New SPCT team

[vsb 6171]

4 minutes ago, Nite said:

Guarantee people would be tripping over themselves to call MattScott "Tiggs 2.0" if we found out about this after the fact.

it'd be sov and pocket dev all over again 

[TheJellyGoo 343]

Dunno where the "secrecy part" is coming from. As someone quoted before:

Quote

Based on where we are in the process, I have recently started reaching out to specific community members about reforming the SPCT. Our goal here was to choose veteran players that covered a wide range of play styles who could devote time to testing with us and give in depth feedback. They are under NDA, none of them will be able to publicly discuss what they are working on.

[ ON A SIDE NOTE, PLEASE DON'T REACH OUT TO US TO JOIN THE TEAM ]

It's not like the program itself would have been unknown - just participants, and lets be honest it ain't hard for Kemp not to wear a top-hat and tuxedo on a testserver.

So it would have been public knowledge that it exists and it's members are protected behind anonymity since they have no community interaction nor are representing LO - pretty simple.

Not saying there wouldn't be any drama at some point anyway. Question is really just what one prefers to defend I guess.

Edited December 16, 2018 by TheJellyGoo

[Kevkof 806]

2 minutes ago, TheJellyGoo said:

So it would have been public knowledge that it exists and it's members are protected behind anonymity 

Knowing this lovely community of ours, that would eventually be found out, so why not just tell you all who we are from the start?

That avoids the hassle of dealing with anonymity being violated.

[Knite 158]

6 minutes ago, TheJellyGoo said:

Question is really just what one prefers to defend I guess.

1 minute ago, Kevkof said:

That avoids the hassle of dealing with anonymity being violated.

 

 

[ThrowawayAccount 8]

1 hour ago, Kempington said:

Well, you're not wrong. I'm terrible when it comes to that sort of stuff and it's incredibly frustrating to be in a position where you have to attempt to carry your team. However, the way I approach it is not acceptable. It's been going on for too long and I need to get better at not doing this. It's not fair on those I call out and completely undeserved. Apologies.

 

Some day, I'm hoping the matchmaking system will drastically improve so the chances of this go down substantially. I feel bad when I get low rank silvers who are completely inexperienced and basically can't play the mission at all, due to taking too long to get to the objective, or simply outclassed in every gameplay aspect of this game (shooting, positioning, reaction, etc). It's not a fun experience for them and definitely not for the more experienced that get grouped with them for a mission.

 

Sadly, experience is not something matchmaking takes into account, because it's practically impossible. How do you tell a system how well someone knows the shortest routes to an objective or what the optimal positioning is, given the weapon load-out and possible methods of approach on an attacking team? Due to how long the threat system has been in disaray, there are playing punch above their weight when it comes to their threat level, so they're treated as "just as good" as other golds who are far more versed in the plethora of weapons in the game, as well as optimal loadouts, methods of approach, gunplay, etc. They know the game inside and out and then have more Timmy over here who just achieved gold, going up against powerhouses who will shoot him down from angles he didn't know existed.

 

I don't mean to steer away from the main claim you've made. You're completely right about me and I'm sorry again for that. I'll do what I can to better myself as a human being and not lash out like I do when frustrated.

I can understand that perspective, especially with regards to the matchmaking. Although, the incident between you and I that is memorable for me was when I was solo queueing on EU 2 years ago and we got into a 4v4 mission on Financial. Both sides consisted of four gold players, so it was supposedly "balanced" in the sense that there were no silvers on either side. The thing that stuck to me was when you lashed out at me because I replied to your comment about "where is the team????". You just proceeded to get angrier after my initial reply. Prior to that incident, I used to watch you on an almost daily basis and I enjoyed the stream, my favorite APB streamer at the time. I was really happy when I finally got to play with you, literally fangirling "omg I'm playing with kemp!". After the incident I was like wow he's just like the other jerks and I just stopped watching altogether. I thought maybe it was just a one-off incident like a bad day or something, but my EU friends said they had similar experiences. I know I'm probably derailing the thread at this point, but I just wanted to let you know why I felt this way.

 

Anyways, thanks for all you've done so far for the community.

 

1 hour ago, MattScott said:

Hi all,

 

Couple more points of clarification:

 

Announcing the members of the SPCT was my idea.

 

1) Why did we announce who is in the SPCT?

