Preview from Matt: Mobilize

[MageLO 144]

Hello everyone,

 

Today we're excited to announce the addition of Cross-District Matchmaking, something we have been working towards for over a year and should significantly help by improving the overall match quality!
 

We have also just published a new blog post from Matt which talks about all things Cross-District Matchmaking as well as significant improvements to our current Anti-Cheat solution and policies.

 

To find out more about Cross-District Matchmaking and our improvements to SARD please head over to our dedicated blog post.

[Darkzero3802 613]

I am skeptical as to how effective this will be in improving matchmaking quality and in banning cheaters. To date nothing has worked and they have easily skirted any cheat detection. Heres to hoping this will actually do something but one big thing that needed addressing yesterday is hitreg. You cant balance weapons when they dont work properly to begin with and that should have happened first.

[BlatMan 715]

"If we have 100% confidence that you are cheating, then you can be banned at our discretion. We have found that there are some players who cheat at a level there is no other solution. We have to ban them. It's unfortunate, but we can't ignore it. Cheat at your own risk. You may lose your account."

In other words, you will ignore players who are 100% cheating. If you were really going to put in any effect, you will have said "will" instead of "can" and "may"

[LilyRain 677]

tldr: EU is to help us debug Cross District matchmaking. NA can join next year with Cross World Matchmaking since... their population is too low for Cross District to matter.

Edited 23 hours ago by LilyRain

[Romique 12]

13 hours ago, MageLO said:

Hello everyone,

 

Today we're excited to announce the addition of Cross-District Matchmaking, something we have been working towards for over a year and should significantly help by improving the overall match quality!
 

We have also just published a new blog post from Matt which talks about all things Cross-District Matchmaking as well as significant improvements to our current Anti-Cheat solution and policies.

 

To find out more about Cross-District Matchmaking and our improvements to SARD please head over to our dedicated blog post.

dear LO, Mage,  We need a check box - Cross-District Matchmaking on/off - so i can choose like we do it now with LFG mode , do i want to be teleported or not. or for example  i want to play 2x2 in current empty  district, and still dont want to be teleported anywhere. it will help NA play as it was before  and EU will have a choice - use Cross-District Matchmaking or not. ty 

Edited 13 hours ago by Romique

[vsb 6172]

 So effective today, I'm amending our public policy on cheating.

If we have 100% confidence that you are cheating, then you can be banned at our discretion. We have found that there are some players who cheat at a level there is no other solution. We have to ban them. It's unfortunate, but we can't ignore it. Cheat at your own risk. You may lose your account.

Why would you word it like this, this is the worst phrasing I've ever goddamn heard. At your discretion? Cheat at a level there is no other solution?

 

In what circumstance are you not banning a player that you are 100% confident is cheating? 

Why is there a level of cheating that doesn't get a player banned?

 

And what the hell was the policy on cheating before if this is the "crackdown"?????????

 

 

For any detection of less than 100% confidence, our system will be assigning Cheat Points. I've spelled some of this out in previous blogs, but Cheat Points are now being used to segregate or feature-limit cheaters so regular players don't have to play matches against them. Effectively, cheaters will play against other cheaters. That segregation may be through matchmaking or it may be feature bans where we prevent you from entering or participating in some kinds of districts until your Cheat Points have come down.

I've been skeptical of "cheat points" since you first mentioned them, and this hasn't alleviated any of my concerns.

 

As far as I'm concerned the whole system is just an elaborate way to warn cheaters before they lose their accounts.

 

Now if they get shadow-banned (instead of actually banned), they can just rotate to another account until cheat points expire and suffer no consequences at all - they don't even have to lose the money they spent to buy a new max rank account anymore.

 

 

[Yapopal 176]

I wonder where to get a pool of players? Transitions between areas lead to bugs. How to complete a mission if there are no markers visible?

 

Have the matchmaking settings changed? Or will we still be offered missions without waiting, but with a reduced quality of selection of opponents?

 

The efficiency of the system directly depends on the matchmaking settings. If you leave everything as it is, the quality of the matches will not improve. Under no circumstances should beginners meet with seasoned players. Without this border, you will not achieve an influx of players.

 

Publish a list of applications and a list of client modifications that are not available for use.

 

A soft policy towards the gray zone has no less negative impact on the pool of players than cheaters.

 

Any modifications of the client as well as macros should be equated to fraud. But first you should put the graphics settings menu in order.

Edited 13 hours ago by Yapopal

[CookiePuss 5381]

How do cheat points affect fight club specifically? Will cheat point players still be able to join or will they be blocked since there is no alternate matchmaking queue there? 
And if they can’t join isn’t that just a 30 second way to see if you’ve been shadow banned? And if they can still join then wtf?

