APB needs new players. Ideas? Little Orbit?

[Merody 8]

tl;dr - What title says. Please give ideas on how regular people can, both in game and in real life, attract new players and enhance engagement of the newcommers. Collaborate with other players to publicize this. Also, discuss an hipothetical collaboration with Little Orbit on this, being it whatever you want and/or whatever they have planned.

 

Hi community,

 

I have been around since about 2011, when the game was launched on Steam. After 2-3 years of relatively good health, player base started descreasing nonstop. I started playing less and less, but never really "left" the game, until I did. Little Orbit taking the project and committing as they did was a nice surprise, as was to see that APB never actually died. So here we are.

 

But we all know the story, so to the point: I think we all agree on that APB needs new players, and it needs them as soon as possible. How APB engages new players is another issue that needs to be addressed if anyone wants new players to stay longer than a week. When I was a rookie I introduced a lot of friends to APB, of which I am the only one who still plays from time to time. They have just forgotten the game, since they were just testing out, and the game failed to hook them in.

 

Goals of this thread are the following:

 

• Give ideas and discuss about how to attract new players, both in game and in real life, on the Internet, on the forums, with friends... Whatever.
• Give ideas and discuss about how to increase engagement for newcommers. APB needs to keep players attention much better than it does now.
• Attempt to increase quality of life for newcommers. Help should be at hand somehow.
• Publicize and help other fellow players that collaboration is key on this.
• Contact with Little Orbit. Guess what they have in mind and work and collaborate with them on that.
• Find out if Little Orbit is open to this kind of community initiative and find how are they able and/or willing to help.

 

As we talk, I will include ideas here in the first post to clarify and organize. I didn't lurk the forums a lot before posting this, so if there is any initiative like this somewhere in the forums, send me a link and I will include it here.

 

So, can we get started? Thanks for collaborating, guys.

[Tiuhti 16]

In my opinion APB is really hard get along for beginners. New players don't understand how threat levels work and they join in wrong districts all the time. They give up after getting stomped by experienced players in silver districts. I want threat locked districts back, gold players should not be able to play against bronzes and silvers. Let new players play bronze and silver districts in peace without getting frustrated. And remove those stupid open conflict districts if they haven't already.

[TheMessiah 430]

Option to play similar video after character creation with Kempington voice on background explaining things:

 

or just attach this video to the game..is enough

Edited December 29, 2018 by TheMessiah

[Merody 8]

The first thing I though of was the APB wiki. Which options do we have? If I type "APB wiki" in my search engine (DuckDuckGo, FYI) it points me to this site: http://apb.wikia.com/wiki/APB_Wiki

I have no affiliation to that website nor know any of its collaborators. Anyone here? What I am thinking is that this wiki's dashboard, splash screen, home or whatever you want to call it should contain guidance for beginners.

As @Tiuhti says -I totally agree with what you say, except in the threat locked servers-, please explain the basics: pick servers, explain threat, how to get money, how to buy a weapon, how to spawn your car, where to look for mission objetives, be ready (press K), watch out for enemies and fight with your team mates.

This wiki and/or guides should be linked probably in the launcher, or publicized in any way in the game. Not to mention that tutorial has wide margins to improvement, but that's another issue and Little Orbit is probably working on it.

 

@TheMessiah that video is great for summarizing stuff beginners must deal with. More details and instructions can be added somewhere else, or in different videos. Great example! Agreed on link this kind of materials directly even from the launcher and/or somewhere in the game.

Also this @Mitne's Basic Newbie Guide is great, but buried in the forums, where only 1% (invented percentage, like 93% percentages on the Internet) of players look.

[SLICKIEM 118]

the game has become almost a private-server like community, with names you will see daily and then "all the others", the people who play once a week or month or year.

 

getting this game out of that population zone is going to be extremely difficult, mostly because of the skill gap more than anything else. a silver will run out in the road with reckless abandon and not understand what's important about cover then get pissed when they die.  repeat this 100 times and you have a player that just quit the game.  this isn't even counting the people who load into the game, IGNORE the tutorial, then complain the game doesn't tell them how to do missions and quit.