 

I don’t like secrets for the sake of secrets.

 

People always find out anyway, so unless there is a good business reason, why bother creating that landmine? Imagine if you found out months from now that we had reformed the SPCT and we didn’t tell the player base. How would that feel? Better or worse than how we handled it? 

 

My guess is that any reaction you’re having right now would be 10x down the road. On top of that there are concrete reasons to reveal the team members. For instance, we are video capturing some of the playtest sessions so we can start creating marketing assets in time for the launch of upcoming features. In my opinion, it’s going to be pretty obvious who those players are in the videos.

 

2) Why do we need NDAs?

 

This should be a no brainer. Testers get context about internal business issues that we don’t necessarily share publicly. Most importantly, we are sharing some information with them that is under NDA from external partners. 

 

Testers will see incomplete, broken features. We don’t want that shared with our players till it’s working correctly. Having said all that, I do want the testers to be able to share the good, the bad, and the ugly sometimes about what we are working on. I have already commited to finding opportunities for that.

 

3) Why did we choose these specifc people?

 

There is no science to this. I read the forums. I chose people with opinions that participate a lot. These people had to pass our own internal standards, and I also chose people that could work together.

 

For this initial group, I wanted a smal set of testers that we could manage properly. I don’t expect that all of our choices will be perfect. They just need to be ‘good enough’ to keep us moving forward. I want the team to be bigger, and there are plenty of other people on my list that I will likely approach in the future.

 

4) What are some tasks of the SPCT?

 

Let’s use Slay Bells as an example. The members of the team have access to an internal Discord channel and to a private forum channel. 

 

We coordinated several tests on a closed server for them to get on and work through the event. They were given times and testing items. Each build was at various stages of completion ranging from late Alpha to Beta. After the playtesting they would write up feedback on the forums or discuss points over Discord. In several cases, we had Beastie get on to answer questions or respond to feedback.

 

During the process of testing, the SPCT discovered various bugs within the gamemode. For example, vehicles could kill players in early tests, and we made adjustments after seeing some

of the crazy stuff testers did to abuse things.

 

To sum things up:

 

I’m less interested in spending a lot of time second guessing and anticipating problems with our current team. I’m far more interested in holding this team accountable and revisiting this topic as time goes on to make sure we are meeting the goals of the game and the community.

 

Thanks,

Matt

 

edited to include examples

I appreciate the clarifications, thank you. With regards to the duties of SPCT, I am perfectly fine with them just being another form of proofreading when it comes to future content. It is just the way these individuals were initially portrayed as community figures that startled me at first, especially since there was no announcement of another potential community team in the works.

 

As I said before, this is certainly a step in the right direction and it should only get better as time goes on.

 

Thank you once again for all you and LO have done for APB and the community.

[vsb 6171]

5 minutes ago, ThrowawayAccount said:

especially since there was no announcement of another potential community team in the works.

volunteer player testers have come up multiple times, the last one i remember being specifically about restarting the SPCT

 

On 11/20/2018 at 11:48 PM, MattScott said:

Based on where we are in the process, I have recently started reaching out to specific community members about reforming the SPCT. Our goal here was to choose veteran players that covered a wide range of play styles who could devote time to testing with us and give in depth feedback. They are under NDA, none of them will be able to publicly discuss what they are working on.

 

[ ON A SIDE NOTE, PLEASE DON'T MESSAGE ME ABOUT JOINING THIS TEAM - I'LL CONTACT YOU IF WE HAVE OPENINGS ]

 

 

[ThrowawayAccount 8]

1 minute ago, BXNNXD said:

volunteer player testers have come up multiple times, the last one i remember being specifically about restarting the SPCT

 

 

I mainly meant a team focused on communication between the community and LO, almost like game sages in a way. These individuals would be responsible for interacting with the community.

[Acornie 490]

5 hours ago, BXNNXD said:

being well known shouldn’t even be any kind of consideration for spct imo

Yes, talk about making it a cool kids club. Also, I dont even know who Asger is in game, all I know him by is his magnificent profile picture here on the forums

[Kewlin 692]

SPOILER ALERT: This post is going to sound really salty. Think what you may, I don't care if people think I'm salty or not, I'm just going to say what I see.

 

So get your tinfoil hats on folks!