[yourrandomnobody74 106]

Quote

Lastly, Cross District isn't the end. We want to continue expanding matchmaking so that you can queue from any type of district. That would allow players to hang out in Social or even Fight Club while waiting. And from there, we want to enable Cross World matchmaking which would truly bring the entire player base together.

If I understood the blog post correctly, you (indirectly) want to tackle the griefing problem with cross-district matchmaking?
If so, that'll be great.
However, this quoted line could be a big issue if this is enforced on everybody.
I don't want to play against 150ms players personally, as with anybody who wants to play this game remotely serious.
But I fear that this won't be a consideration for LO in any way, cause that's their way of solving the dying game population (as remarked by LilyRain)

I do think there needs to be a bigger emphasis in more easy to-do things, which require basic changing lines in a file.
I'll give you an easy one:
There's absolutely 0 reason to play any gun in the game right now apart from the Scout, Coroner, Oblivion, all ISSR guns (especially ISSR-C).
Why? Because they are the only 0 to none bullet spread guns in the entire game.
The arguement of "BUH UH NTEC IS FASTER TTK" is also irrelevant since ISSR-C exists, which has no movement penalty in MM mode and has almost pixel-perfect total bullet spread regardless of firerate.
All guns should behave akin to the mentioned guns above, it's ridiculous to implicitly enforce longer TTK by "SKILLFULLY CLICKING BETWEEN SHOTS" while not even having the base accuracy of the aforementioned guns.
Why does this matter? Because this game is a TPS game and it's the only way to counter someone pixel-hugging you from a certain distance. You need accuracy & a longer TTK together, they come in a package together to form the bigger picture.
The game ACTIVELY tries to harm any kind of incentive to grind it fully because of this. This was the main issue people had with the game for years now.
Not cheaters, not content, but actual core gameplay foundations not being well-thought-out. Oh and the fact the server is stuck at these low tickrates doesn't help it either.

I'd even go as far as increasing the overall character health of the game to 1500 or 1750. It would allow for more leeway for balancing the sheer amount of redundant guns you've brought into the game.
Drastic changes are needed:
- Mods that change TTK, range, rate of fire, MM accuracy should not exist (CJ3, IR3/LRR, HS3 - hs should only change FoV),
- Vastly different sprint to run modifier is also just unnecessary bullet spread / randomness added to the game,
- Slow crouch speed and the lack of any movement mechanics in fights completely make this game linear and boring. It's as bland as it gets.
- MM modifier = 0 and elongating TTK to 0.9 - 1s range across all guns is a must, it would make the game playable.
- Removing broken / redundant mission selection in districts (anything that isn't capture point or plant bomb on Fight Club is just ridiculous)
- Balancing the broken spots in districts which have been an issue for years (roofs near the west side of Waterfront close to police station, German Fortress etc.)
- Adding melee weapons or a melee attack (the animations are there, ever since blowtorch came out people have been wanting it. as easily seen with goomba stomping)

Then you can worry about things such as UI unification (Kismet & Scaleform are still intertwined, opt for ImGui if any of those are an issue), tutorial, adding new game modes (a 5 vs 5 mode bomb plant mode, BR, PvE modes which you've seemingly been exploring for next set of contacts if I understood Matt correctly), a new map (the groundwork for Midtown has been done by forum members), clan war content

Even trivial things such as finally adding the missing vending kiosks in Social's Gallery would be a welcome QoL addition to the game, or just unlocking all equipment slots.
 

2 hours ago, CookiePuss said:

How do cheat points affect fight club specifically? Will cheat point players still be able to join or will they be blocked since there is no alternate matchmaking queue there? 
And if they can’t join isn’t that just a 30 second way to see if you’ve been shadow banned? And if they can still join then wtf?

Why does it matter if cheaters realise they've been shadowbanned?
Now that you mention it, it would be funny if they only apply cheat points to accounts in action districts...
Can't wait for all the false bans in a 300 pop game, just because someone was mad over getting stomped by other players (indirectly just APB's RNG) ^_^

Edited 13 hours ago by yourrandomnobody74

[Romique 12]

13 hours ago, MageLO said:

Hello everyone,

 

Today we're excited to announce the addition of Cross-District Matchmaking, something we have been working towards for over a year and should significantly help by improving the overall match quality!
 

We have also just published a new blog post from Matt which talks about all things Cross-District Matchmaking as well as significant improvements to our current Anti-Cheat solution and policies.

 

To find out more about Cross-District Matchmaking and our improvements to SARD please head over to our dedicated blog post.

