Can we make APB more newbie friendly?

[foolish ninja 59]

There are many things why new people dislike or struggle in this game. Its not about the core game, rather the smaller things, we, the people that play for longer time, dont even realize.

Making money got nerfed from some time ago by g1, for unknown reasons. Missions were given around 2-4k APB$ (dont know exact numbers) and got butchered down to 800-2,5k APB$. This snowballed so hard, with all these money sinking features like the -20% market place fee, the 10days weapon lease, ammo purchases and car spawns. Of course we couldnt realize this, cuz most people already have either permament weapons bought from ARMAS or millions of money due to years of playing. 
Newbies struggle with these kind of small features and changes, not just the cash, but also unnecessary  features, like the premium discount for ARMAS, -50% recharge time for Character mods or missing features like buying a permament weapon from contacts for APB$.

There is also low amount of content for people that do not want to spend real money right away. Be it more outfits or more weapons, etc. There havent been added any new free content for APB since long time. There are still only 2 ARs, 2 Sniper Rifles, 2 LMGs, and so on to choose from, as a new player. Any new content that has been added was ARMAS only, and this should change, cuz people get scared off from this kind of system.

There is more to that, but I wanted to keep it as short as possible.

Should we improve on these aspects of APB to make it more friendly for newcomers and welcoming, or is the current path of APB good enough and we should keep going?

 

[TheMessiah 430]

New players need separate districts to start thats biggest problem for them right now i think.Like T districts where only players with new accounts start playn and others cant join.Better to be hidden districts.First 25 ranks (dats first 3 contacts - 2 in finan. and 1 in waterf.) and after that they get theyr threat and can join the rest of districts.Still some players will make new accounts and try farmin them but not gonna be many

[Stunny 42]

TL;DR "make everything free, i want all the armas stuff without actually having to pay for it. don't worry about server bills or anything i lack the abstract thinking skills required to process such concepts"

[foolish ninja 59]

2 minutes ago, Stunny said:

TL;DR "make everything free, i want all the armas stuff without actually having to pay for it. don't worry about server bills or anything i lack the abstract thinking skills required to process such concepts"

I... -I didnt even say that.
There havent been any new content for free, like weapons also no new outfits, at all. I dont say that they should make everything free, Im saying that there should be more. It scares people off, to force people to buy, so they have new content.

[Fenton 210]

Currently the game drops people into populated districts often occupied by silver and gold threat characters. It would certainly help if there was a "safe" place for the newbies to practice and go through the tutorial.

[Nekoya-Sensei 5]

3 minutes ago, Fenton said:

Currently the game drops people into populated districts often occupied by silver and gold threat characters. It would certainly help if there was a "safe" place for the newbies to practice and go through the tutorial.

Nobody cares about your SJW comment. They need to man up and fight against vets if they want to get better.

[Lato 188]

Wanky/boring tutorial, missions are always a press F and kill, there are like 10 viable weapons, nothing new until you reach level 195, in order to have fun and variety with the game you need to spend an absurd amout of money (but oh hey game is free so they need money somehow, lets put guns at 30$, new players are definitely gonna buy them). What else? Matchmaking basically does not exist because there is no real ranking system, there are 2 maps and one of them is hvrFront which is really unbalanced and annoying to play other than laggy. Oh also, if you are a solo player you could go against premade groups OF 4.
The positive things are..APB is not pay to win and symbol/theme customization can be fun. 
That said, new players really hate this game with HEART

Edited August 18, 2018 by Lato

[Fenton 210]

1 minute ago, Toxicitykiller said:

5 minutes ago, Fenton said:

Currently the game drops people into populated districts often occupied by silver and gold threat characters. It would certainly help if there was a "safe" place for the newbies to practice and go through the tutorial.

Nobody cares about your SJW comment. They need to man up and fight against vets if they want to get better.

"SJW comment"?

I'm  suggesting that the newbies could learn the game before they get ROFLstomped by players who, in turn, get stomped on by much better skilled players in silver districts.

If you got thoroughly trashed every mission you played, I imagine word to the effect of "Get good" wouldn't motivate you to stay for long.

[Genobee 143]

Something definitely needs to change. I have to agree with that. 