 

2 hours ago, MattScott said:

3) Why did we choose these specifc people?

 

There is no science to this. I read the forums. I chose people with opinions that participate a lot. These people had to pass our own internal standards, and I also chose people that could work together.

 

Simply put, this is. . . uhh. . . well that simply isn't true, or almost even possible? Because I wouldn't call these people "active" on the forums. Let's do a count of the posts each member has made up until this point on the new forums:

 

Shini - 87 (Total - 4065)

Kempington - 117 (Total - 2255)

SKay - 50 (Total - 1304)

Frosi - 194 (Total - 1384)

Rooq - 4 (Total - 145)

Skitty - 55 (Total - 7459)

CookiePuss - 4290 (Total - 6729)

Shakespade - 1 (Total - 205)

Kevkof - 482 (Total - 1048)

Elanih - 4 (Total - 50)

Speedz - 41 (Total - 374)

 

 

So look, we both know now that what you said isn't true, so what's the deal? You couldn't even be mistaken, since you absolutely are not under the impression that you found and recruited someone with 1 post on the new forums and 205 posts total because they're active on the forums. I'm not throwing shade on these SPCT members, I have no idea if they do their job well and that's none of my concern at the moment, but saying you recruited them because they're active on the forums, or honestly anywhere is bullshoot, 'cause the only person here I'd call active is Cooky, seeing as rarely visit the forums and I have 841 posts on the new forums. I'm not even active on the forums and I have almost double the posts of the second most posts on your SPCT list.

 

No, before anyone says I'm just trying to get on the SPCT, I have a general idea that being an annoying pleasant fellow to Matt every time he says literally anything is probably not the best way to make a good impression.

 

 

So where'd you find these people? Skay, Kemp, and Skitty post enough on the "unofficial" APB discord, Kevkof could have been from there or the forums, Speedz is obvious, and I know you've had a lot of interaction with Cooky in lots of places. So I guess that leaves Shini, Frosi, Rooq, Shakespade, and Elanih? Where have they been active that you saw them? And I can't even give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you looked at the old forums too because very few people in the SPCT were really active there either. Does streaming and making YT montages count as being active? because if so what people are saying about this being a celebrity show is basically just true.

 

From what I can tell Kevkof is the only one you could have possibly recruited because you found him on the forums, but even then it's just as likely you found him on Discord. Doesn't that seem a little off? Recruiting as few as 0 people through your actual official means of communication with the playerbase? And I get that the SPCT isn't an honor or anything, which is why you get a big badge under your name, but seriously, taking everybody from third party sources is a horrible PR move at best.

 

If you're going to use Discord as an official interaction platform, make an official Discord: don't just use a controversial server run by some random dude that tons of people have ran away from due to drama with its staff.

 

I don't even know what to say, this is just weird, it's bizarre, and I don't even want to think you're lying because I don't see a clear motive (you could have just. . . actually recruited people from the forums, after all.) I was going to let the fact that these people weren't from the forums slide but then you said this and. . . yeah. Anyways, I could go on making minor edits to this post forever, but I've already spent too much time on this conspiracy, so if there's some glaring mistake, whatever, someone just tell me about it.

 

So what say you Mister Scott?

[CookiePuss 5377]

12 minutes ago, Kewlin said:

CookiePuss - 4290 (Total - 6729)

 

Im am the king of the nerds!!!

[vsb 6171]

3 minutes ago, CookiePuss said:

Im am the king of the nerds!!!

 

[gif]

 

halt, pretender to the throne

 

 

BXNNXD - 4375 (total - 8386)

 

 

 

 

Edited December 16, 2018 by BXNNXD
this post counts too

[Kewlin 692]

3 minutes ago, BXNNXD said:

halt, pretender to the throne

 

 

BXNNXD - 4375 (total - 8386)

 

Not to mention the like disparity, gees. 

[vsb 6171]

2 minutes ago, Kewlin said:

 

Not to mention the like disparity, gees. 

i cant hold that against him, we all know how negative opinions get downvoted around here

[CookiePuss 5377]

1 minute ago, BXNNXD said:

halt, pretender to the throne

 

 

BXNNXD - 4375 (total - 8386)

 

 

 

 

 

The king is dead, long live the king.

 

 

[Yem176 0]

ive just now started catching up with the game news since pepple have been saying the game is gonna have some drastic, yet good changes. is it true? and yes i didnt read the thousands of replies on this post.