Dear MAGE, we often playing arranged games - its like private matches team vs team, we set time and place, prepare and train , we go to empty districts and play 2x2 3x3 4x4, or else, We need a check box - Cross-District Matchmaking on/off, to have an options to play our arranged matches with enemy group that we made a agreement, and stay in the district and not be teleported anywhere, and so nobody will be teleported to us and ruin our arranged games, after we press K. TY 

[Yapopal 176]

1 hour ago, Romique said:

Dear MAGE, we often playing arranged games - its like private matches team vs team, we set time and place, prepare and train , we go to empty districts and play 2x2 3x3 4x4, or else, We need a check box - Cross-District Matchmaking on/off, to have an options to play our arranged matches with enemy group that we made a agreement, and stay in the district and not be teleported anywhere, and so nobody will be teleported to us and ruin our arranged games, after we press K. TY 

Look at the root. You need a copy of the district with a population limit of 8 people, with robbery missions disabled, with inter-district matchmaking disabled and marked "team against team". The function you suggested can be used as a glitch.

[Romique 12]

4 minutes ago, Yapopal said:

Look at the root. You need a copy of the district with a population limit of 8 people, with robbery missions disabled, with inter-district matchmaking disabled and marked "team against team". The function you suggested can be used as a glitch.

we often playing arranged games - its like private matches team vs team, we set time and place, prepare and train , we go to empty districts and play 2x2 3x3 4x4, or else, We need a check box - Cross-District Matchmaking on/off, to have an options to play our arranged matches with enemy group that we made a agreement, and stay in the district and not be teleported anywhere, and so nobody will be teleported to us and ruin our arranged games, after we press K.  - i want to use what we already have - just check box

[Haganu 105]

We got a working SARD before GTA VI Pog

4 hours ago, CookiePuss said:

How do cheat points affect fight club specifically? Will cheat point players still be able to join or will they be blocked since there is no alternate matchmaking queue there? 
And if they can’t join isn’t that just a 30 second way to see if you’ve been shadow banned? And if they can still join then wtf?

This is a question that very much needs an answer

[kiky 2]

i hate it.it just randomly took me from  a missions final stage to select other district.You try to bring a dead game to life-making it shit like this ,makes you guys lose even more players.

whats the effing point of even doing missions anymore if you cant win since you will be randomly teleported to other district?

 

[Yapopal 176]

1 hour ago, Romique said:

we often playing arranged games - its like private matches team vs team, we set time and place, prepare and train , we go to empty districts and play 2x2 3x3 4x4, or else, We need a check box - Cross-District Matchmaking on/off, to have an options to play our arranged matches with enemy group that we made a agreement, and stay in the district and not be teleported anywhere, and so nobody will be teleported to us and ruin our arranged games, after we press K. - i want to use what we already have - just check box

Ask the developers for a special area for your matches. This is more reasonable than another crutch with ticks.

[Yapopal 176]

My guesses are correct. A small pool of players prevents the system from working properly. We need to reduce the maximum number of players in the copy of the district. And allocate special slots only for players from another area. Also set a timer to cancel the readiness for the task. 

The quality of the opponent's selection has not improved! The missions are still unbalanced. If this is not fixed, then the price of your work that you spent a year on is worthless. 
Due to the frequent change of areas, the game works worse. The number of ghost shots increases with each change of the copy of the district.

Edited 10 hours ago by Yapopal

[VanilleKeks 743]

It makes no sense to shadow ban people in a game with such low population. If you prevent access to districts, when sometimes only ONE instance is available, cheaters will easily be able to finetune their settings to avoid this threshold because you have a very easy way of verifying when you are shadowbanned.

 

I don't know if you are confident in some secret strategy that will make APBs population blow up, but these recent changes are very clearly intended for that scenario. Which means that you are either extremely confident or extremely tone-deaf. As an initial implementation, SARD should just slam detected cheaters. Assuming the system is somewhat competent you will be able to count the false positive cases using 10 fingers with the current pop.

[Yapopal 176]

The configurations of the Flavs graphics have become very relevant due to the deterioration of the client's work associated with frequent changes of copies of districts.

 

As usual, you take too much on yourself, you spend a lot of time working. But the result is always bad. You spent a lot of time on the 64-bit version, but the quality of the game has not improved.  You spent a lot of time on matchmaking and on a new anti-cheat. Matchmaking has earned bravo! But the quality of the matches remained poor! And a new global performance issue has been added. The new anti-cheat is working, they spoil everything for your stupid rules. Your self-confidence is ruining you, you are not calculating your strength and resources. The game is not ready for the new matchmaking system!The pool of players will be reduced even more! Your game becomes a cheat testing tool! 

 

 

[Romique 12]

18 hours ago, MageLO said:

Hello everyone,

 

Today we're excited to announce the addition of Cross-District Matchmaking, something we have been working towards for over a year and should significantly help by improving the overall match quality!
 

We have also just published a new blog post from Matt which talks about all things Cross-District Matchmaking as well as significant improvements to our current Anti-Cheat solution and policies.

 

To find out more about Cross-District Matchmaking and our improvements to SARD please head over to our dedicated blog post.

