Balance of mission objectives..?

[Acornie 490]

I'll start with a story to explain what I mean by 'mission balance'; I was playing a mission where the final stage was to bring a heavy item to the team base, my team's base upstairs in the mall where you either had to climb a ladder, open two doors, then walk 30m.. or go over a fence, up a ladder, through two doors or go all the way to the back, up stairs and still walk 20m... Their base? Back up the vehicle right to the point and plop it down. I see no way that this was not lopsided and I'm trying to think of why it was designed like this, is asymmetrical missions just a quirk of Apb? I'm not sure why some missions are set up in such an apparent lopsided way

I can think of several other missions that feel not too balanced; missions where you have to deliver very fragile cars where all the opp has to do is pull out an ALIG or Volc and camp various spots and you have little chance

So I guess my question is, is LO going to possibly look at the missions, maybe tweak ones that are unbalanced... I just thought I'd bring it up as a though, see if people agree or not that some missions don't seem to make sense how they are set up

[vsb 6171]

while i agree this is something that should be done, im fairly sure the only way to do it effectively is to manually go through every drop off location and pair it with another since im pretty sure the spots are randomly selected (gotta love those your drop/their drop where the dropoffs are literally 5m from each other)

this is also something i think needs to be done for spawns as well, but this is a insanely large amount of work so i wouldnt expect anything drastic for a while

[CookiePuss 5377]

52 minutes ago, Archon said:

 missions where you have to deliver very fragile cars

Oh god, that mission.
You literally have to wipe the entire opposition in a coordinated fashion to even have a chance to be able to deliver a shitty little cisco.
Fun sure, but also maddening.

[Mercuie 28]

Yes they desperately need to do some mission balance passes.  So many things are inconsistent or dumb.  Sometimes you have to break into the car, sometimes you can just get in.  Sometimes the enemy can see a car and sometimes they can't.  Missions where you just pick up an item (or just get in the car) should have shortened timers or switched over to actually having to do an action.  Hidden Menace still has the "whoever is holding it at the end wins" for a final objective.  Lots of little things.  Very much need to be looked at.

[Mack_ii 1]

1 hour ago, Archon said:

I'll start with a story to explain what I mean by 'mission balance'; I was playing a mission where the final stage was to bring a heavy item to the team base, my team's base upstairs in the mall where you either had to climb a ladder, open two doors, then walk 30m.. or go over a fence, up a ladder, through two doors or go all the way to the back, up stairs and still walk 20m... Their base? Back up the vehicle right to the point and plop it down. I see no way that this was not lopsided and I'm trying to think of why it was designed like this, is asymmetrical missions just a quirk of Apb? I'm not sure why some missions are set up in such an apparent lopsided way

I can think of several other missions that feel not too balanced; missions where you have to deliver very fragile cars where all the opp has to do is pull out an ALIG or Volc and camp various spots and you have little chance

So I guess my question is, is LO going to possibly look at the missions, maybe tweak ones that are unbalanced... I just thought I'd bring it up as a though, see if people agree or not that some missions don't seem to make sense how they are set up

Agreed. I personally lost a mission once because my base was hard to reach.

[vsb 6171]

4 minutes ago, Mercuie said:

So many things are inconsistent or dumb.

theres a spray hold mission that still doesnt use overtime

and 3 point hold final stages wont go into overtime if each team has 1 point and the 3rd is being captured

[Hexerin 1140]

1 hour ago, Archon said:

my team's base upstairs in the mall where you either had to climb a ladder, open two doors, then walk 30m.. or go over a fence, up a ladder, through two doors or go all the way to the back, up stairs and still walk 20m... Their base? Back up the vehicle right to the point and plop it down

Try to put aside your frustration for losing, and look at the design objectively for a minute. Both of these locations are double-edged swords, but yours was actually the better one.

Sure, they can just drive the item up and drop it without fuss on their base, but then your team can just drive up and grab it off the point before they have a chance to really do anything about it. If you happened to kill their anti-vehicle user (assuming they even had one), you could very easily just grab it and take off.

