Little Orbit, do not listen to us.

[xnyuu 23]

Dear Little Orbit,

your communication is top notch, keep it up! drinks to the whole team!♥

 

 

I‘d love to know, who‘s vision of APB‘s future you are following, if you have any? Is Tiggs still the pushing for Qwentle's(lead designer) vision?
Is there any vision for APB?

 

Again, I don‘t think releasing more weapons will be helping APB becoming a better game in any way.

 

I should not address this, since it‘s normal human behaviour and probably can‘t be eliminated.

Be aware of overly hyped players trying to help and volunteer. Treat with caution.

 

We have a very rough past of ‚San Paro City Testers‘ doing too much then simply volunteering. I was a member, I participated to help get stats and numbers needed. I love to volunteer and help, it‘s normal business.

But, be aware of the cuddly and friendly ones with weird ideas. If you ever add a volunteer program, be professional at all times. Do not do the same mistakes Gamersfirst did.

APB Reloaded is a clusterfmess of weapons some extremely unbalanced and simply crazy and absurd. Some weapons not only ruin the game for the opposition but teammates as well. I‘d still prefer the rollback and change of concept, but I can understand it not happening.

 

Be careful and good luck.

[AgentWatson 85]

I was hoping Matt Scott would comment on whether or not they'll have a "Community Test Environment" in the future to test future balance changes to the game or any changes at all. 

[Thial 176]

That's why only the top players should be recruited, not yukon gamers or hvr mains or overall any people of that sort. Only legitimately skilled people who are neutral and care about the balance, not releasing more broken weapons which they can abuse. With all respect I think that releasing more weapon types which later could get reskins would be a nice idea. I can't say how many times I was sad that I only have either an OCA or PMG to choose from when I want to play smg, or pretty much only ntec or star when I wanna play AR. There should be more free weapon types which could get reskins in the future. The game is very stale at this point because we have been using the same stuff all these years.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Thial

[LilyV3 323]

6 minutes ago, Thial said:

That's why only the top players should be recruited, not yukon gamers or hvr mains or overall any people of that sort. Only legitimately skilled people who are neutral and care about the balance, not releasing more broken weapons which they can abuse. With all respect I think that releasing more weapon types which later could get reskins would be a nice idea. I can't say how many times I was sad that I only have either an OCA or PMG to choose from when I want to play smg, or pretty much only ntec or star when I wanna play AR. There should be more free weapon types which could get reskins in the future. The game is very stale at this point because we have been using the same stuff all these years.

 

Hardly anyone acts neutral in this game, especially those in the top skills, most top skilled gamers are evry competitive and have their very own agendas.

 

Also, for SPCT, a large portion was Test if basic things work, like can you steal a car and turn it in properly as a cop, elase guns, destroyable objects still destroyable, do cars properly slow down with mission task items etc. . That was the build verification test. For those you really don't need skilled players. But most top palyers are way too busy addicting the game for competitive reasons to participate in those trivial tasks.

[Thial 176]

1 hour ago, LilyV3 said:

 

Hardly anyone acts neutral in this game, especially those in the top skills, most top skilled gamers are evry competitive and have their very own agendas.

 

Also, for SPCT, a large portion was Test if basic things work, like can you steal a car and turn it in properly as a cop, elase guns, destroyable objects still destroyable, do cars properly slow down with mission task items etc. . That was the build verification test. For those you really don't need skilled players. But most top palyers are way too busy addicting the game for competitive reasons to participate in those trivial tasks.

Yes I totally agree that there aren't that many neutral players but still there are those few individuals who would not be biased. Those few veterans understand exactly the flaws of the current balance. They know which weapons are overpowered and which require a little bit of a buff to compete with the meta guns. As always most of the community hates any changes if it means losing their op toys and having to learn how to play with normal guns but LO as a parent shouldn't listen to that part of the community who are simply spoiled children in that scenario. What's op should be nerfed, what's underpowered should be buffed. That's all there is to it and I'm afraid that LO won't be able to do that alone without the help of the community. It's like that funny quote from ffbans.org about FairFight "There's nothing Fair about this Fight if a 60y old granny decides if you are cheating or not". Same goes for weapon balance. With all respect to LO, without someone with top skill level and few years of experience it will be hard for them to provide us with proper balance.