 

fixing the skill gap issue could be done by doing a better job with threat/matchmaking, but it's still gonna cause issues till the population increases.  we're caught in quite a severe catch-22 currently that no one has offered a real resolution for.  an ad campaign for a re-brand of the game might be a good start, paired up with the matchmaking changes with ue3.5, but again no one has a crystal ball and i think we'll just have to ride it out and see

[Syzus 23]

Good topic, i was thinking the same. 

For now, what they can do is promote events and give players cosmetics, so that old players can stick to the game (Slay Bells/Beacon was pretty decent, i like it, they are learning).

Once the engine upgrade is out with matchmaking some ppl will come back

Then you need to keep people entertained, i suggest a new tutorial, some cool rewards for playing like if you play 10 missions a day you gain 5 gc, new events, ARMAS Sales. Hint:  Give players many modes/reasons to play

In the future, new districts, new contacts, new game modes.

Finally, change the game's name APB Reloaded Reloaded(just kidding lol), maybe APB 2, a big update so that they can relaunch it

That's it.

Overall, I really hope Matt has a good plan in his mind to bring players back and our suggestions should help him out.

Edited December 29, 2018 by Syzus

[LChristy 27]

APB in 2019

 

Edited December 29, 2018 by LChristy

[Ketog 1031]

There you go

 

New contacts = new content to unlock !

Edited December 29, 2018 by Ketog

[nndrei 129]

1 hour ago, LChristy said:

APB in 2019

 

i expect better graphics

[vsb 6171]

21 minutes ago, Roxane said:

i expect better graphics

then you’re going to be disappointed tbh, since that’s not really what the engine upgrade is about

[Defibrillator 132]

23 minutes ago, BXNNXD said:

then you’re going to be disappointed tbh, since that’s not really what the engine upgrade is about

Action replay of how you got killed instead of spawn selection. Slow motion of bullets in mid air, stunts etc.  Would love to see somethn like this.

Edited December 29, 2018 by Defibrillator

[Merody 8]

1 hour ago, SLICKIEM said:

getting this game out of that population zone is going to be extremely difficult

Challenge accepted I don't want to just wait and instead do something. Still don't know what exactly, that's why I opened this thread, but we'll figure something out.

 

Also, while we can make a lot of proposals here, they will need to implement them in game. APB is a complex piece of software, so that would be really time consuming and they already have a pile of work ahead. Namely, engine update. Slow motion and the like falls in this category.

 

So what I wanted to put the focus on is what we can do, ideally collaborating with them. Starting with the small things:

• I have started working with the Wiki. It seems abandoned. Maybe I can adopt it and adapt it to the new times.
• Little Orbit could update the launcher as well, to include and promote new beginner-friendly content as well. I'd like to know what @MattScott thinks about this.
• I would like to propose the creation of the figure of mentors or a mentoring system of any kind. Even if it's just announcing "mentors" to newcommers or something.
• Another propose: in-game moderation, such as to avoid this kind of stuff that ruins newcommers' experience: https://forums.gamersfirst.com/topic/6815-robokast-why-apb-failed-gamings-100000000-failure/?tab=comments#comment-83946

Whoever wants to help with the mentoring, moderation or just help newcommers with their onboarding, could be part of something called [NEW], Newcommer Engagement Workgroup

[Syzus 23]

3 minutes ago, Merody said:

Challenge accepted I don't want to just wait and instead do something. Still don't know what exactly, that's why I opened this thread, but we'll figure something out.

 

Also, while we can make a lot of proposals here, they will need to implement them in game. APB is a complex piece of software, so that would be really time consuming and they already have a pile of work ahead. Namely, engine update. Slow motion and the like falls in this category.