Meanwhile your base... woo buddy, sounds like it was a pain in the arse to carry the item there (I'm going to assume you're exaggerating the location a bit though). However, once you've got the item dropped at your base, the enemy then has to navigate it back out while your team is respawning from the street and heading back in to stop them. Your location is the your drop / their drop dream, it's pretty much an automatic victory the moment you successfully make the drop.

All this being said though, I fully agree that every mission in the game needs to be looked at. Some can get by with some slight tweaks, most need complete reworks... and there's a couple that need to just be removed entirely because they're broken on the fundamental level.

  Edited August 15, 2018 by Hexerin

[Acornie 490]

See I was thinking about that @Hexerin, but only theoretically was our base better, if we had more people, (it was at a 2v2) and a longer time limit then it would be a better spot for us, making it flip flop and still be a lopsided mission just for the other side. I don't understand the reasoning of making them overly asymmetrical to the point it feels more like bad balancing more than intentional... and nah, I wasn't frustrated because I lost, only thing I was a lil peeved about was one of the opp used the fact he was able to plop the item down in the nick of time to talk about how good he was when it felt like he only won because of the mission layout 

Edited August 15, 2018 by Archon

[Hexerin 1140]

17 minutes ago, Archon said:

@Hexerin the reasoning of making them overly asymmetrical

It's not an intentional design choice. The way missions work is that when you start a new stage, the objective locations are randomly chosen from a list of locations. These locations were chosen when the mission was designed, and aren't dynamic in any way. Stages that feature multiple locations just select multiple random locations, within the limits set for that particular stage. It's why you see certain mission types group their objectives in a certain way every time you do that mission, but those groups aren't always in the same area.

In most cases, your drop / their drop finales have their locations in really bad locations pairings. They can be on literal opposite sides of the district, and they can also be literally 10m from each other. I've once seen one where the previous stage finished on one end of the map, and the drops for the finale were on the other... resulting in a mad dash where the mission ended as soon as the item was dropped because it takes a few minutes to get across the district.

  Edited August 15, 2018 by Hexerin

[Queen of Love 452]

hard to deliver, hard to carry away.
easy to deliver, easy to carry away.

is balanced if you analize both scenarios.

[Acornie 490]

8 minutes ago, Hexerin said:

~snip~ Stages that feature multiple locations just select multiple random locations, ~snip~

[Hexerin 1140]

21 minutes ago, Archon said:

-Snip-

Stages that have multiple locations ("raid these three separate doors on this one stage"), will choose where those locations are randomly from the list. They are, however, restricted by certain limitations ("can only be within this section of the map" or "must be within this range from each other").

[KnifuWaifu 499]

4 hours ago, Archon said:

my team's base upstairs in the mall 

Do you guys even Vaquero? 

Jeeps own those stairs like they were child-sized speed bumps in a school zone. Got to think outside the box. 

I think the only adjustment these missions need is an increase on the timer (not the amount of needed to win, just the time) so there can be some honest back-and-forth between bases.

[illgot 379]

objective vehicles that need to be turned in should no longer be marked once accessed by the attackers.

Because these vehicles are always marked, the enemy only has to go to the vehicle and damage it enough to make it inoperable or near inoperable and wait.

 

[Hexerin 1140]

26 minutes ago, KnifuWaifu said:

Do you guys even Vaquero?

Mikro too, it's surprising how high the car's frame is despite the visual appearance.

[Similarities 226]

The thing I find somewhat unusual about base missions is that sometimes (rarely, but sometimes) the base of your team and the opponent team can literally be like 5m from one another, for example, in financial where the highway merges back into one from a fork and there's a satellite dish you can jump on next to a car spawner with a few fences, your team, and the enemy team can actually have your base be a single fence away, as I said, it's rare, but still happens. I don't necessarily think it needs to be changed because there's not really an advantage to either side, it's actually pretty damn balanced, all things considered, it's just rather unusual is all.

