Community Discussion Topics

[finaljustice 8]

Hi Matt,

 

You alluded to the most important topic to address in your post, but it's not in your list. It's the declining population. We need to hear about short term plans to at least maintain the number of current players.

 

We know about the long term plans. People will come back for whatever is hyped as the "engine update".

 

But for the people who are still playing, you need to give them a reason to stay. The holiday events are good, but at this point they're expected. Adding a new game mode is great. When the events are over, you need to keep going.

 

Look at other f2p games now and model their incentives. Login bonuses, double xp weekends, premium weekends, loot boxes. G1 started a mini-event system but abandoned it like they did the refer a friend system.

 

Either that topic, or ir3 and presets.

 

Thanks for reading.

[ChellyBean 200]

9 hours ago, Eisena said:

Is acquiring new customers more important than retaining the old?

This question seemed so small at first but it's actually huge when you think about it

15 hours ago, CookiePuss said:

Could we maybe add:

 

-Why is APB information spread across the forums, Twitter, and Facebook?

-Why cant everything be explained on the forums?

Is the implication here that APB doesn't need it's social media presence and should rely on the forums alone? 

Or are different things being posted on different outlets?

 

Clarification plz 

[vsb 6170]

20 minutes ago, finaljustice said:

The holiday events are good, but at this point they're expected. Adding a new game mode is great. When the events are over, you need to keep going.

the holiday event is the new game mode, didnt you read the blog?

[Jazeker 1082]

3 minutes ago, BXNNXD said:

the holiday event is the new game mode, didnt you read the blog?

"When the events are over, you need to keep going."

 

You didn't even read the post.

[CookiePuss 5374]

11 minutes ago, ChellyBean said:

This question seemed so small at first but it's actually huge when you think about it

 

That is a good question, are there even enough old players willing to play and pay to sustain APB?

Part of the reason I wonder what success looks like to LO.

Is it just 2,000 players? Cuz if its more than that, I kinda feel like you need new players more than old.

 

11 minutes ago, ChellyBean said:

 

Is the implication here that APB doesn't need it's social media presence and should rely on the forums alone? 

Or are different things being posted on different outlets?

 

 

The latter. 

After missing several announcements because they were Twitter only, I finally made a Twitter account just to make sure I wouldnt miss out again.

Now Im being told there was a vehicle design contest that was only announced on Facebook. And is over. And only had like 5 entries. And one of the winners is a green car, with the red splash decals by the wheels.

 

Just seems odd that all news isn't posted to the forums, Twitter, AND Facebook. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited October 18, 2018 by CookiePuss

[vsb 6170]

3 minutes ago, Jazeker said:

"When the events are over, you need to keep going."

 

You didn't even read the post.

the event will be running through december, after which the engine upgrade is tentatively predicted

 

even if the engine upgrade gets pushed back (which is likely imo) they clearly have the ability to add the new mode to the current engine

[TheDogCatcher 176]

8 hours ago, Fortune Runner said:

first part I partially disagree since many changes like optimization rely on upgrading the engine and that would get old players to want to stay.

But not just optimization but graphics and many other features desperately rely on this upgrade happening asap.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The reason why I don't think returning players will stick around is based on my experience of older games I've played that have been remastered or whatever.

 

It usually goes something like this : there's a load of hype with people getting all excited over updated graphics improved netcode or just the fact that they'll be able to play these games on newer systems. Then the game is released and lots of people are playing but after a couple of weeks they start to drift away again as they realise it's just the same old same old with a shiny new coat of paint, and eventually what you are left with is a few die hards who never left in the first place and a few new players who didn't get to play the game the first time around.

 

I really don't see why APB would be any different in this respect, it's the new blood that will determine if this game lives or dies.

Edited October 18, 2018 by TheDogCatcher

[CookiePuss 5374]

1 hour ago, TheDogCatcher said:

 

 

The reason why I don't think returning players will stick around is based on my experience of older games I've played that have been remastered or whatever.

 

It usually goes something like this : there's a load of hype with people getting all excited over updated graphics improved netcode or just the fact that they'll be able to play these games on newer systems. Then the game is released and lots of people are playing but after a couple of weeks they start to drift away again as they realise it's just the same old same old with a shiny new coat of paint, and eventually what you are left with is a few die hards who never left in the first place and a few new players who didn't get to play the game the first time around.

 

I really don't see why APB would be any different in this respect, it's the new blood that will determine if this game lives or dies.

You better be careful fam... folks round here dont take kindly to logic, reason, and common sense. 

