that games are more imbalanced now then they were before. You get any sort of 2v2 where one side has a player with a threat lower you cant call backup to even it out. You can only requesrt escalation and if the other side doesnt agree to it you remain at a disadvantage and pretty much have a guaranteed loss. A silver and gold vs 2 silvers. 2 silvers vs a silver and bronze. These are imbalanced matches that you cant call backup on to balance them out. If its mismatched like that there should be a 3rd silver or bronze on the imbalanced side to even it out.

2v2 shouldn't even be possible to matchmake. 3v3 should be the absolute minimum, and only happen if the matchmaking is taking at least 5+ minutes to find a match. 4v4 should be the baseline. 5v5 should also only be possible if it can't find a suitable 3v3 after searching for a few minutes beyond the baseline. 6v6+ shouldn't be possible.

Edited September 20 by Hexerin

[Darkzero3802 611]

18 hours ago, Hexerin said:

2v2 shouldn't even be possible to matchmake. 3v3 should be the absolute minimum, and only happen if the matchmaking is taking at least 5+ minutes to find a match. 4v4 should be the baseline. 5v5 should also only be possible if it can't find a suitable 3v3 after searching for a few minutes beyond the baseline. 6v6+ shouldn't be possible.

Well guess what. I get 2v2 roughly 80% of the time and that imbalance issue is still the same problem wether 2v2 or 3v3. MM doesnt seem to take threat into account as if it did the side with less threat should have an extra player (of same lower threat) to compensate for the lesser threat. Also remember when 1v1 wasnt possible yet routinely happened?

[BlatMan 711]

On 9/20/2024 at 4:56 PM, Berkshire said:

Anyone else experiencing excessive waiting times for missions? Its really putting me and my mates off. 

Unopposed missions are no longer created, and there needs to be an equal amount of players ready per side to start a match. They also dropped the district population from 50/50 to 40/40.

[Anella 70]

6 hours ago, BlatMan said:

Unopposed missions are no longer created, and there needs to be an equal amount of players ready per side to start a match. They also dropped the district population from 50/50 to 40/40.

That makes sense then, thought it was still a thing and I was just lucky to get opp that fast...

[Hexerin 1140]

On 9/21/2024 at 8:42 AM, Darkzero3802 said:

Well guess what. I get 2v2 roughly 80% of the time and that imbalance issue is still the same problem wether 2v2 or 3v3. MM doesnt seem to take threat into account as if it did the side with less threat should have an extra player (of same lower threat) to compensate for the lesser threat. Also remember when 1v1 wasnt possible yet routinely happened?

The problem with 2v2 is that it's effectively 1v1. If one of the two goes down, the other one will inevitably go down as well due to 1v2 being effectively impossible if all four players are of reasonably similar skill level. Compare this to 3v3, where if one goes down it's still 2v3 which is possible to stall out long enough for the downed player to return.

[Darkzero3802 611]

On 9/23/2024 at 1:03 AM, Hexerin said:

The problem with 2v2 is that it's effectively 1v1. If one of the two goes down, the other one will inevitably go down as well due to 1v2 being effectively impossible if all four players are of reasonably similar skill level. Compare this to 3v3, where if one goes down it's still 2v3 which is possible to stall out long enough for the downed player to return.

Well 2v2 still happens frequently and with the new matchmaking the teams are even worsely balanced then before. Just came out of a 4v4 with 3 golds, one gold blatent botter (who wont get banned cause LO tolerates cheating) and on my team 1 gold and 3 silvers. This game was an insta loss the moment mm made it. The blatent botter was just an exclamation point to how poor mm is and a middle finger. LO needs better servers and larger districs for better mm quality. Which they should have done before rolling out these changes

[Yapopal 169]

To eliminate the problem of unbalanced missions, it is necessary to speed up player rotation and increase the pool of available players. Escalation reduces the pool of available players and causes a problem with a long search for tasks. A disorderly escalation challenge breaks the mission. Escalation is not able to balance the mission. Escalation brings practically no benefit, but causes major problems. It gets to the point that the game becomes simply unplayable. It is impossible to ignore and delay the decision. Escalation is not viable and only causes harm.

[Darkzero3802 611]

7 hours ago, Yapopal said:

To eliminate the problem of unbalanced missions, it is necessary to speed up player rotation and increase the pool of available players. Escalation reduces the pool of available players and causes a problem with a long search for tasks. A disorderly escalation challenge breaks the mission. Escalation is not able to balance the mission. Escalation brings practically no benefit, but causes major problems. It gets to the point that the game becomes simply unplayable. It is impossible to ignore and delay the decision. Escalation is not viable and only causes harm.