[Hexerin 1140]

5 minutes ago, Similarities said:

The thing I find somewhat unusual about base missions is that sometimes (rarely, but sometimes) the base of your team and the opponent team can literally be like 5m from one another, for example, in financial where the highway merges back into one from a fork and there's a satellite dish you can jump on next to a car spawner with a few fences, your team, and the enemy team can actually have your base be a single fence away, as I said, it's rare, but still happens. I don't necessarily think it needs to be changed because there's not really an advantage to either side, it's actually pretty damn balanced, all things considered, it's just rather unusual is all.

Those are my favorite, simply because at that point it's basically a single territory hold finale (which is one of the most balanced finales in the game).

[Similarities 226]

1 minute ago, Hexerin said:

7 minutes ago, Similarities said:

The thing I find somewhat unusual about base missions is that sometimes (rarely, but sometimes) the base of your team and the opponent team can literally be like 5m from one another, for example, in financial where the highway merges back into one from a fork and there's a satellite dish you can jump on next to a car spawner with a few fences, your team, and the enemy team can actually have your base be a single fence away, as I said, it's rare, but still happens. I don't necessarily think it needs to be changed because there's not really an advantage to either side, it's actually pretty damn balanced, all things considered, it's just rather unusual is all.

Those are my favorite, simply because at that point it's basically a single territory hold finale (which is one of the most balanced finales in the game).

It is definitely my favorite final mission, and it's definitely the most balanced final mission in the game, when the points are very, very close to each other, it's not like anyone gets an unfair or favorable point, as the points are in the exact same location, both teams have the exact same areas that give them an advantage or disadvantage, the better team is the one that's going to win that mission pretty much every single time, especially in the area I'm talking about (albeit very poorly), because it's not a super enclosed or hard to get to area with only a few methods of entry, like the enforcer roof or red roof in the middle of the map at waterfront, it's entirely open and the highway connects it which means most people are going to just drive up onto the highway and fight up there, not a lot of corners to be camped either.

[Revoluzzer 274]

7 hours ago, Archon said:

I see no way that this was not lopsided and I'm trying to think of why it was designed like this, is asymmetrical missions just a quirk of Apb? I'm not sure why some missions are set up in such an apparent lopsided way

The missions aren't inherently set up this way. As Hexerin correctly explained, all mission-objectives in APB are randomly distributed to a certain extend. This means each mission always plays out in the same order and fashion (and based on a mission's name you can anticipate each stage's objective(s)), but the objectives are always placed randomly across the map.

Bottom line this shouldn't matter much. APB was never designed to provide proper competitive gameplay and you were never supposed to win every mission. That's why, originally, reaching Threat Level 15 was such a big deal and would have your position permanently visible on the map, as well as announcing you joining the district. It meant you had won 25 or 50 missions in a row (I don't remember the exact number); only the really well coordinated teams would achieve this!
One defeat would demote you to a lower threat level. And given that your opposition could see you on their map throughout the mission, keeping that TL15 for long was near impossible.


There is a different side to this story, however. Certain objectives are either unique to one faction or distributed unevenly between them.
Low rank contacts will provide Criminals with "Destroy"-objectives (shoot cameras or storefronts), which are incredibly easy to complete. Later they have to burn targets, which can be doors, windows, vehicles or piles of boxes. Enforcers do not have either of these activities, buy share the objectives of "Burn" (usually when they defuse bombs or place bugs).
Enforcers will spend a significant amount of their missions with bugging and hacking objectives (phones, sat dishes and antennas in particular). While criminals do have some missions with the same objective, they aren't nearly as common. The problem: These objectives are 9 out of 10 times wide open and can be covered easily by the defending team, making missions as an Enforcer often more difficult than as a Criminal.