[LilyV3 323]

16 minutes ago, Thial said:

Yes I totally agree that there aren't that many neutral players but still there are those few individuals who would not be biased. Those few veterans understand exactly the flaws of the current balance. They know which weapons are overpowered and which require a little bit of a buff to compete with the meta guns. As always most of the community hates any changes if it means losing their op toys and having to learn how to play with normal guns but LO as a parent shouldn't listen to that part of the community who are simply spoiled children in that scenario. What's op should be nerfed, what's underpowered should be buffed. That's all there is to it and I'm afraid that LO won't be able to do that alone without the help of the community. It's like that funny quote from ffbans.org about FairFight "There's nothing Fair about this Fight if a 60y old granny decides if you are cheating or not". Same goes for weapon balance. With all respect to LO, without someone with top skill level and few years of experience it will be hard for them to provide us with proper balance.

 

and there comes LO's first problem, how would they properly know who of them is skilled enough and also neutral. that decisions is equally difficult.

[Thial 176]

16 minutes ago, LilyV3 said:

 

and there comes LO's first problem, how would they properly know who of them is skilled enough and also neutral. that decisions is equally difficult.

The easiest way would be probably to recruit decent streamers / people who have famous apb montages imo. You can even see based on that which weapons they are using or hear their opinions on the balance during the streams.

Additionally there were quite few people who were doing weapon showcases on youtube and were testing the guns in all circumstances. Even if they weren't some top players they most likely understood the balance very well.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Thial

[AgentWatson 85]

47 minutes ago, Thial said:

The easiest way would be probably to recruit decent streamers / people who have famous apb montages imo. You can even see based on that which weapons they are using or hear their opinions on the balance during the streams.

Additionally there were quite few people who were doing weapon showcases on youtube and were testing the guns in all circumstances. Even if they weren't some top players they most likely understood the balance very well.

Oh god no, here is where I have issues. Streamers aren't arbiters of what makes a weapon good or bad, neither are many of the competitive players in this game. He said something very valid in response to you and that's people come with their own agendas. Streamers are the worst people to hand that sort of power over to because they're opinion formers, which means to say they validate the opinions of people who may be feeling the same way and it snowballs into anything they say being self-validated by the obviously biased community that follows them.

 

For instance streamer with 5000 viewers says "Oh this N-TEC is super overpowered" There will be legitimate grievances with what he says in his chat but a majority will then come to the forums and pay lip service to this stream by reiterating not even their own views but the views of the streamer. 

 

I'd only agree for streamers getting accepted into a balance program on certain conditions.

 

-They have to sign an NDA, no exceptions. If they're helping on balance I don't want it being "leaked" out or revealing details before the devs do. 

-They need to be a longstanding member of the community, someone like Kempington or Shini or even DopeFish if he was still around. 

-I don't want the dev team to ever forget that the streamers or community contributors are simply in an advisory role and I don't want to see a balance change added simply because they had one shitty night on APB.

 

That's really all I'd ask but overall I agree, good players and community contributors should be where Little Orbit should turn, but they should also not forget that the new user experience is just as important. 

Edited May 30, 2018 by AgentWatson
communist

[Thial 176]

2 minutes ago, AgentWatson said:

Oh god no, here is where I have issues. Streamers aren't arbiters of what makes a weapon good or bad, neither are many of the competitive players in this game. He said something very valid in response to you and that's people come with their own agendas. Streamers are the worst people to hand that sort of power over to because they're opinion formers, which means to say they validate the opinions of people who may be feeling the same way and it snowballs into anything they say being self-validated by the obviously biased communist that follows them.