It doesnt reduce the pool of players if theres no pool to begin with lol. LO didnt take that into account.

You have a district that has a small 40v40 max. This is way too small to properly matchmake off of especially when the amount of a certain threat varies due to there being no segregation. One side may have 15 silvers while the other only half that. Not only will there be a long wait but matches will be imbalanced. Districts need to be at a bare minimum 50v50 and some sort of threat segregation.

The current threat system has been completely destroyed beyond repair thanks to dethreaters and cheaters and needs a complete overhaul and fresh start. What is currently in place cant be salvaged.

[Yapopal 169]

There is always a pool of free players. One player or ten - it doesn't matter. Escalation, cancellation of district threats, reduction of the maximum number of players in the district - all these are negative factors that reduce the pool of free players. 
The first factor, escalation, has been added to the game to balance missions. But in fact, escalation has the opposite effect. She randomly changes the balance of power and does not strive for balance. There is also a high chance of a complete breakdown of the mission.
The second factor is the cancellation of district threats. The cancellation occurred due to the outflow of population on the American server. The administration did not bother and canceled the threat on all servers. The result was a decrease in the population of the European north, which led to an even greater collapse. It was a wrong move. It was worth changing the deterrent factor - the multiplier of experience points. The multiplier of experience points and currency should be much smaller. That is, a conditional gold player in the bronze district cannot earn anything because of the experience point multiplier equal to 0.1. It is also necessary to change the player's search system. Upon receiving five stars, the player is hunted for a certain period of time, the death of the player does not cancel the hunt. 
And the third factor is the decrease in the maximum number of players in the district. This decision was made due to the heavy load on the servers or the game. The result is lags, stuttering. I do not know what exactly lies at the root of the problem. But perhaps optimization will be the solution. For example, canceling the download of prints of clothes of third-party characters. Blocking part of the traffic packets responsible for the shots (you don't care who shoots at whom not in your mission?) 

If something does not work correctly, it must be destroyed, turned off, redone from scratch. I'm annoyed by such a dumb approach to things.  
If you have a system that does not work well, you need to understand why this is happening. To do this, you need to make small adjustments to the system and draw conclusions from the results obtained. Based on the findings, make new adjustments until the desired operating mode is obtained. If changing the system becomes unprofitable, then only then it needs to be deleted and a new system built. 
For example, the fundamental problem of the game is the imbalance of the opponents. The imbalance is caused by a low pool of available players who match each other in terms of playing skills. The quality of the player pool depends on the presence or absence of district threats. District threats are a great system, but it didn't work like shit! And it didn't work because of the crappy setup! At the heart of this system is the deterrence factor - the multiplier of experience points and currency. That is, the efficiency of the system depends on the change of this multiplier. Just a few numbers in the code. 
What is the administration doing? The administration ignores the system settings, simply turns it off. Without offering any alternatives, it disables one of the main game systems affecting its quality. The inter-district selection of rivals is wet dreams. With a reasonable approach, this system should have been ready before shutting down the old system. Its production required too many resources...
why am I writing all this? I want to explain to the administration why they fail so often. And I want to explain why this is happening.

Edited October 4 by Yapopal

[Hexerin 1140]

On 10/3/2024 at 9:11 PM, Darkzero3802 said:

What is currently in place cant be salvaged.

The current system is fine, they just need to adjust it and then reset everyone's threat so the system can start fresh. As for what needs to be adjusted, that's simple:

 

Remove green threat, so that there's only three threat levels (gold, silver, bronze). Make gold and bronze account for the upper and lower 25% of players, with silver being the 50% in between. This makes it much easier for the system to matchmake smartly, since there's less variance to consider. It also allows for the matchmaker to be tightened up, such as removing the ability for bronzes to be in the same match as golds. This will, over time, smooth out matchmaking and result in healthier matches overall.

 

Then, have the system soft reset everyone's threat level every 3 months, with soft reset being defined as "threat is reset, but the system is temporarily more inclined to move a given player's threat level towards where they were before". This will account for the issues that plague the current system, such as existing players quitting the game and new players joining.

 

Once those adjustments are in place, perform a hard reset on the entire account database. Every single player's threat information being completely deleted/reset, making everyone start as if they were brand new accounts (as far as threat level is concerned). This will result in outright chaos at first, possibly even for the entire first soft reset cycle (aforementioned 3 months). However, once past that initial stretch, the system as a whole will be good to go and matches going forward will be significantly improved.