In short, the distribution of objectives across the map isn't inherently unfair or biased, but the distribution of objectives across factions is. However APB isn't designed for competitive play, so missions aren't balanced for it.

[GhosT 1301]

3 hours ago, Queen of Love said:

hard to deliver, hard to carry away.
easy to deliver, easy to carry away.

is balanced if you analize both scenarios.

Yeah no, that's not how it works.

Imagine you've got the item, and the spot that accessible by a car. You go there first, drop it off, points for you.
Then you just defend it. If the opposition ever manages to kill you, they have to slow walk that thing all the way over to their base buried in some building. You have to defend yourself through 2 or more respawn waves until you got your item in.

[BlackJana 14]

And then there are those missions where you got 5 minutes to take the item from the eneny base and drive it 1000m to yours and those missions were the bases are next to each other and you got 8minutes.
Also part of the stupid missions are Creme de la crime or those stupid "Hold the dumpster" missions~

[TonyKebell 5]

7 hours ago, Hexerin said:

Try to put aside your frustration for losing, and look at the design objectively for a minute. Both of these locations are double-edged swords, but yours was actually the better one.

Sure, they can just drive the item up and drop it without fuss on their base, but then your team can just drive up and grab it off the point before they have a chance to really do anything about it. If you happened to kill their anti-vehicle user (assuming they even had one), you could very easily just grab it and take off.

Meanwhile your base... woo buddy, sounds like it was a pain in the arse to carry the item there (I'm going to assume you're exaggerating the location a bit though). However, once you've got the item dropped at your base, the enemy then has to navigate it back out while your team is respawning from the street and heading back in to stop them. Your location is the your drop / their drop dream, it's pretty much an automatic victory the moment you successfully make the drop.

All this being said though, I fully agree that every mission in the game needs to be looked at. Some can get by with some slight tweaks, most need complete reworks... and there's a couple that need to just be removed entirely because they're broken on the fundamental level.

 

But in all likelyhood how this plays out, as it has for me plenty of time is:

Enemy delivers, gets 10 points.
We try to deliver, get stopped walking the item.
The Enemy camp the item.
6 minutes later we lose 10 points to 0

Because yes, our base is easy to camp. But the enemy are the ones who got to camp it.

[Queen of Love 452]

2 hours ago, GhosT said:

Yeah no, that's not how it works.

Imagine you've got the item, and the spot that accessible by a car. You go there first, drop it off, points for you.
Then you just defend it. If the opposition ever manages to kill you, they have to slow walk that thing all the way over to their base buried in some building. You have to defend yourself through 2 or more respawn waves until you got your item in.

my experience shows that only few organized team know how to defend -every- drop zone.
have a programmed plan helps.
if enemy knows the weak point access of their "Easy" zone they should know that the real target is not the items, but themself.
i lost item for first many time, and only when the opponet had "Easy drop" i had been full able to manage the item rescue.
i agree in some way to remove heavy item drop. cause a player carrying it is a too vulnerable at every distance, and is always a team mate less in action. medium item drop should be enough.
in any way carrier should dont need to be defended, situations should allow to carry items without active menaces around.

APB is a real unique good game also for this kind of game mechanic where real coop team is a must for get the mission.
 

[Keshi 436]

9 hours ago, CookiePuss said:

Oh god, that mission.
You literally have to wipe the entire opposition in a coordinated fashion to even have a chance to be able to deliver a shitty little cisco.
Fun sure, but also maddening.

*wipes squad, gets in cisco and drives for 3seconds*

*osmaw spawn infront of you*

you: Well shit

[Kempington 295]

In practice, there are quite a few missions in the game that aren't well balanced for certain match ups such as car delivery for 4v4s  or heavy item delivery for 2v2s.

It'd be nice to have separate mission pools for 2v2s and 3v3/4v4s, given what can happen.
some locations are pretty bad as well and require good teamwork to pull off, a nightmare for solo players. That would require map changes, though, in order to be most effective.

I'm sure they'll look into this after phase 2 "unification".