The Server Threat problem.

[Drai 3]

Right now the servers each have their separate uses .

Gold is for Ram Raiding, Silver is for Golds, Bronze for silvers and dethreaters and bronzes and total newbies that are probably going to ragequit and uninstall. 
Fight Club is for Golds and masochistic Silvers that needed to be reminded that they're so not gold. 
This is how it's been forever, and while it works it hasn't been the best experience. 
I've been playing for a long time , in total , but I stepped off and got rusty and normally I can't stand playing the game long enough to get good again. Haven't been Gold in over a year. 

There have been many attempts to force people onto servers for their threat or punish people for being on different servers. They've all failed. 
Any attempt at punishment or force at this point would risk losing the few people we have. 

Instead I'd like to suggest a different approach. 

Heavy REWARDS for playing on a server that matches your threat, and maybe smaller rewards if you're on a server a threat up.   

Things like:  Double or Triple the money , paid uncontested missions, extra renown and experience, have each kill count as 2 or 3 towards progression (eliminating the need for noob farming). 10% discount at contacts.  Whatever.
If you subscribe, you'll ZOOM through the ranks (which is great for Alts). Even if you don't sub there's heavy incentive to stay in your lane. The games grind was designed to make you want to sub, some of that could easily be used to incentivize people staying in a server that matches their rank.  

Making servers less appealing hasn't helped the games popularity, I can't help but think giving the servers bonuses might improve competition and give people a chance to learn and eventually master the game. 

Another idea could be to have Threated Fight Clubs. Like 1 gold and 1 Bronze Fight Club and rotate regularly, so that Silvers and lower can actually play in a Fight Club and not feel like their just feeding.  Again if would give them a space to learn and grow and not just be farmed. 

 

[vsb 6171]

always thought that rewards for playing in the correct district would work better than punishments for not playing in the correct district, so i agree

unfortunately it still runs into the same issue, where a majority (if not all) of dethreaters dont really care about rewards, they just want easy opposition to stomp

[Vitrorax 17]

I really like the idea you're getting at. I've been playing less and less APB as time goes on, and it sucks because no matter how much I love this game, there's always that small little feeling of dread whenever I hover my cursor over APB's desktop shortcut. This might actually get me to play consistantly again.

[Drollin 17]

I wonder how this topic has so few replies, as the threat problem is in my opinion one of the bigger, if not the biggest, issues that needs to be fixed. OP's idea to improve rewards in your correct district seems like a good idea, but as BXNNXD mentioned, dethreaters are usually people, who only care about easy victories, not the rewards and obviously ruining the game for others. So therefore there has to be a forced way of assigning players to their corresponding threat districts and not only when joining, but also when you become higher threat.
 

So first of all, in my opinion, players should only be able to join districts with a threat level of their own or higher (that means no silver should be able to join bronze and no golds should be able to join silver districts, but bronze may join gold districts if that's what they want).

And secondly, maybe implement some automated system for moving players to their corresponding threat districts when they become higher threat, ofc not immediately, but with some timed warning for example (dunno, 15min or such maybe?). So just to be clear, what i mean is that if a silver player in silver district becomes gold, he'll get a warning that he'll be moved to a gold district in 15*min if he wont do it himself. And ofc you may ask, what about groups... Well, prompt the group members to join their higher threat friend if they want to. (Well, plain kicking to district select screen could also be an option after timed warning, tho maybe a bit too inconvenient and harsh towards players).

Maybe LO already has better ideas/plans for solving this problem, maybe they're already working on something, i don't know. These are just my thoughts on the matter, considering the current situation and if such things have been tried or suggested before already, then sorry, for not knowing about it.
It's just that something has to be done about it and fixing this threat problem would be a huge step towards making APB more new player friendly. It's frustrating enough for me, a player who had taken a few years break and recently returned, to play against gold dethreaters in bronze districts, but i can't even imagine how bad it must be for my friend, who just recently started playing APB as a new player.

[BlatMan 711]

They need to stop treating non golds like special snowflakes. Slap everyone together and match based on player count instead of threat. Allow players to progress via fightclub, that way they don't have to struggle through missions just to get a shirt unlocked.

[Arpegius 9]

On 10/6/2018 at 8:52 PM, Drai said:

Right now the servers each have their separate uses .

Gold is for Ram Raiding, Silver is for Golds, Bronze for silvers and dethreaters and bronzes and total newbies that are probably going to ragequit and uninstall. 
Fight Club is for Golds and masochistic Silvers that needed to be reminded that they're so not gold. 
This is how it's been forever, and while it works it hasn't been the best experience. 
I've been playing for a long time , in total , but I stepped off and got rusty and normally I can't stand playing the game long enough to get good again. Haven't been Gold in over a year. 