[TheDogCatcher 176]

35 minutes ago, CookiePuss said:

You better be careful fam... folks round here dont take kindly to logic, reason, and common sense. 

yep I'm just waiting for the howling mob with their pitchforks to come out and downvote me.

[Sayori 311]

Among those topics, the only one that matters is cheaters. I don't expect perfect weapon balance or better matchmaking with a tiny pool of players.

I really would like to hear how many people you have permabanned since the BE's implementation because it feels like cheating is rampant as before.

And while we are on cheating, there's something that costs nothing and will benefit every game - start looking for cheat providers, contract their hosting providers and demand them to take the site down as it violates it's DCMA violation. + contact PayPal and also demand them to shutdown their "business" accounts. It will not weed out that garbage entirely but it will greatly reduce it.  Almost nobody will use their CC directly or pay Bitcoins for cheats.

Recently Rockstar and Paypal closed the account of some cheat site. So it's possible because for example Cloudflare's ToS forbids copyright content on their servers and cheats are DCMA violation.

Edited October 18, 2018 by Sayori

[Similarities 226]

44 minutes ago, Sayori said:

...

 

You don't understand what copyright or the DMCA does, do you? First off, the DMCA is only enforced in the USA, so how do you plan to enforce it elsewhere? Second off, the DMCA also has to do with copyright, copyright means your own, written code. How do you think these cheat developers are going to be prosecuted under DMCA when it's their own code they're using? Third, DMCA is susceptible to Fair Use, meaning if the code used is actually from the game, but is changed enough to not be in it's (mostly) original form, DMCA still can't be enforced on it. You can crack down on them for breaking ToS, but it has nothing to do with DMCA lol.

[BlatMan 706]

11 minutes ago, Sayori said:

Among those topics, the only one that matters is cheaters. I don't expect perfect weapon balance or better matchmaking with a tiny pool of players.

I really would like to hear how many people you have permabanned since the BE's implementation because it feels like cheating is rampant as before.

And while we are on cheating, there's something that costs nothing and will benefit every game - start looking for cheat providers, contract their hosting providers and demand them to take the site down as it violates it's DCMA violation. + contact PayPal and also demand them to shutdown their "business" accounts. It will not weed out that garbage entirely but it will greatly reduce it.  Almost nobody will use their CC directly or pay Bitcoins for cheats.

Recently Rockstar and Paypal closed the account of some cheat site. So it's possible because for example Cloudflare's ToS forbids copyright content on their servers and cheats are DCMA violation.

Every single time I play there's players accusing me of cheating. It's usually when I'm having a bad game too which really doesn't make sense. APB does have a cheater problem, all games do, but the number of real cheaters is a tiny fraction of those who get reported.

 

What I would like to discuss more on is the reasoning behind making such drastic changes to weapon balance. The community seems to only want the N-TEC and N-HVR 762 nerfed, and a few vocal lower skilled players wanting IR nerfed. What LO implemented was an overnerf to the only useful red mod which indirectly nerfed all preset weapons with it. They gave a range nerf to shotguns and rifles, and a slight nerf to the OCA's ttk. This indirectly buffed the N-TEC and other ARs. The N-TEC also got it's dynamic bloom removed, so now it's even easier to tap fire. We did get a nerf to the N-HVR 762, but it's buggy. Sometimes the crosshair is fully closed but it deals minimum damage.

 

I never felt the N-TEC was OP. I do think the HVR was OP. It used to be balanced when we had the steady damage dropoff years ago. When G1/Reloaded implemented the new dropoff system, they nerfed the usable range on all non snipers, and basically made weapon damage make no sense. A weapon shouldn't all of a sudden lose over 50% of it's damage after 10-15 meters. The only exceptions were the CR762 and OBIR, but LO then nerfed their ranges with the last patch.

 

rldr. Weapon balance changes do not make sense.

[Nipps22 3]

@MattScott if you are reading this comment, this game definetly needs to be advertised, promoted everywhere!
thats why this game is dying ( basing on steam charts and other apb statistics ) .
i know its hard, but this game is special, no game is like apb, the gameplay is unique and this game dont deserve to die!

at least, advertise it after the engine upgrade, do a cool review about apb and thats it. 

its sadly for me to see this game dying, im playing this game since 2012.. i can say i played this game.. 

im really sorry for whats happening right now.

You are a great man, Matt! 
All the best!

[Fortune Runner 796]

9 hours ago, TheDogCatcher said:

 

 

The reason why I don't think returning players will stick around is based on my experience of older games I've played that have been remastered or whatever.

