Can we make APB more newbie friendly?

[Fortune Runner 796]

5 hours ago, Rikard86 said:

Districts should be segregated

No it should not be segregated at all it is why we lost so many players to begin with.
We would easily have thousands more of players who left from this to begin with.

Matchmaking needs to be reworked and districts need to be reworked and rebuilt as well to handle a few hundred people at once instead of small amounts  but this is clearly no easy task and needs an engine upgrade to do this properly.
And of course graphics updated to modern times matter as well.

Little Orbit is already getting on all of this in the proper order (and many things not mentioned come in between all of what little I mentioned) but we need to be patient while they work all the  problems out

[Misterff1 5]

Double post, you can ignore this one

Edited August 20, 2018 by Misterff1

[Misterff1 5]

I think more segregation or new player districts is not the way to handle this situation. You will only make population spread over more instances and you can bet your patootie that the toxics of this community will keep making new accounts to grief the newbies (the most childish thing you can do, but sadly a harsh reality here). 

Here's a different set of ideas:

1. Have a proper gameplay tutorial
Right now we have a textwall tutorial, which does not work for humans in any part of their lives. If there is one thing I learned, it's that people just don't read. What we need is an opt-in step by step tutorial where you spawn into an area on your own with target practice and its own contact. You can then learn about contacts, pledging, joker tickets and gun types. You can also do a few example missions purely focussed on the mechanics. Then when you are done, you get to my next point:


2. Use cross-instance matchmaking
This way, you can add a system where you initially only get matched against other low levels. HOWEVER, this should be optional. You should get the option to get matched against any level and after R30 or so this should be the only option. That way, you give new players some time and old players the option to get out of this filter (only a new char on the same account should simply not get the option in the first place).

3. Add an Elite:dangerous-like mentor system.
In E:D, you can request a mentor ingame that can show you the ropes. Others can apply for this so they can then receive those requests. Imagine this in apb, where anyone R195+ can become a mentor and anyone below R50 can request one. Possible addition: mentor rating, to avoid trolls. 

In my opinion, these changes will help new players while uniting the playerbase, instead of dividing it. 
 

[Acornie 490]

I have a few ideas that would make it more newbie friendly... old G1 didn't seem to realize you have to make the player like the game before they'll dish out dough

1. Better tutorial would help, there's too many of little things that are up to the new player to learn on their own 2. Freemium weapon recombobulation would be nice, maybe increasing the lease time of guns bought from contacts to 15 days, and possibly making the price jump per open slot not so damn high.. I have more ideas but can't think of them atm

Edited August 20, 2018 by Archon

[Rikard86 32]

1 hour ago, Fortune Runner said:

Matchmaking needs to be reworked and districts need to be reworked and rebuilt as well to handle a few hundred people at once instead of small amounts  but this is clearly no easy task and needs an engine upgrade to do this properly.
And of course graphics updated to modern times matter as well.

Districts should be rebuilt from the ground up to handle more than 100 players, starting from map design.
You know how chaotic it gets when two separate missions take place at the same spot, right? Raising the population cap to even a fraction of the number you suggest would either turn it into a very common occurrance or force the game to start picking unfun spots a lot more often in order to avoid overlap (ex. Simon Tran's old location, that corridor in Waterfront with the two ladders going up, the roof behind Double-B), not that it will help, because the higher the player count the more likely it will be for missions to overlap either way even on those spots for maximum crapping power.
Not to mention that spots where people usually converge would be come very unpleasant to navigate through (the gas station in front of the Blades Hotel in Waterfront, for example).

What we need is a way for the game to tell apart players who spent 1600+ hours on the game from players who just started, and segregation by Threat Level alone clearly isn't cutting it. Throwing everyone into a big pot and let matchmaking decide wouldn't either.

[Fortune Runner 796]

1 hour ago, Rikard86 said:

Raising the population cap to even a fraction of the number you suggest

I said rework the districts..... never said only raise the cap

[Eisena 86]

No.

[notHunky 32]

I think the matchmaking and the missions themselves need a big overhaul. There's a few instances I'm seeing where like 4 golds grouped together getting matched against 3 silvers and a random gold, and the silvers don't stand a chance because the mission doesn't allow for more than 4 players on a team. Then in the very few cases where it becomes a big team battle like 6 vs 6, it becomes immediately obvious the game missions weren't properly balanced to handle that many players because both teams will constantly spawn on top of the objective, commonly resulting in a draw if you need to bring heavy items back to a base. If the missions could be fixed to play out better with larger groups I think things would work a lot better.

Still I find the big team games to be more fun since the chaos generally makes the match less one sided than say, a 2v2 match where just one person dying usually means the other person will get ganked in a 2v1 every time. 1 vs 1 is even worse since the defender almost always has the advantage of being able to hide around corners unless the attacker is ranked high enough to have a radar on their vehicle.

