PVE: TO BE OR NOT TO BE?

[DenVx 12]

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PVE: TO BE OR NOT TO BE?

 

Today I went to the Waterfront, I need to play there to raise the level and open up modifications and clothes. The problem is that after 3 hours of waiting, I never got the mission (I was ready). In the Financial District, I have no more contacts. Now I am waiting for 3 hours one mission in the area in which only I and another player, does not give me any mission. I managed to watch several films, and a couple of TV series, having waited more than 3 hours, I went out.

 

Therefore it is worth adding PVE, since:

 

1) Bad players will be able to get a little pleasure from the game.

 

2) AI can be both difficult and simple, they can use weapons from both Armas and available to all players.

 

3) It will revive the game a bit, as players who play poorly against other players will be able to enjoy the game and invest money in the game, thereby developing APB Reloaded.

 

4) Players performing tasks against AI may not receive a “role” pumping by killing AI. There may be some additional roles associated with AI.

 

5) Bosses - each MMO has bosses, creating a boss in PvE mode can add the ability of players from different factions to work together.

(A great way for friends from different factions to play together)

 

P.S.

Yes, everyone has their own opinion, someone will say that the AI is bad idea, someone will support this idea.

BUT, THIS SHOULD BE DEDICATED TO SEPARATE AREAS WITH A SIGNATURE "PVE".

Edited January 21, 2019 by DenVx

[NotZombieBiscuit 3146]

Not to be

[iTzBlackout 139]

I also would say that PVE isn't the best for APB. Maybe better AI for civilians but not for fighting. What do you think about having like small activities similar to the daily activities? Not like the daily acitvities you should be able to complete them together with your group and without being in a mission. There could be different "quests" as like "Assassin this person" (This Person would be a NPC who spawns at a special location and you and your team have to find and kill him) or "Deliver X of this Car" (You have to find requested cars and deliver them). The "quests" could turn into missions with enemys if you fail a step. There are actually so much possiblities.... I think I already flipped to far away from OPs post so I take a cut here.

[Guest]

Abit worried about the game to be honest.

[gordoIsMyName 69]

i think adding AI PVE would be great. there are a lot of options on how you could do this... teammates, roaming enemies, weather elements, etc...

 

the games very open world can allow a ton of small to large integration of AI over time and in various modes.

[vsb 6174]

lazy reposts from the last time this was suggested

 

On 12/16/2018 at 11:20 PM, BXNNXD said:

short answer - no 

 

long answer - any kind of ai meant to imitate player character movement would take a hefty amount of work, and frankly would never be a decent substitute 

On 12/22/2018 at 12:44 AM, BXNNXD said:

making a bot that could accurately replicate even a low gold player is anything but simple lol

On 12/22/2018 at 1:39 AM, BXNNXD said:

most open world games have serviceable AI the problem is that raising the "skill level" usually just ends up making their aim more and more artificially good, leading to a situation where your AI "players" would play like silvers or bronzes but with perfect aim - it doesnt lead to particularly good gameplay since any face to face firefight is essentially an automatic loss

 

 

its an unfortunate downside of having low population, coding pve into apb would take time away from projects that will likely boost the population and fix the problem

 

 

[SLICKIEM 118]

ai in that case would just be a stopgap for the very serious issue of low playerbase. that's just treating the symptoms, not the disease.

 

just wait for 3.5 when matchmaking system is reworked. i have a really good feeling about that

[DenVx 12]

But damn it, I waited more than three hours for the mission to begin, and in the end I ended up playing games, since I was wildly bored. And I am sure that new players will also throw this game as there are no missions AT ALL. That is, no one wants to wander around the city for more than 3 hours, I lost my primium time. All by the fact that I was not given even a single mission.

 

So what is the use of the game if it has nothing to do? The AI would fix this problem and make the game more interesting for all those who would be interested.
The game would not be as dead as it is now.

Edited January 22, 2019 by DenVx

[Fortune Runner 796]

APB will never be PvE

 

Doing a thread over doesnt change the many reasons given why its a bad idea , hard to program , and so on.

especially when it has only been a few weeks from the last thread.

Edited January 22, 2019 by Fortune Runner

[ZoriaDunne 327]

Not even sure if LO can do that.