 

It usually goes something like this : there's a load of hype with people getting all excited over updated graphics improved netcode or just the fact that they'll be able to play these games on newer systems. Then the game is released and lots of people are playing but after a couple of weeks they start to drift away again as they realise it's just the same old same old with a shiny new coat of paint, and eventually what you are left with is a few die hards who never left in the first place and a few new players who didn't get to play the game the first time around.

 

I really don't see why APB would be any different in this respect, it's the new blood that will determine if this game lives or dies.

Don't forget our other discussions.

You know how I don't mean just graphics

And yes you of course do have  valid points as well.

[Sig 0]

I trust a lot of the work that little orbit is doing, I think the team is progressing very well so far, but there are two main points that continue to worry me a lot especially in the last month ... would be the quality of the servers and the marketing work for APB:

 

1st: I feel that the servers are more optimized now although there are still sudden instabilities, my question is is that they would support for example an expressive increase of the population of the game? for example if hypothetically today 2000 or 3000 new players appear simultaneously the server could support the load? or rather if by chance the number increased by only 500, would it support? I get a foot back because I'm not so confident in the current servers even Little Orbit saying they are reliable and have been improved ...

 

2st: Regarding marketing I have to say that I am a little disappointed with Little Orbit ... I know the priority is in the development of the game but I think that leaving marketing so much aside can be very damaging, I'm not saying to invest heavy on 1 billions of advertisements everywhere but at least start to make better use of the tools of lower cost available such as the game page on facebook, twitter account, instagram etc.
The page of the game in facebook until some content in the last weeks but I think it is not something that can be called "Exciting", I believe that Little Orbit could explore the goal and the visual of the game that has in his hands and develop content for its social media as a way of marketing such as exploring the history of san paro and figures that stand out (contact NPCs), using them could even fortaceler the immersion of the players to the world of the game stimulating their imagination since once the player knows the story of the game and the characters he can imagine where his character would fit the story, it may seem silly but it really makes some difference.

*** Translated text through google, I apologize for this and hope you are 

[Noob_Guardian 417]

12 hours ago, MrsHappyPenguin said:

Every single time I play there's players accusing me of cheating. It's usually when I'm having a bad game too which really doesn't make sense. APB does have a cheater problem, all games do, but the number of real cheaters is a tiny fraction of those who get reported.

 

What I would like to discuss more on is the reasoning behind making such drastic changes to weapon balance. The community seems to only want the N-TEC and N-HVR 762 nerfed, and a few vocal lower skilled players wanting IR nerfed. What LO implemented was an overnerf to the only useful red mod which indirectly nerfed all preset weapons with it. They gave a range nerf to shotguns and rifles, and a slight nerf to the OCA's ttk. This indirectly buffed the N-TEC and other ARs. The N-TEC also got it's dynamic bloom removed, so now it's even easier to tap fire. We did get a nerf to the N-HVR 762, but it's buggy. Sometimes the crosshair is fully closed but it deals minimum damage.

 

I never felt the N-TEC was OP. I do think the HVR was OP. It used to be balanced when we had the steady damage dropoff years ago. When G1/Reloaded implemented the new dropoff system, they nerfed the usable range on all non snipers, and basically made weapon damage make no sense. A weapon shouldn't all of a sudden lose over 50% of it's damage after 10-15 meters. The only exceptions were the CR762 and OBIR, but LO then nerfed their ranges with the last patch.

 

rldr. Weapon balance changes do not make sense.

If you have like 8 "assault rifles" in game and the only one that 95% of the population uses is the NTEC, it needs to be brought in line with the rest. It's rather simple when it comes to that. HVR imo has been fine since they have been doing away with qsing, but the methods to do so have been meh. Rather than just fix QS3 to have a downside they nerf the sniper instead lel.

 

Shotguns didn't need the range nerf imo, but that kinda had to happen due to the shotgun rework and overdamage i miss the old Strife, would have been fine with the current changes. OCA is fine with its back to near .7ttk. I don't even know why they even touched it to decrease ttk.  AR's got a slight nerf in general, but ntec still is meh at least it can't reach as far as easily damage wise as it takes an extra hit.