[CookiePuss 5377]

3 minutes ago, Kewlin said:

 

Not to mention the like disparity, gees. 

Thats a low blow homie... low blow indeed.

 

[Frosi 722]

2 hours ago, Kewlin said:

Simply put, this is. . . uhh. . . well that simply isn't true, or almost even possible? Because I wouldn't call these people "active" on the forums.

This depends on how you define active. You do not need to have thousands of posts to be an active member. An active member of the forum could also be a person that doesn't post in every thread, but rather in those that he wants to participate in by giving valuable feedback or sharing his insight on the thread's topic. 

 

You're also taking Matt's post out of context as the OP says that they were looking for the best players that have the most availability and those that have been their harshest critics. Only one of these has to do with posting on the forums which would be the "harshest critics" part.

 

Not everyone's going to like the list of players that are in SPCT simply because they don't like them, don't think they're a good pick or simply feel like they're not going to do a good enough job. Of course, there are many other reasons but I can assure you that from a gameplay perspective, this new SPCT team has many of Citadels best and most knowledged players.

[Shini 251]

3 hours ago, Kewlin said:

So where'd you find these people? Skay, Kemp, and Skitty post enough on the "unofficial" APB discord, Kevkof could have been from there or the forums, Speedz is obvious, and I know you've had a lot of interaction with Cooky in lots of places. So I guess that leaves Shini, Frosi, Rooq, Shakespade, and Elanih? Where have they been active that you saw them? And I can't even give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you looked at the old forums too because very few people in the SPCT were really active there either. Does streaming and making YT montages count as being active? because if so what people are saying about this being a celebrity show is basically just true.

Come on dude, recent post counts is the main benchmark for you? Given my lack of content on yt and twitch it would also say I am not that active.

 

Honestly I just post less on the forums because I just don't need to, a lot of threads just turn into shit posting, drama or its really the same threads over and over again.

If you want me to be honest here, after the weapon balance. I thought at the time instead of posting on the various threads I'd just PM matt with my thoughts. Which wasn't really about weapon balance, more about trying not to change too much now because you're bound to piss off large numbers of the playerbase with big changes to the meta. Rather than weapon changes, I gave some other things in the game in the game people are tired of (like bugs, mission balance etc)  it's better to focus on areas that are bound to make players happy. Weapon balance its just so tricky at the moment honestly and if you're trying to drum up hype for the engine update its probably best to leave the stale meta as it is, if we can wait almost 5 years we could wait a few months.

 

So funnily enough he read my PM, talked a bit. A few months later here we are. Obviously he checked I've been on APB since Q3 2009 (heavy hitters) I've been on this game since forever. I don't post on the forums much, I don't play much, I am not even that good at all anymore, I am really just busy with work and trying to fit in some other games apart from APB these days but that doesn't negate what I know or have experienced on my time on this game with 3 different owners now. I still very very care for the game as it has taken up a huge chunk of my life (and my wallet).
Now I wasn't one of the best people on the old SPCT, I am hoping to see some brought back as they were very much a great help back in the day. I also still notice a few very old names on the forums, names that I have seen since the old heavy hitters days that I know have good insight. Hope some more of that criteria are brought back as that would make me feel less bad.

 

What I am trying to say is there are other ways to get noticed.

 

Edited December 16, 2018 by Shini

[Kewlin 692]

4 hours ago, Frosi said:

This depends on how you define active. You do not need to have thousands of posts to be an active member. An active member of the forum could also be a person that doesn't post in every thread, but rather in those that he wants to participate in by giving valuable feedback or sharing his insight on the thread's topic. 

 

You're also taking Matt's post out of context as the OP says that they were looking for the best players that have the most availability and those that have been their harshest critics. Only one of these has to do with posting on the forums which would be the "harshest critics" part.

 

So what's active to you? 1 Post? 4? 41? 50? 117? 482? 482 is where I might call someone active, 'cause that's multiple posts a day since LO changed the forums. 50 posts on the other hand is around one post every 4 days on average, which is certainly not active IMO.

 

I personally don't post in almost any threads, mostly just ones my friends link me or ones made by LO, but I got over 800 with no effort (granted, I have lots of free time.)