There have been many attempts to force people onto servers for their threat or punish people for being on different servers. They've all failed. 
Any attempt at punishment or force at this point would risk losing the few people we have. 

Instead I'd like to suggest a different approach. 

Heavy REWARDS for playing on a server that matches your threat, and maybe smaller rewards if you're on a server a threat up.   

Things like:  Double or Triple the money , paid uncontested missions, extra renown and experience, have each kill count as 2 or 3 towards progression (eliminating the need for noob farming). 10% discount at contacts.  Whatever.
If you subscribe, you'll ZOOM through the ranks (which is great for Alts). Even if you don't sub there's heavy incentive to stay in your lane. The games grind was designed to make you want to sub, some of that could easily be used to incentivize people staying in a server that matches their rank.  

Making servers less appealing hasn't helped the games popularity, I can't help but think giving the servers bonuses might improve competition and give people a chance to learn and eventually master the game. 

Another idea could be to have Threated Fight Clubs. Like 1 gold and 1 Bronze Fight Club and rotate regularly, so that Silvers and lower can actually play in a Fight Club and not feel like their just feeding.  Again if would give them a space to learn and grow and not just be farmed. 

 

That's pretty good, and would definitely shield newbies from getting pushed to ragequit; I would add a strict policy against dethreating, so having a robust reporting system in place would help. At the moment all reports go to in the same category, there is no way of stating reasoning for the report which makes it harder for GMs to look further into it as they will most likely just assume it's a hackusation.

 

On 10/13/2018 at 1:55 AM, MrsHappyPenguin said:

They need to stop treating non golds like special snowflakes. Slap everyone together and match based on player count instead of threat. Allow players to progress via fightclub, that way they don't have to struggle through missions just to get a shirt unlocked.

I disagree, I think they should shield non golds from top players as much as possible (specially bronze and under) so we can finally get new players into the game; that said the fightclub suggestion is a good idea. Having an faster level progression would help newcomers from getting frustrated and the longer they stay the more likely they are to spend money on the game (be it premium, guns, cars or cosmetics).

[BlatMan 711]

17 hours ago, Arpegius said:

That's pretty good, and would definitely shield newbies from getting pushed to ragequit; I would add a strict policy against dethreating, so having a robust reporting system in place would help. At the moment all reports go to in the same category, there is no way of stating reasoning for the report which makes it harder for GMs to look further into it as they will most likely just assume it's a hackusation.

 

I disagree, I think they should shield non golds from top players as much as possible (specially bronze and under) so we can finally get new players into the game; that said the fightclub suggestion is a good idea. Having an faster level progression would help newcomers from getting frustrated and the longer they stay the more likely they are to spend money on the game (be it premium, guns, cars or cosmetics).

I'm sick of these pricks committing suicide and tking mission after mission just so they can go down a level and play in bronze. Silver and gold districts are nearly dead, meanwhile half the bronze district is gold...

[Zvitatzki 6]

problem is these low or high servers are mostly underpopulated

 

as much i play this game already years ago im just a poor bronze player but i join other districts because of the higher player population

 

many servers have just like 4-8 ppl while other have 40  ofc i join the 40x server

 

the same may count to many other players as they want fun and action in the city not boredom silence

 

i think the entire treat system need be removed  or atleast invisible to every other player (let us only see our own)

 

this prevent trash talking and flamming by other when u join a big mouth team as just a bronze player

 

the chance we get random ppl in every team and enemy team is good mixed so we or they get newbies or pros  which give every mission a different experience

 

sometimes we get the pros or we are in the looser team   atleast nobody can flame on our "omg  u bronze noob"  they already do when u join the party

 

its sad  its a downer and it makes new player  not stay long

 

already posted the same thing in anther thread 

 

sorry bad english

[Ashika 12]

On 10/31/2018 at 1:49 AM, Zvitatzki said:

problem is these low or high servers are mostly underpopulated

as much i play this game already years ago im just a poor bronze player but i join other districts because of the higher player population

many servers have just like 4-8 ppl while other have 40  ofc i join the 40x server

the same may count to many other players as they want fun and action in the city not boredom silence

 

Sorry, but for sure: no, that's not the problem.

There are 2 reasons for current state:

 

1. Silver servers are FULL of cheating kids. Really - after all those years I know how to find cheating players. And as the result of it - legit players de-threat and are going to bronze.
2. Toxic players which are "going for fun", they don't want to play hard, so they also de-threat and we have R255 Gold teams in bronze servers.

[Fenton 210]

My main enforcer is currently a R255 at bronze threat. I don't want to be bronze, but I keep getting hammered every time I venture into a mission district.