 

You either had bullets that disappeared in thin air (which makes no sense but it was funny nonetheless)  or bullets that can go to 100m but do very little damage so you tickle people. Quite frankly i'm fine with the current damage drop changes. It may not make sense to you but it allows weapons to reach out of their niche at a cost. Which is how it should be, unless you want to go back to "here's the range suck it if the enemy isn't in it" which is fine imo it likely would have fixed some of the issues with the ntec honestly

Edited October 19, 2018 by Noob_Guardian

[Fortune Runner 796]

5 hours ago, Sig said:

I trust a lot of the work that little orbit is doing, I think the team is progressing very well so far, but there are two main points that continue to worry me a lot especially in the last month ... would be the quality of the servers and the marketing work for APB:

 

1st: I feel that the servers are more optimized now although there are still sudden instabilities, my question is is that they would support for example an expressive increase of the population of the game? for example if hypothetically today 2000 or 3000 new players appear simultaneously the server could support the load? or rather if by chance the number increased by only 500, would it support? I get a foot back because I'm not so confident in the current servers even Little Orbit saying they are reliable and have been improved ...

 

2st: Regarding marketing I have to say that I am a little disappointed with Little Orbit ... I know the priority is in the development of the game but I think that leaving marketing so much aside can be very damaging, I'm not saying to invest heavy on 1 billions of advertisements everywhere but at least start to make better use of the tools of lower cost available such as the game page on facebook, twitter account, instagram etc.
The page of the game in facebook until some content in the last weeks but I think it is not something that can be called "Exciting", I believe that Little Orbit could explore the goal and the visual of the game that has in his hands and develop content for its social media as a way of marketing such as exploring the history of san paro and figures that stand out (contact NPCs), using them could even fortaceler the immersion of the players to the world of the game stimulating their imagination since once the player knows the story of the game and the characters he can imagine where his character would fit the story, it may seem silly but it really makes some difference.

*** Translated text through google, I apologize for this and hope you are 

1. optimization - APB engine update will allow better optimization. engine scheduled for end of year.

 

2. marketing - too soon to market advertise or only same problems for years will be seen and bad public relations will occur from it.

After engine update and major content updates then marketing ok or nothing good will happen. patience.

[Nitronik 348]

Refer to own forum title. WHy is LO not listening to me!!!

3 hours ago, Noob_Guardian said:

OCA is fine with its back to near .7ttk. I don't even know why they even touched it to decrease ttk.
 

Keep in mind the OCA nerf isnt live yet

[HighSociety 148]

I personally think there is nothing to discuss...

 

1. Engine upgrade

2. Better server performance

3. Matchmaking

4. Advertise and give us new content

5. Cookies

 

...and we are fine to go

 

u'r welcome

[Mitne 724]

On 10/17/2018 at 11:12 AM, Excalibur! said:

Basically point I made.

[LordVegeta 35]

On 10/17/2018 at 12:48 AM, Fortune Runner said:

shotguns dont suck..... ive used them before the update was done to what  it is now

the pre update shotguns were horrible to the point i didnt use them unless i had to

now they function a lot better to where i can play a balanced mission with them.

All shotguns are really bad right now except for NFAS/Thumper. JG, CSG, and Shredder are basically broken because of the last update to them. As one of the best, if not THE best shotgun player, JG, CSG and Shredder, under perform right now compared to other CQC weapons and honostly if you are out killing people with those weapons they are probably below your skill level. 

[CookiePuss 5374]

4 minutes ago, LordVegeta said:

As one of the best, if not THE best shotgun player

Im sorry, but who even are you?

 

[LordVegeta 35]

On 10/18/2018 at 8:48 AM, MrsHappyPenguin said:

Every single time I play there's players accusing me of cheating. It's usually when I'm having a bad game too which really doesn't make sense. APB does have a cheater problem, all games do, but the number of real cheaters is a tiny fraction of those who get reported.

 

I disagree with you. The number of cheaters are actually GREATER than the number of people reported. Why? Because a lot of people use cheats like Configurations,Advanced APB Launcher (which isnt considered a cheat but should because you can take out muzzle flash, fog, and other things), and code that you would never be able to tell they were using. For instance, if you take a look at apb twitch channels, you will see people streaming with apb configs often. APB configs are against the TOS and are considered a cheat. But check it out. Those are the only people you can SEE use a config. Can you imagine how many people use a config and dont stream??? A lot more than you think.

Just now, CookiePuss said:

Im sorry, but who even are you?

 

Your worst nightmare. 

[CookiePuss 5374]

1 minute ago, LordVegeta said:

Your worst nightmare. 

touche

[February 22]

On ‎10‎/‎17‎/‎2018 at 4:03 AM, Fortune Runner said:

I don't believe shotguns suck. I can break even with a  kill/death ratio with them

Where as before Little Orbit made any changes I would get lucky to get 2 kills with the shotguns

GeForce1080 ti graphics with 60 fps so my comp is decent enough but I couldn't get kills with a shotgun unless i got lucky before the update to shotguns

Late, but not our fault you couldn't get kills with them before   practice more ez fix