 

 

4 hours ago, Frosi said:

You're also taking Matt's post out of context as the OP says that they were looking for the best players that have the most availability and those that have been their harshest critics. Only one of these has to do with posting on the forums which would be the "harshest critics" part.

 

No I'm not? Nothing even hints at that being the context of what he's saying, lol. The context is him answering "Why did we choose these specifc people?" plain and simple. What he said was across the board and you're applying context that Matt did not imply, and honestly if that's what Matt meant he fucked up.

 

I'm not sure how you came to this conclusion.

 

 

4 hours ago, Frosi said:

Not everyone's going to like the list of players that are in SPCT simply because they don't like them, don't think they're a good pick or simply feel like they're not going to do a good enough job. Of course, there are many other reasons but I can assure you that from a gameplay perspective, this new SPCT team has many of Citadels best and most knowledged players.

 

At no point did I say I do or do not like the current SPCT crew? I honestly don't have much of an opinion either way. What does this have to do with me? And why are you preaching about your team to me in the first place, that's hella cringy.

 

Merged.

4 hours ago, Shini said:

Come on dude, recent post counts is the main benchmark for you? Given my lack of content on yt and twitch it would also say I am not that active.

 

No? I never said that, what I said was that his claim that he found the SPCT crew from looking for active forums users is blatantly false given the forum activity of most of the members. To be clear, I don't really care either way if you are or aren't in the SPCT, but I'm sure you'll be fine given your history.

 

My post said that Matt's statement was clearly false, and that I think somebody should have been taken from the forums to be in the SPCT. I didn't really say much else.

 

 

4 hours ago, Shini said:

Honestly I just post less on the forums because I just don't need to, a lot of threads just turn into shit posting, drama or its really the same threads over and over again.

If you want me to be honest here, after the weapon balance. I though at the time instead of posting on the various threads I'd just PM matt with my thoughts. Which wasn't really about weapon balance, more about trying not to change too much now because you're bound to piss off large numbers of the playerbase with big changes to the meta. Rather than weapon base, I gave some other things in the game in the game people are tired of (like bugs, mission balance etc)  it's better to focus on areas that are bound to make players happy. Weapon balance its just so tricky at the moment honestly and if you're trying to drum up hype for the engine update its probably best to leave the stale meta as it is, if we can wait almost 5 years we could wait a few months.

 

So funnily enough he read my PM, talked a bit. A few months later here we are. Obviously he checked I've been on APB since Q3 2009 (heavy hitters) I've been on this game since forever. I don't post on the forums much, I don't play much, I am not even that good at all anymore, I am really just busy with work and trying to fit in some other games apart from APB these days but that doesn't negate what I know or have experienced on my time on this game with 3 different owners now. 

 

Interesting, good to know.

[Frosi 722]

2 minutes ago, Kewlin said:

So what's active to you? 1 Post? 4? 41? 50? 117? 482? 482 is where I might call someone active, 'cause that's multiple posts a day since LO changed the forums. 50 posts on the other hand is around one post every 4 days on average, which is certainly not active IMO.

 

I stated that activity on the forums doesn't have to be related to your post count and that other things can be considered as activity such as the quality of your posts and how much they actually contribute to the threads topic.

 

9 minutes ago, Kewlin said:

No I'm not? Nothing even hints at that being the context of what he's saying, lol. The context is him answering "Why did we choose these specifc people?" plain and simple. What he said was across the board and you're applying context that Matt did not imply, and honestly if that's what Matt meant he fucked up.

Taken from the OP:

On 12/13/2018 at 2:18 AM, MattScott said:

I am very pleased with the team we have selected. I wanted a combination of the best players who have the most availability, and even some who have been our harshest critics.

 

You're essentially forgetting what he said in the opening post and are taking something that he said after as the only factor that went into choosing who's going to be in SPCT. You do not define who is among the best players by Forum activity.

 

13 minutes ago, Kewlin said:

At no point did I say I do or do not like the current SPCT crew? I honestly don't have much of an opinion either way. What does this have to do with me? And why are you preaching about your team to me in the first place, that's hella cringy.

 

If you do not have an opinion on who's in SPCT and who isn't then why are you bringing up all these things about Matt "lying" about the ways the members have been selected? It makes no sense to me and to an extent you honestly sound upset about the selection of players that got in, even tho the list isn't final and more members will be added over time. 