My point is, rather than focusing on keeping all threat levels segregated from each other in separate districts and missions, the matchmaking should have players of different skill levels on each team. For example:

• Team A has 4 golds and team B has 3 silvers + 1 gold.
• Team B should be able to call backup and get 2 more golds.
• Team A should also be able to call backup and get 1 silver and 1 bronze.
• End result is Team A has 4 golds, 1 silver and 1 bronze. Team B has 3 silvers 3 golds.

It may not be perfect, but at least Team B won't be as likely to get absolutely roflstomped, and maybe the bronze will be able to observe/learn some tactics from watching their more experienced team members work.

Another thing which really annoys me are the threat locked districts. When you're a low level and gold threat, nobody playing in a silver or gold instance of where your contacts are located makes leveling impossible. The gold districts are always empty so I HAVE to rely upon people feeling like joining Silver Waterfront to level my newer enforcer character.

[Davess 19]

I can point to an example of terrible matchmaking today that shows how the system completely discourages new players; 3 team gold vs @kenshi and 3 Trainees , props to him for having the will to continue 

[Fortune Runner 796]

Don't forget Little Orbit already mentioned they are working on a solution to matchmaking.

As for more clothes buying  an  outfit someone made opens up a lot of possibilities.
Lately most are reasonably priced.

[yood 345]

the orbit is simply MUST! improve the game for new players.

2 hours ago, Davess said:

I can point to an example of terrible matchmaking today that shows how the system completely discourages new players; 3 team gold vs @kenshi and 3 Trainees , props to him for having the will to continue 

and again go around the circle ! )  
 
THE GAME IS NOT WORKING .
 

[Misterff1 5]

3 hours ago, Yood said:

the orbit is simply MUST! improve the game for new players.

and again go around the circle ! )  
 
THE GAME IS NOT WORKING .
 

Oh hey it's you again. Can you maybe stop posting nonsense all over the place? Also can you stop dethreating?

Ktxhbai

[Sniperturtle 64]

Put new players in green districts by default until they reach rank 60/gold. Work somethging out, i been making this suggestion like a million times in many detailed ways.

[Revoluzzer 269]

11 hours ago, notHunky said:

My point is, rather than focusing on keeping all threat levels segregated from each other in separate districts and missions, the matchmaking should have players of different skill levels on each team. For example:

• Team A has 4 golds and team B has 3 silvers + 1 gold.
• Team B should be able to call backup and get 2 more golds.
• Team A should also be able to call backup and get 1 silver and 1 bronze.
• End result is Team A has 4 golds, 1 silver and 1 bronze. Team B has 3 silvers 3 golds.

It may not be perfect, but at least Team B won't be as likely to get absolutely roflstomped, and maybe the bronze will be able to observe/learn some tactics from watching their more experienced team members work.

Missions play worse as more players join in. Ideally it's 2v2 or 3v3. With eight or more players in a mission it becomes too easy to cover an objective while parts of your team are dead/respawning.

[Fortune Runner 796]

2 hours ago, Misterff1 said:

Oh hey it's you again. Can you maybe stop posting nonsense all over the place? Also can you stop dethreating?

Ktxhbai

He does do that a lot doesn't he?
Kind of ruins the point of making the game better for new players to dethreat intentionally
 

[killernerd 0]

Didn't LO say they were looking into reworking the instance and matchmaking system?

Something along the lines of how some MMORPGs work with channels, you'd simply join the map you want (financial or wf) and be put in the channel that (the system thinks) is best suited for you and your group.
Matchmaking would then be allowed to select missions/opposition from ALL the different channels rather than just the one instance you (and your group) are in and move either or both groups to a mutual channel.

Same could go for backup.

Also, switching channels would only require the client to load the players and NPCs of the new channel and not the entire map.

Pros:
- No more deliberate joining of bronze/silver distracts to stomp on newbies
- Fixes a whole host of matchmaking issues in general
- Makes balancing/fixing matchmaking a whole lot easier
- no more "spam joining" that one district with decent population
- fairer opposition for everyone

disadvantages?
- doesn't fix dethreating
- switching channels might incur a bit of lag or even require a short loading screen
- NPCs, players, and all vehicles would "phase" in/out as you switch channels (if you can call this a disadvantage to begin with)
- probably quite a few technical challenges that I'm missing.

[Fortune Runner 796]

If done properly channel switching takes up to 5 seconds so its no big deal to me

[yood 345]

4 hours ago, Misterff1 said:

Oh hey it's you again. Can you maybe stop posting nonsense all over the place? Also can you stop dethreating?

Ktxhbai

continue to kill the game. the forum has been engaged in this for 8 years.

Misterff1  gold playing in a silver area.
  Edited August 21, 2018 by Yood