 

For instance streamer with 5000 viewers says "Oh this N-TEC is super overpowered" There will be legitimate grievances with what he says in his chat but a majority will then come to the forums and pay lip service to this stream by reiterating not even their own views but the views of the streamer. 

 

I'd only agree for streamers getting accepted into a balance program on certain conditions.

 

-They have to sign an NDA, no exceptions. If they're helping on balance I don't want it being "leaked" out or revealing details before the devs do. 

-They need to be a longstanding member of the community, someone like Kempington or Shini or even DopeFish if he was still around. 

-I don't want the dev team to ever forget that the streamers or community contributors are simply in an advisory role and I don't want to see a balance change added simply because they had one shitty night on APB.

 

That's really all I'd ask but overall I agree, good players and community contributors should be where Little Orbit should turn, but they should also not forget that the new user experience is just as important. 

I totally agree with you. But look at your own post, you mentioned kemp and shini who are both streamers yet their opinion is not biased. Most decent streamers don't base their opinions on how good they are with the weapon. They base the opinion purely on the stats of the weapons + many years of experience playing with and against certain weapons. I also totally agree with the NDA part. It's obvious that it would have to be done.

[iDev 17]

3 hours ago, AgentWatson said:

I was hoping Matt Scott would comment on whether or not they'll have a "Community Test Environment" in the future to test future balance changes to the game or any changes at all. 

Lixil did mention they won't be doing any testing with the community, as they have QA for that. Whether or not they'll do it for balance changes, do not know.

[Excalibur! 207]

8 minutes ago, AgentWatson said:

Oh god no, here is where I have issues. Streamers aren't arbiters of what makes a weapon good or bad, neither are many of the competitive players in this game. He said something very valid in response to you and that's people come with their own agendas. Streamers are the worst people to hand that sort of power over to because they're opinion formers, which means to say they validate the opinions of people who may be feeling the same way and it snowballs into anything they say being self-validated by the obviously biased community that follows them.

 

For instance streamer with 5000 viewers says "Oh this N-TEC is super overpowered" There will be legitimate grievances with what he says in his chat but a majority will then come to the forums and pay lip service to this stream by reiterating not even their own views but the views of the streamer. 

 

I'd only agree for streamers getting accepted into a balance program on certain conditions.

 

-They have to sign an NDA, no exceptions. If they're helping on balance I don't want it being "leaked" out or revealing details before the devs do. 

-They need to be a longstanding member of the community, someone like Kempington or Shini or even DopeFish if he was still around. 

-I don't want the dev team to ever forget that the streamers or community contributors are simply in an advisory role and I don't want to see a balance change added simply because they had one shitty night on APB.

 

That's really all I'd ask but overall I agree, good players and community contributors should be where Little Orbit should turn, but they should also not forget that the new user experience is just as important. 

"Yeah... it would be nice to have streamers guiding the game" *has stream himself.*

But what a coincidence!

[Spheri 66]

Uhh no, streamers should not guide a game. Streamers are part of a healthy game, they bring (good) advertisement to the game and some games are alive or have seen life thankfully to streamers. 
However, streamers should not have favoritism or more power than any other person. This always happen to a certain extent but this can be overlooked. The big problem with streamers and has been mentioned before is that once they grow big their opinion will be much stronger and may be echoed by their fanbase. Even if this were wrong.

The only people who should be in charge of balancing is a person working behind the scenes who takes feedback from the community. With a grain of salt. 

[Lixil 3524]

Hello,

 

The only volunteering teams for now that we will be having is Forum Mods and GM's. Regarding players as testers we do have QA's for that and if they are in need of help I'm sure they will reach out to the community and ask for their help. 

[Bornstellar 108]

5 minutes ago, Lixil said:

Hello,

 

The only volunteering teams for now that we will be having is Forum Mods and GM's. Regarding players as testers we do have QA's for that and if they are in need of help I'm sure they will reach out to the community and ask for their help. 