 

 

All in all, I really don't see a point in having this discussion so I'll leave it at that. 

[Kewlin 692]

3 minutes ago, Frosi said:

I stated that activity on the forums doesn't have to be related to your post count and that other things can be considered as activity such as the quality of your posts and how much they actually contribute to the threads topic.

 

That has literally nothing to do with being active though, unless we're talking hella well made, really intense, (as in long or with extra material,) well thought out posts.

 

We're talking less than 100 posts on average here since LO took over, that'd better be some pretty fucking amazing posts if you're going to count that as active.

 

 

4 minutes ago, Frosi said:

You're essentially forgetting what he said in the opening post and are taking something that he said after as the only factor that went into choosing who's going to be in SPCT. You do not define who is among the best players by Forum activity.

 

No I'm not, this absolutely is not how the English language works. He said how he chose the SPCT members without any reference to the OP or anything else. He clearly stated the question he was answering, and he said NOTHING about what you're saying.

 

I'm not saying who's a good player, I'm not saying who's qualified, I'm not saying who he should have chosen, I'm saying he said something provably false.

 

 

7 minutes ago, Frosi said:

If you do not have an opinion on who's in SPCT and who isn't then why are you bringing up all these things about Matt "lying" about the ways the members have been selected? It makes no sense to me and to an extent you honestly sound upset about the selection of players that got in, even tho the list isn't final and more members will be added over time. 

 

I didn't say I don't have an opinion on who is and isn't in the SPCT, I said I don't have a strong opinion on the current crew either for good or bad. Those two things are entirely different.

 

 

10 minutes ago, Frosi said:

All in all, I really don't see a point in having this discussion so I'll leave it at that. 

 

Cool.

[Fortune Runner 796]

12 hours ago, Glubbable said:

Shoving testers under NDA goes against the point of giving any form of transparency. Plus it's pretty common these days for people to just leak stuff... so why not just avoid giving them access to stuff that you don't want them to talk about? Like, this game is only holding on thanks to LO, so the last thing we need is for them to repeat the same mistakes Reloaded did.

We wanted to know the players chosen would be reliable on this so they released the names so that w could rest at ease. To me , it looks like it is being handled how it should be.

 

Merged.

11 hours ago, Kempington said:

adly, experience is not something matchmaking takes into account, because it's practically impossible. How do you tell a system how well someone knows the shortest routes to an objective or what the optimal positioning is, given the weapon load-out and possible methods of approach on an attacking team?

On saints row unlocking shortcuts was a part of the game.

If Little Orbit found a way to program that in on APB silently to keep track of driving routes then it could be possible.

No small task to factor in with matchmaking of course but over time it could be built up to that.

Most programming is built up from smaller programs over time so theoretically this is possible.

[Kewlin 692]

17 minutes ago, Fortune Runner said:

On saints row unlocking shortcuts was a part of the game.

 

I cannot tell you the trouble I got into unlocking "shortcuts" that weren't even remotely viable in SR2, lol.

 

Good times, good times.

[Fortune Runner 796]

7 minutes ago, Kewlin said:

 

I cannot tell you the trouble I got into unlocking "shortcuts" that weren't even remotely viable in SR2, lol.

 

Good times, good times.

I play it  now and then. Still hate doing it but its still fun lol

 

I think that over time they could add coding like this and it would benefit.

But we better keep that topic that topic and this topic this one or it might expand too big on this thread

I realized I may of opened up a can of worms to discuss  whoops

Edited December 16, 2018 by Fortune Runner

[TheJellyGoo 343]

8 hours ago, Kevkof said:

Knowing this lovely community of ours, that would eventually be found out, so why not just tell you all who we are from the start?

That avoids the hassle of dealing with anonymity being violated.

True, I guess it was naive of me to believe that SPCT members will honor the NDA and not leak info to their friends making their participation known. 

Because that is essentially the only way, apart from an unlikely LO leak, that would violate the anonymity. 

Not sure I would like going into it under this premise though since it would imply that there is no real trust for SPCT upholding it in the first place.

I don't know, maybe I really just wear rose-colored glasses. I can definitely see logic in both ways with none being wrong in that sense.

Just think it would have given proof of more trust in SPCTs members.

Edited December 16, 2018 by TheJellyGoo