 

Also, it goes without saying, but the districts need to be put back to 50v50 and LO needs to get the game hosted on actual servers instead of the 20 year old laptop they've got it on currently. Ideally, they should also just remove the factions from matchmaking, so that all 100 players in the district are available for consideration of both sides in every potential match.

[Darkzero3802 611]

8 hours ago, Hexerin said:

The current system is fine, they just need to adjust it and then reset everyone's threat so the system can start fresh. As for what needs to be adjusted, that's simple:

 

Remove green threat, so that there's only three threat levels (gold, silver, bronze). Make gold and bronze account for the upper and lower 25% of players, with silver being the 50% in between. This makes it much easier for the system to matchmake smartly, since there's less variance to consider. It also allows for the matchmaker to be tightened up, such as removing the ability for bronzes to be in the same match as golds. This will, over time, smooth out matchmaking and result in healthier matches overall.

 

Then, have the system soft reset everyone's threat level every 3 months, with soft reset being defined as "threat is reset, but the system is temporarily more inclined to move a given player's threat level towards where they were before". This will account for the issues that plague the current system, such as existing players quitting the game and new players joining.

 

Once those adjustments are in place, perform a hard reset on the entire account database. Every single player's threat information being completely deleted/reset, making everyone start as if they were brand new accounts (as far as threat level is concerned). This will result in outright chaos at first, possibly even for the entire first soft reset cycle (aforementioned 3 months). However, once past that initial stretch, the system as a whole will be good to go and matches going forward will be significantly improved.

 

Also, it goes without saying, but the districts need to be put back to 50v50 and LO needs to get the game hosted on actual servers instead of the 20 year old laptop they've got it on currently. Ideally, they should also just remove the factions from matchmaking, so that all 100 players in the district are available for consideration of both sides in every potential match.

Your not far off where my thoughts were on this. I agree with the green removal, nobody is a green and the few who are dethreated to get it. 50v50 would be a bare minimum for a district size for the new matchmaking to function half decently. It should be higher and yes it should be on new servers and not the potato it currently runs on. But one thing they need to do is to optimize the game. This whole unoptimized mess is just that. A mess. It doesnt serve anything but to make life harder for everyone. An optimized game runs better and we all want APB to run well.

A reset is mandatory for threat as this completely removes the dethreating mess that has ruined matchmaking. They also need to actively enforce the TOS and to stop tolerating cheaters. If they continue to have a high tolerance and half patootie anti cheat its just going to skewer it. They need to change up from threating up and down from highly based off wins and losses to a point range. This many points dethreats, this many points is silver and this many is gold. Obv make wins and losses mean something but dont make it the main factor in threat. If teams are stacked on one side its not a fair asessment, nor is not including K/D. Ive seen matches where the top losing team was a K/D of 3 and its a threat down cause they lost cause the rest of th team got stomped.

 

I get where your going with the soft reset but idk how effective that would be given the sheer number of hackers in APB. If done right yea I can see it weeding out inactive accounts but if abused it could be what threat is now. A complete and total waste of time that is rather poor at showing someones skill level. But to add on LO should put out steam achievements. Get bronze threat, silver, gold. 

[BlatMan 711]

Dark, have you even played this game in the last 10 years? Threat hasn't been determined by wins for a long time. It goes by score. There's a bonus for winning, but it's barely enough to affect threat.

 

Same with the team lead kicking you talk about in this thread. That hasn't been a thing for a while. You need a demerit to get kicked, long before we had the option to vote for team leader. If you get kicked, it means you team killed, suicide multiple times, or went afk. There's a few people who will try to get you to team kill so they can kick you, but usually they end up team killing first and throwing the mission for themselves.

[Darkzero3802 611]

On 10/6/2024 at 4:00 PM, BlatMan said:

Dark, have you even played this game in the last 10 years? Threat hasn't been determined by wins for a long time. It goes by score. There's a bonus for winning, but it's barely enough to affect threat.

 

Same with the team lead kicking you talk about in this thread. That hasn't been a thing for a while. You need a demerit to get kicked, long before we had the option to vote for team leader. If you get kicked, it means you team killed, suicide multiple times, or went afk. There's a few people who will try to get you to team kill so they can kick you, but usually they end up team killing first and throwing the mission for themselves.

Im on as we speak. I had said match where I couldnt kick cause the one of my team didnt want his afk friend kicked. We lost that game cause he threw it to protect his afk friend.  and yes I have seen many times over the last month where team lead makes someone get a demerit and kicks em. Its still actively going on to this day. And yes that win bonus is more then enough to prevent a demerit in threat. You can have the match of your life and cause the other team won and had more points they get the threat up. The system needs work. Still.