The game throws you into the fire then laughs at you while you burn. As mentioned there's very little content for free players AND the tutorial section of the game is all but missing. Leaves newbies to just get obliterated. It's no wonder they leave. 

I hope they can devote some development time to fixing this. The tutorial menus from ages ago were a nice step in the right direction, but just aren't enough on their own.

[koIaman 19]

Well said. For starters, LO needs to rework the whole tutorial system, it's a complete mess. They need to implement a whole new version because right now new players don't read it at all because it's just so boring, and then they're just so lost.

Once they fix the tutorial system, players will learn the game, population will rise, and then they can work on the other stuff.

[Xnetexe 78]

2 hours ago, foolish ninja said:

Making money got nerfed from some time ago by g1, for unknown reasons. Missions were given around 2-4k APB$ (dont know exact numbers) and got butchered down to 800-2,5k APB$.

Losing used to give pretty much no rewards, so G1 significantly raised the rewards for losing and reduced the rewards for winning to compensate.

[Fortune Runner 796]

3 hours ago, foolish ninja said:

Making money got nerfed from some time ago by g1, for unknown reasons. Missions were given around 2-4k APB$ (dont know exact numbers) and got butchered down to 800-2,5k APB$

This in particular I do not agree with because I can still do this in a good mission when it is big enough to have enough people to shoot at.
honestly I did not read the rest yet.

[foolish ninja 59]

3 minutes ago, Fortune Runner said:

This in particular I do not agree with because I can still do this in a good mission when it is big enough to have enough people to shoot at.
honestly I did not read the rest yet.

I havent got any mission where i had above 3k. Even if its possible, its really rare then. I just find it weird that you spend so much money during a mission (ammo, grenades, car spawns) that the reward isnt even worth it, sometimes. 

Sometimes you have to spawn your car more than once, and sometimes there are missions where you have to spawn your it 4-6x each costing $100.

[Fortune Runner 796]

Just now, foolish ninja said:

I havent got any mission where i had above 3k. Even if its possible, its really rare then. I just find it weird that you spend so much money during a mission (ammo, grenades, car spawns) that the reward isnt even worth it, sometimes. 

Sometimes you have to spawn your car more than once, and sometimes there are missions where you have to spawn your it 4-6x each costing $100.

All I can suggest is to kill them better with strategy like blowing up their cars to get multi kills faster or handling grenades better or running them over etc
Its do-able but also the smaller  2 on 2 or 3 on 3 missions are harder to do this.

[Goldtiger 133]

On 8/18/2018 at 11:43 AM, foolish ninja said:

Making money got nerfed from some time ago by g1, for unknown reasons. Missions were given around 2-4k APB$ (dont know exact numbers) and got butchered down to 800-2,5k APB$. This snowballed so hard, with all these money sinking features like the -20% market place fee, the 10days weapon lease, ammo purchases and car spawns.

Newbies struggle with these kind of small features and changes, not just the cash, but also unnecessary  features, like the premium discount for ARMAS, -50% recharge time for Character mods or missing features like buying a permament weapon from contacts for APB$.

There is also low amount of content for people that do not want to spend real money right away. Be it more outfits or more weapons, etc. There havent been added any new free content for APB since long time. There are still only 2 ARs, 2 Sniper Rifles, 2 LMGs, and so on to choose from, as a new player. Any new content that has been added was ARMAS only, and this should change, cuz people get scared off from this kind of system.

If LO was to address each of these problems in APB, I'm pretty sure that most of the new people coming into the game would stay longer than most already do. I honestly feel like this game is not very fair to play if you don't have premium, and I hate how you're locked away from so much content all because most of it is behind a bit of a paywall. Adding permanent options of weapons to the Joker Store would keep some sort of incentive to pay for those weapons but also give some incentive to continue to play. Also adding more weapons to roles would make the game so much less limited. And don't even get me started with the -50% recharge time.. that is one of the only pay2win things about this game and it's so crazy how huge of an advantage it gives. Edited August 20, 2018 by Goldtiger

[V2050 31]

On 8/18/2018 at 7:16 PM, Toxicitykiller said:

Nobody cares about your SJW comment. They need to man up and fight against vets if they want to get better.