Dear Mage, after a day of plying - i can tell u for ALL APB PLAYERS that r left to play  - YOU HAVE TO ROLL BACK CROSS DISTICT matchmaking!!!!!!!! - or  THE END IS NEAR! i hate to say it but it is what it is! 

[Hexerin 1142]

So did the original plan of seamless instance switching happen, or are players going to be hit with full loading screens every match when they get pulled to another instance? If the latter, how does it handle mission starting in the case of not everyone having the same loading times? Will the mission wait for everyone to load in, or will slow loaders become a burden on everyone else?

[CookiePuss 5381]

7 hours ago, yourrandomnobody74 said:

Why does it matter if cheaters realise they've been shadowbanned?

It sounds like they could just switch accounts and get back into normal matchmaking while their other account's cheat points expire..

Edited 5 hours ago by CookiePuss

[Kapler 36]

21 hours ago, MageLO said:

Hello everyone,

 

Today we're excited to announce the addition of Cross-District Matchmaking, something we have been working towards for over a year and should significantly help by improving the overall match quality!
 

We have also just published a new blog post from Matt which talks about all things Cross-District Matchmaking as well as significant improvements to our current Anti-Cheat solution and policies.

 

To find out more about Cross-District Matchmaking and our improvements to SARD please head over to our dedicated blog post.

Evening,

I want to start by thanking everyone who is involved in this project just for the fact you guys keep pushing it. I still have the same opinion about this game, it is still worth investing in its development because there is no other game like this one and nowadays f2p most of them tend to fail.

I am sure you guys found out that investing in the "new engine" leftovers was not the best decision made and rebuilding everything would be easier, probably it would be out by today.

• Matchmaking

I do not believe, that today's matchmaking has some sort of "skill related" to find your new teammates. It is been an unbalanced experience when it comes to matchmaking, beside the "cheating" problem, matchmaking is been one of the top topics discussed on this forum.

I'd agree with the implementation of cross-district if there will be some preventions to avoid such as "lag abuse", an issue well-known and would be a pain in the patootie to deal with such situation.

It would be nice to use social as a queue lobby for missions, basically the "social district" kinda screams it, and that was a question I had on why nobody had such an idea before.

• Anti-Cheat

This topic is a hot one and no one knows how it will work properly, it seems like you guys have it pictured out, but still trying to figure out how to make it all work. It sounds like an "overwatch" system, where once a player has enough "cheating points", you guys will spectate his gameplay and make a decision. Our concern is right about that, it seems like it does require a decent amount of staff to handle it and at the same time a capable team to handle such a task to avoid at maximum to not falsely banning a player, not having such capacity, it will eventually fall due to the time it takes or the countless mistakes made. I am not convinced about this system, it has too much freedom for the cheaters and raises too many questions.

1. Christmas' Event

I am hoping to see something new coming from this event rather than the usually boring event that pops up at this time of the year. There are many topics with some great suggestions on what an event like this one should be and packing some of the players' ideas would be a great move to save such an event.

1. Guns' adjustment

Nowadays everyone likes a competitive game and a big role belongs to the weapons and how well balanced they are. There are currently too many "overpowering" weapons, such as AP45, which allows you to only carry it and nothing else and still manage to win a fight, secondary weapons should remain secondary as its name says and not be a replacement to a main weapon.

 

Besides all of this, this whole topic seems rushed out and a lot of information is missing, would be nice to have some sort of Q/A topic or stream.

[RoxieBragg 1]

So, does this mean that we will be put into a mission in a sever that has no one in it but the people in said mission??? If so, that fucking sucks. The chaos of multiple missions going on around you is part of the fun of APB. No wants to go sit in social, with no VOIP, and wait for a mission. If we are going to have instanced missions just go on and rename this Crime Craft because that is what it will be like. It won't be APB anymore.

[Westford 167]

54 minutes ago, CookiePuss said:

It sounds like they could just switch accounts and get back into normal matchmaking while their other account's cheat points expire..

I would hope, cheat points only expire while that character(account) is active in game.

They are active in game, and no longer using cheats.

Accumulated cheat points start to decrement.

 

If cheat points expire when a user decides not to use that account for a period of time,

that would be a poor way of implementing the "cheat point" expiration.

 

JMO

 

Another thought.
If a player that is cheating and has reached the threshold for a shadow ban,

they might decide to offload any weapons/mods/cash to another account, and just abandon their current shadow banned account,

and continue on their newly prepared account to receive all that bounty.

 

There should be a Trade lock on that shadow banned account at some level of cheat points accumulated

before they dump their ill gotten gains.

 

Edited 4 hours ago by Westford

[CookiePuss 5381]

11 minutes ago, Westford said:

I would hope, cheat points only expire while that character(account) is active in game.

I hope so too.