[reign 2]

On 10/6/2024 at 7:19 AM, Hexerin said:

The current system is fine, they just need to adjust it and then reset everyone's threat so the system can start fresh. As for what needs to be adjusted, that's simple:

 

Remove green threat, so that there's only three threat levels (gold, silver, bronze). Make gold and bronze account for the upper and lower 25% of players, with silver being the 50% in between. This makes it much easier for the system to matchmake smartly, since there's less variance to consider. It also allows for the matchmaker to be tightened up, such as removing the ability for bronzes to be in the same match as golds. This will, over time, smooth out matchmaking and result in healthier matches overall.

 

Then, have the system soft reset everyone's threat level every 3 months, with soft reset being defined as "threat is reset, but the system is temporarily more inclined to move a given player's threat level towards where they were before". This will account for the issues that plague the current system, such as existing players quitting the game and new players joining.

 

Once those adjustments are in place, perform a hard reset on the entire account database. Every single player's threat information being completely deleted/reset, making everyone start as if they were brand new accounts (as far as threat level is concerned). This will result in outright chaos at first, possibly even for the entire first soft reset cycle (aforementioned 3 months). However, once past that initial stretch, the system as a whole will be good to go and matches going forward will be significantly improved.

 

Also, it goes without saying, but the districts need to be put back to 50v50 and LO needs to get the game hosted on actual servers instead of the 20 year old laptop they've got it on currently. Ideally, they should also just remove the factions from matchmaking, so that all 100 players in the district are available for consideration of both sides in every potential match.

You’ve got some solid ideas here, especially regarding threat adjustments and how it could help improve matchmaking. Reducing threat to just gold, silver, and bronze makes sense—simplifying the system could make matchmaking more efficient and less chaotic, especially if you can separate the extremes like golds and bronzes from ending up in the same match. It would also tighten the skill gaps between players in a given match, which should lead to healthier, more competitive games overall.

The idea of a soft reset every 3 months is interesting too, as it accounts for player turnover and keeps things fresh without completely wiping progress. It would keep the system dynamic and better at adjusting for changes in the player base. A hard reset after all the adjustments would definitely cause some chaos in the beginning, but if handled right, it could set up a more balanced system in the long run, especially with regular soft resets.

As for bringing back 50v50 districts and upgrading servers, I totally agree. The game could benefit massively from better performance and larger matches like it used to have. And removing faction restrictions in matchmaking would certainly open up more balanced matchups by increasing the pool of potential players.

It would definitely be a big shake-up, but these changes could address a lot of the issues that plague the current system!

-reign

[Revoluzzer 274]

On 10/6/2024 at 7:19 AM, Hexerin said:

The current system is fine, they just need to adjust it and then reset everyone's threat so the system can start fresh. As for what needs to be adjusted, that's simple:

 

Remove green threat, so that there's only three threat levels (gold, silver, bronze). Make gold and bronze account for the upper and lower 25% of players, with silver being the 50% in between. This makes it much easier for the system to matchmake smartly, since there's less variance to consider. It also allows for the matchmaker to be tightened up, such as removing the ability for bronzes to be in the same match as golds. This will, over time, smooth out matchmaking and result in healthier matches overall.

 

Then, have the system soft reset everyone's threat level every 3 months, with soft reset being defined as "threat is reset, but the system is temporarily more inclined to move a given player's threat level towards where they were before". This will account for the issues that plague the current system, such as existing players quitting the game and new players joining.

 

Once those adjustments are in place, perform a hard reset on the entire account database. Every single player's threat information being completely deleted/reset, making everyone start as if they were brand new accounts (as far as threat level is concerned). This will result in outright chaos at first, possibly even for the entire first soft reset cycle (aforementioned 3 months). However, once past that initial stretch, the system as a whole will be good to go and matches going forward will be significantly improved.

 

Also, it goes without saying, but the districts need to be put back to 50v50 and LO needs to get the game hosted on actual servers instead of the 20 year old laptop they've got it on currently. Ideally, they should also just remove the factions from matchmaking, so that all 100 players in the district are available for consideration of both sides in every potential match.

The colours are only representations of underlying Glicko values. "Removing" green threat means expanding the other colours to occupy value-ranges previously occupied by a different one.