 

So what I wanted to put the focus on is what we can do, ideally collaborating with them. Starting with the small things:

• I have started working with the Wiki. It seems abandoned. Maybe I can adopt it and adapt it to the new times.
• Little Orbit could update the launcher as well, to include and promote new beginner-friendly content as well. I'd like to know what @MattScott thinks about this.
• I would like to propose the creation of the figure of mentors or a mentoring system of any kind. Even if it's just announcing "mentors" to newcommers or something.
• Another propose: in-game moderation, such as to avoid this kind of stuff that ruins newcommers' experience: https://forums.gamersfirst.com/topic/6815-robokast-why-apb-failed-gamings-100000000-failure/?tab=comments#comment-83946

Whoever wants to help with the mentoring, moderation or just help newcommers with their onboarding, could be part of something called [NEW], Newcommer Engagement Workgroup

Nice! It actually could revive the old San Paro City Mentors (SPCM)

Source: http://apbdb.com/track/372934/

[Regenance 59]

The main problem is that the game is not that understandable, which makes new players frustrated on how things works, that'd be awesome to have a tutorial phase which will lead new player with instructions inside how the game works, basically there are a lot of things to be fixed such as buildings, weapons balance (which seem to be still not working so far, you made shotgun dead rn, no one actually uses it nowdays)

 

The game has a lot of potential, but so far that seems like small things done instead of thinking big and creative. 

[Syzus 23]

13 minutes ago, Regenance said:

The main problem is that the game is not that understandable, which makes new players frustrated on how things works, that'd be awesome to have a tutorial phase which will lead new player with instructions inside how the game works, basically there are a lot of things to be fixed such as buildings, weapons balance (which seem to be still not working so far, you made shotgun dead rn, no one actually uses it nowdays)

 

The game has a lot of potential, but so far that seems like small things done instead of thinking big and creative. 

buildings?

[vsb 6171]

12 minutes ago, Syzus said:

buildings?

i assume he means the map balance

[_chain 176]

You're anticipating the problems here. The thing you should be doing right now is waiting for the engine update which should come with new contacts and vehicles/weapons/clothing in the long run. 

 

Once we have new stuff to publicize we should also have new players. 

No one is going to start playing APB over a couple of bug fixes, weapon balances and a trading system, but someone will surely do when the game gets updated on steam with a "UE3.5/4 + new content" banner. 

 

IMHO and from my experience the problem could be fixed right now if we opted for a warframe approach to the entirety of the armas.

 

For example; I managed to get a few friends to play APB. The first few days of learning were fun, but when they saw that all the cool stuff people were rocking locked behind a payment wall they couldn't exactly go around, they weren't so enthusiastic about the deal.

 

On the other hand I showed them Warframe and they're still playing to this day. In that game you can look cool starting from hour 0, the rest doesn't matter. People also want that and it's a decisive factor in wether or not they will be biased towards liking the rest, discovering new stuff the game has to offer, etc. 

 

That's my piece of mind for you. 

Edited December 29, 2018 by _chain

[Syzus 23]

1 minute ago, _chain said:

You're anticipating the problems here. The thing you should be doing right now is waiting for the engine update which should come with new contacts and vehicles/weapons/clothing in the long run. 

 

Once we have new stuff to publicize we should also have new players. 

No one is going to start playing APB over a couple of bug fixes, weapon balances and a trading system, but someone will surely do when the game gets updated on steam with a "UE3.5/4 + new content" banner. 

 

IMHO and from my experience the problem could be fixed right now if we opted for a warframe approach to the entirety of the armas.

 

For example; I managed to get a few friends to play APB. The first few days of learning were fun, but when they saw that all the cool stuff people were rocking locked behind a payment wall they couldn't exactly go around, they weren't so enthusiastic about the deal.

 

On the other hand I showed them Warframe and they're still playing to this day. In that game you can look cool starting from hour 0, the rest doesn't matter. People also want that. 

Just want to help, anticipating problems means good planning and discuss before act, we all know how things go without planning and testing....

[Rade 54]

It might be a good idea to look at things from the point of any old player first, then consider what it might be like for a new player.

 

I join any full district, silver given golds are empty. I press K, I wait, and wait, more waiting. A mission starts unopposed with other team members. Half or all quit straight away. Then opposition arrives, players on either side quit / afk because they are losing, some are dethreaters so they don't play seriously. Mission ends. Rinse and repeat.