I like how you're called "Toxicitykiller" but at the same time you're calling them SJW for basically wanting to help new players building up a fighting chance against people instead of ending up as cannon fodder for the smaller population of experienced players.

Not to mention that being (or not being) a SJW has f*ck nothing to do with this topic.

[SunnyMonroe 180]

I had a little idea for this
 

[Rikard86 32]

Districts should be segregated by rank, not threat level - ex. R < 100, R < 195, R > 195, with of course a "free" district where you can challenge other players regardless of your rank. Rank to be calculated across all characters in your account by the way, not a single character (a player with a character over 200 making a new toon will be forced to play in R > 195 or Free).

People will of course flock the Free channels to get more variety but that way newbies have a safe haven to learn the ropes against other newbies before gradually moving up.

And permanent weapons could be the biggest money/time sink ever if they made it like RTW 3-slotters. APB$1M *and* 10,000 kills with a weapon class for a single weapon is enough of a daunting task to make people consider buying permanent account bounds, not to mention that if they want the same weapon on a different character they'd have to do it again every time.

[vsb 6171]

On 8/18/2018 at 1:16 PM, Toxicitykiller said:

Nobody cares about your SJW comment. They need to man up and fight against vets if they want to get better.

friendly reminder that no one learns anything by being repeatedly stomped with no chance to react except how bad a game is

[DouglasFalcon 125]

Big agree. This game is very hard for newbies rn (tried to get a couple friends playing it and they found it extremely hard), and a big testament of this is the very low amount of newbies you find around. I think 70% of the current pop is composed by people who have 3+ years of experience in the game, while the other 30% are mostly bronzes/low silvers that are pretty unlikely to stick with APB for more than 1 year. If this company wants to keep the game alive they'll definetely need to find a way to attract new players to an old game, but this all will probably be done after the engine upgrade(s). We can only wait and hope for the best.

[MartisLTU 265]

Low prices or giving free stuff doesn't equal "NEWBIE FRIENDLY". If we want to make APB more niewbie friendly we should start with kicking out golds and silvers from green and bronze dists.
(remove ability to dethreat).

+ untill we get pop. for better mission balance system we should stop being as*h*les when we get noob as apponents and just dont rekt them on full cancer level. Ohh and after mission would be nice to say something nice instead of "GG EZ".

Edited August 20, 2018 by MartisLTU

[Rikard86 32]

1 hour ago, MartisLTU said:

+ untill we get pop. for better mission balance system we should stop being as*h*les when we get noob as apponents and just dont rekt them on full cancer level. Ohh and after mission would be nice to say something nice instead of "GG EZ".

To be fair, it's more fair to kick somebody's patootie in 5 minutes and move on than dragging their face on the floor for 20 minutes, letting them finish the objective in time just to "be nice" while you're actually prolonguing the slaughter, maybe even letting them win as a "token of good sportmanship".


Anyway, going down in threat upon losing is necessary - imagine coming out as a Gold after your Trainee period and being locked into Silver+ districts forever, I seriously doubt anybody with a brain would appreciate being stuck playing people way above their skill level with no chance of going back to a lower district, they'd just quit after realizing they have no chance against better equipped, more skilled players.
That's why segregation should not be based on Threat, but on how long you've been playing the game instead.
  Edited August 20, 2018 by Rikard86

[Danimal 36]

Some trainees do not even know how to call back up....the vets I see still smash them. GG savages, nice to see you fucktards ruining peoples new found experiences.

[killernerd 1]

g1 dropped the mission rewards to get people to buy premium stating that "not having premium should leave you with just enough cash to buy a decent car with some effort and lease 1 or 2 weapons a week but no more".

Paraphrasing but that was the gist of it.

[McRabbiton 22]

Well its all bout the bronze servers.

Seeing 3 High Rank golds against a bronze rank 19... The bronze rank 19 ran away from the opponents just because he did not want to be bashed.

Osmaw and True Ogre included.


Why cant you all play the game: If you see a green or bronze (or T) low rank just try to get him to a rank up and make him MVP. Sometimes this is more funny than apb itself xD