 

A system which dynamically keeps all active players (e.g. everyone who participated in opposed missions in the past 30 days) evenly distributed across the entire threat-range would  help, I believe. The colours aren't really relevant. Could just as well have each represent 25% of the full range. Though a more natural distribution would have the majority of players be in bronze or silver and only the very top end in gold and the very bottom end in green.

Again, the colours don't really matter, mind you. Removing them altogether and leave the matchmaking to work in the background would probably be the healthiest choice.

 

Something like soft reset is a mechanic already in place, called confidence. And what this does, is slowing down your threat-"progression". In other words, as confidence increases, threat-mobility decreases. A new player will have a confidence-value of 0, thus their threat swings up and down rapidly. A long-lived player will have a high confidence value and their threat moves like molasses. If the value reaches 1, you have to lower it before your threat starts moving again at all. This confidence value is also the reason why it is difficult to de-threat at first and then becomes very easy to gain threat again. (Copied from here.) Supposedly confidence will increase when you do not log in / participate in opposed missions for a prolonged time, as well as threat slowly decreasing. But I could not confirm this so far. It was only hinted at in past blog posts about the matchmaking system.

 

A hard reset is nonsense. We had two of those and they barely qualified as stopgaps. The system is already self correcting. Once mechanics are in place which hinder players from gaming the system, it will heal by itself. Hard resets are great for people who want some easy matches. Once they're back in the matchmaking-bracket where they belong (and opponents are tough again), they will complain.

 

If phasing ever becomes a reality the population limit on districts won't matter either, because matchmaking will be more global and the pool of available opponents potentially even greater than 100.

[MACKxBOLAN 431]

2 hours ago, Revoluzzer said:

A hard reset

I'd be all for a Threat reset. 

 I helped in otw and turned gold in two missions. GM said its because the 'Pool is so small there. 

   So I think that if my threat depends so much upon the vast Pool of NA. 

And we take into account all the golds who rarely play,

We take into account the current and long time hacking issues, 

and that golds make up most of the na pop.

So with them desegregating, it puts golds in every mission, on one or both sides, with rare exception. 

 So win or lose the gold will out score any non gold.

They will have unfathomable kill counts.

So the legit and or average players threat level will never rise past silver 1.

 

 So lets pretend one day a bronze goes wild and wins the match and kills

more than the gold on team, so it'd have to be like 30 kills. So he wins the mission, 

and out scores the golds. Then his threat movement is then based on the pools average

gold. Not the pool of in district playing now people. but the entire data base of players. 

 So its never been a mountain I considered climbable. 

The only reward I see from it is being called a hacker by association

 

 I think they should remove threats altogether cuz I believe it encourages hacking and

contributes to toxic comments in chat

[Hexerin 1140]

8 hours ago, Revoluzzer said:

Again, the colours don't really matter, mind you. Removing them altogether and leave the matchmaking to work in the background would probably be the healthiest choice.

Nah, there needs to be a player-facing indicator to keep the devs accountable.

[Hunt 18]

Escalation is useless. You don't have a working matchmaking system to make use of Escalation. One team escalates because they need help (because the matchmaking sucked) and the other team couldn't give a shit - they just want to farm. There is no mutual respect in APB, one team just wants to fuck the other over.

[MACKxBOLAN 431]

1 hour ago, Hunt said:

There is no mutual respect in APB, one team just wants to fook the other over.

You have to consider the source. Most of these kids are ignorant to what the word respect is.

But Ya, as one of very very few legit players, I only 'Play' to fook over those that don't belong. 

  With a Non-existent Anti cheat, and most players either hate trolling legits and or exceeding 

the average score of the average hacker in the Pool.

 MM appears to be rigged because ya can't get missions without golds. 

So Ya, they are people who invaded the bronze district and ruined the game. 

So you play to screw them out of farming and anything you can. 

Beings they hate legit players so badly.

 So its not the game or tickets or anything normal you would think, that I play for. 

These low lifes have been in game ruining it for years, and allowed to do it. 

Escalation simply deprives grinders of xp, bringing you in late. Wastes your time. 

 With unopposed missions turned off, you can only grind on the district that is full, 

and can't do anything in the other district. You have to wait.

  It would be nice if there was a setting to turn on or off back up missions. 

It's alright for a max rank but a grinder needs a fresh mission, you're not 

going to get the min score of i think 500 by coming in late. 

 Anything lower than the 500 and you get zero progress on your contact. 

This is why car trolling a mission is so common, they know you're coming 

and have others waiting to crash into you from outside the mission. 

 Then if ya get there some sweat wil tk ya.

So in most cases you cant even trust your team mate.