 

New players get the same thing with added benefits, abused for being a trainee, bronze, silver, kicked for accidental TKs, abusive team chat, stomped by too difficult opposition / dethreaters preying on newbies.

 

Let's be honest about the situation, the player experience is frankly quite shit at present, made even worse by the match making system, threat levels and the toxic behaviour it fosters, the poor graphics, the choppy server performance.

 

Getting new players to stick around and bump up the average daily player count is simply not going to happen with APB the way it is.

 

There needs to be real focus on making the player experience a positive one.

 

https://forums.gamersfirst.com/topic/6213-matchmaking-and-threat/

 

My view is it all boils down to the match making / threat system in APB and I hope something is done before the engine upgrade or very soon after. If not, well, a polished turd springs to mind...

[Regenance 59]

26 minutes ago, Syzus said:

buildings?

There are too many bugs with the buildings textures and structures which leads to other abuse them to win missions and so on. There are too many things that needs to be cleaned, rewritten-ed and done. but so far it's up to Little Orbit's manpower and developers.

[Clandestine 390]

Visit bronze financial in Citadel on a new account, pretend you're new af and answer yourself.

[Merody 8]

37 minutes ago, _chain said:

You're anticipating the problems here. The thing you should be doing right now is waiting for the engine update which should come with new contacts and vehicles/weapons/clothing in the long run. 

 

(...)

 

On the other hand I showed them Warframe and they're still playing to this day. In that game you can look cool starting from hour 0, the rest doesn't matter. People also want that and it's a decisive factor in wether or not they will be biased towards liking the rest, discovering new stuff the game has to offer, etc.

Thanks for participating. I can't critizice anyone since waiting is what I've been doing for the last 5 years regarding APB, but that's not what we/I want here. Of course, the engine update will drive to a great degree any effort to publicize the game, but still... That's Little Orbit's job. What I was proposing here is to do our thing, collaborating with them if possible. Coordinating these proposals with their marketing at engine update launch is included in that proposal of mine.

 

25 minutes ago, Rade said:

(...)

 

I join any full district, silver given golds are empty. I press K, I wait, and wait, more waiting. A mission starts unopposed with other team members. Half or all quit straight away. Then opposition arrives, players on either side quit / afk because they are losing, some are dethreaters so they don't play seriously. Mission ends. Rinse and repeat.

 

New players get the same thing with added benefits, abused for being a trainee, bronze, silver, kicked for accidental TKs, abusive team chat, stomped by too difficult opposition / dethreaters preying on newbies.

 

(...)

Thanks for sharing your view on this. What we are doing here is discussing -or trying to- ways to improve that ourselves. Most of us know what issues APB has very well and even suffer from them. Pointing  these issues is probably not news to anyone. Instead, I would have liked to focus more on the initiative. Reviving the San Paro City Mentors as @Syzus pointed by ourselves was a great idea. If we can get Little Orbit support for this, we could achieve something. That's just an example, I'm sure that someone has great ideas here that we can take on our own.

 

21 minutes ago, Clandestine said:

Visit bronze financial in Citadel on a new account, pretend you're new af and answer yourself. 

Already done that. Last time today, actually, in order to get some screenshoots for the wiki.

[CookiePuss 5378]

Man, wouldn't it be cool if we had a dedicated forum subsection for suggestions?

Wait, that would only help if people used forums properly.

 

 

[Merody 8]

What's wrong with the suggestions section? I don't find anything particularly wrong there. The downside in my opinion is that most people have no idea about game development and don't realize that what they suggest may take months or years of development and is thus very difficult to take them to the game.

[swft 356]

1 hour ago, Merody said:

What's wrong with the suggestions section? I don't find anything particularly wrong there. The downside in my opinion is that most people have no idea about game development and don't realize that what they suggest may take months or years of development and is thus very difficult to take them to the game.

 

The joke was that this thread wasn't posted on the suggestions subsection...