Fantastic to hear. It's actually rather nice having a team working on the game rather than one or two people doing everything involving development. But I'm sure it wasn't there fault they were shorthanded. They tried the best they could.

[Zoehh 33]

7 hours ago, AgentWatson said:

-They have to sign an NDA, no exceptions. ...

-... someone like Kempington or Shini ...

-I don't want the dev team to ever forget that the streamers or community contributors are simply in an advisory role and I don't want to see a balance change added simply because they had one shitty night on APB.

- NDA was always mandatory for SPCT. I've signed 2 of them for GF and RP.
- Both of those people were SPCT at one point. Were they effective? Debatable.
- This largely didn't happen, as also mentioned by LilyV3 (Also former SPCT), SPCT was mostly for BVT and QA. Did we have some influence on Balance? Maybe. They did ask for opinions from time to time but the decision was entirely Qwentle's always. I can only think of really one situation where the opinion of an SPCT member caused an actual change in final build. The speed of the Coywolf. One person went out of their way to constantly harass them about it, and eventually it got nerfed to what it is now instead of it's former glory. (Yes i'm still salty about it).

 

A bigly problem with the olden SPCT ways were that a majority of the people who joined, did not join to test, and never did test. They simply joined to see the patch notes before they went live, or used it as a "personal arsenal" of sorts, since you had everything in the game unlocked to test with.

 

19 minutes ago, Lixil said:

Hello,

 

The only volunteering teams for now that we will be having is Forum Mods and GM's. Regarding players as testers we do have QA's for that and if they are in need of help I'm sure they will reach out to the community and ask for their help. 

Will you be continuing SPCM (San Paro City Mentors) at all? I'd like to think that while I was a part of it most of us did some form of good. The ability to ignore threat segregation to go and help/answer questions from newer or less skilled players I think helped a lot. The tag it gave showed people were knowledgeable and not trolling them or providing false information. It also, actually, helped a lot of the higher skilled players as well. District chat may have never showed it, but you would get a lot of whispers from people looking for actual help or advice.
Did the program have it's bad apples? Sure. Especially when people later into it's lifespan just wore the tag and did nothing with it, or used it to grab attention/show off.
I think the system itself was a good idea though.

--

In what capacity are the GM's volunteer currently? Will you be adding any Player GM's? If so why and how? Can you elaborate?
Same for forum mods. In the past players were allowed to volunteer to be forum mods. Will this still happen? See above questions.

[Nessie 81]

10 hours ago, Thial said:

That's why only the top players should be recruited, not yukon gamers or hvr mains or overall any people of that sort. Only legitimately skilled people who are neutral and care about the balance, not releasing more broken weapons which they can abuse. With all respect I think that releasing more weapon types which later could get reskins would be a nice idea. I can't say how many times I was sad that I only have either an OCA or PMG to choose from when I want to play smg, or pretty much only ntec or star when I wanna play AR. There should be more free weapon types which could get reskins in the future. The game is very stale at this point because we have been using the same stuff all these years.

 

Or... you know... have players of all ranges testing instead of using the feedback of a single type of player? You can't really balance something based only on the way -some- play when the majority of the community is composed of average players.

[Lixil 3524]

I will not be taking any of the old teams there was in the past. If anything I will create something new - however, this is something in the future.

 

Players will be allowed to do both GM or Forum moderating. However, they will have to apply. Applying doesn't guarantee 100% that they will be accepted.

Not sure what do you mean by why... Having players who help out the community and who have knowledge of the game helps both players and the company.

 

I will not be giving any more information regarding this. If you wish to apply for the program, you will be able to once I announce it.

[Bornstellar 108]

3 minutes ago, Lixil said:

I will not be taking any of the old teams there was in the past. If anything I will create something new - however, this is something in the future.

 

Players will be allowed to do both GM or Forum moderating. However, they will have to apply. Applying doesn't guarantee 100% that they will be accepted.

Not sure what do you mean by why... Having players who help out the community and who have knowledge of the game helps both players and the company.

 

I will not be giving any more information regarding this. If you wish to apply for the program, you will be able to once I announce it.

Definitely sounds interesting.

[Zoehh 33]

6 minutes ago, Lixil said:

I will not be taking any of the old teams there was in the past. If anything I will create something new - however, this is something in the future.

 

Players will be allowed to do both GM or Forum moderating. However, they will have to apply. Applying doesn't guarantee 100% that they will be accepted.

Not sure what do you mean by why... Having players who help out the community and who have knowledge of the game helps both players and the company.

 

I will not be giving any more information regarding this. If you wish to apply for the program, you will be able to once I announce it.

Thank you for the reply, this pretty much answered my questions.
I asked "why" because I can see potential abuse happening with player GMs, but this is mostly just my experience with the game and it's community speaking up, and I realize that this will most likely not be the case. That said I see absolutely no problem with it as long as they're kept on a tight leash or monitored closely, etc.

It also sounds like this may just be an extension of SPCM in a manner in that "players who help out the community and who have knowledge of the game" is basically what SPCM was in the past, but may now have more power.

Edited May 30, 2018 by Zoehh

[Panicbutton 5]

Tells company not to listen to us, gives multiple pieces of advice.

 

Quality posting.

[Lixil 3524]

1 minute ago, Zoehh said:

Thank you for the reply, this pretty much answered my questions.
I asked "why" because I can see potential abuse happening with player GMs, but this is mostly just my experience with the game and it's community speaking up, and I realize that this will most likely not be the case. That said I see absolutely no problem with it as long as they're kept on a tight leash or monitored closely, etc.

This a reason why GM's will not be allowed to do any banning or anything that allows them to do any 'abuse'. When I say not allowed I mean not have the option of doing so. If a GM is misbehaving I count on players to report that to me.

[Thial 176]

6 minutes ago, Lixil said:

I will not be taking any of the old teams there was in the past. If anything I will create something new - however, this is something in the future.

 

Players will be allowed to do both GM or Forum moderating. However, they will have to apply. Applying doesn't guarantee 100% that they will be accepted.

Not sure what do you mean by why... Having players who help out the community and who have knowledge of the game helps both players and the company.

 

I will not be giving any more information regarding this. If you wish to apply for the program, you will be able to once I announce it.

Please don't accept just any players as GMs or forum moderators. Most people will want to apply to show off or abuse their power or just won't do what they should. In fact I don't think recruiting actual players as GMs is a good idea. It would most likely end badly, players don't have the professional approach which will be required. I would definitely be interested in joining some kind of testing team though in the future to help with any sort of balancing or new system if that would be a thing.

[Zoehh 33]

2 minutes ago, Lixil said:

This a reason why GM's will not be allowed to do any banning or anything that allows them to do any 'abuse'. When I say not allowed I mean not have the option of doing so. If a GM is misbehaving I count on players to report that to me.

I see, thank you!

[Lixil 3524]

Just now, Thial said:

Please don't accept just any players as GMs or forum moderators. Most people will want to apply to show off or abuse their power or just won't do what they should. In fact I don't think recruiting actual players as GMs is a good idea. It would most likely end badly, players don't have the professional approach which will be required. I would definitely be interested in joining some kind of testing team though in the future to help with any sort of balancing or new system if that would be a thing.

Thank you for your suggestion, however, I will be accepting players as GMs. They do have to go through an interview and stuff like that. My current GMs are players and they are doing an amazing job. 

[Thial 176]

1 minute ago, Lixil said:

Thank you for your suggestion, however, I will be accepting players as GMs. They do have to go through an interview and stuff like that. My current GMs are players and they are doing an amazing job. 

I really hope they will stay as professional as possible. It would be a shame if we would start seeing GMs taking sides and stuff like that since I'm certain that you will face many candidates who will lie during the interview just to get the job. This game was always about ego boosting to many people after all.