[TheOppositePolarBear 93]

even tho it looks like you think having a PVE mode would be fun

 

i think your main problem is not being able to lvl waterfront contacts

 

there were suggestions to allow WF pledges while in financial

 

its a more realistic solution to that problem

[VickyFox 353]

PvE to compensate for low population levels making WaterFront empty has been suggested a few times.

 

It would be easier and quicker to just finish the Unreal Engine 3.5, then do promotions and public relations to try and raise awareness of APB and get new players

Developing a NPC/AI/bots to work within APB would take years to do, then testing and bug fixes would take even more months.

[WhiskeyTangoFoxX 280]

PvE, while it would be neat to have, absolutely does not work with how APB plays. APB is so hugely dependent on positioning and dynamic strategy, you can't go and write a simple CS style bot. Even if we ignore positioning and paths of approach, alone weapon handling will be difficult to manage. In my experience with bots in PvP focused games, they usually have so much fudge in their aim values that they do not work at all, or so little that they keep min TTKing everyone.

 

The only bots I can see happening at all would be some sort of horde bot for an event mode, but nothing that emulates mission play.

[DenVx 12]

Now PVE mode does not seem like a bad idea at all. I can not keep any of my friends in this game.
All my friends play from 1 hour to 2 days and leave APB forever, because they are not able to play with the new "balance" system.

When I returned to this game I was shocked by how few new players there were in this game. I myself do not see the point in playing this game anymore, because I will never be able to play as well as other players (for my own reasons). We lose mission after mission without getting anything.
This game causes frustration for new players and old players who cannot spend 24/7 in APB.

 

Merged.

 

Honestly, I'm ready to try to make AI for APB Reloaded for "thanks".

 

This is the game of my childhood and giving the game a new life would not be so difficult for me.

Unfortunately, the developers do not listen to that percentage of players who want to play the game for fun and immersion, the developers listen only to those players who have configs that turn off smoke, explosions, shots, objects on the map, ragdolls and even parts of the map, which gives an advantage in the game compared to ordinary players whose goal is to enjoy the game as it is, and not a game with graphics in the style of Potato Mode.
Players with configs play for dominance, for self-affirmation, and players who play this game for the entourage and immersion suffer and leave the game FOREVER.

 

Now average online dropped to 700 players.

[LilyRain 680]

5 hours ago, DenVx said:

 

Honestly, I'm ready to try to make AI for APB Reloaded for "thanks".

 

This is the game of my childhood and giving the game a new life would not be so difficult for me.

Unfortunately, the developers do not listen to that percentage of players who want to play the game for fun and immersion, the developers listen only to those players who have configs that turn off smoke, explosions, shots, objects on the map, ragdolls and even parts of the map, which gives an advantage in the game compared to ordinary players whose goal is to enjoy the game as it is, and not a game with graphics in the style of Potato Mode.
Players with configs play for dominance, for self-affirmation, and players who play this game for the entourage and immersion suffer and leave the game FOREVER.

 

Now average online dropped to 700 players.

MattScott in the AMA declared attempts to make PvE. He won't 'spoil' it and may give information at a later date. 

 

I'm not sure if he'll let you in on that but the possibility exists.

[DenVx 12]

18 hours ago, LilyRain said:

MattScott in the AMA declared attempts to make PvE. He won't 'spoil' it and may give information at a later date. 

 

I'm not sure if he'll let you in on that but the possibility exists.

I have friends who don't play this game because of the broken balance.

When asked if they would play this game if it had PVE, 8/10 friends said they would play this game, the other 2 friends only want PVP but with balance.

 

Based on a survey of my friends who tried APB and quit after a few missions (and losses in a row), but a couple of friends lasted in this game even for a week and only because of me, but quit the game because of the too broken balance.

 

That's why I'm more than sure that if APB has PVE, it will be online and players will buy various items in Armas.
I'm personally ready to buy something in Armas once every 1-2 months if the game starts to bring me pleasure as it did with a working balance.

[LilyRain 680]

4 hours ago, DenVx said:

I have friends who don't play this game because of the broken balance.

When asked if they would play this game if it had PVE, 8/10 friends said they would play this game, the other 2 friends only want PVP but with balance.

 

Based on a survey of my friends who tried APB and quit after a few missions (and losses in a row), but a couple of friends lasted in this game even for a week and only because of me, but quit the game because of the too broken balance.

 

That's why I'm more than sure that if APB has PVE, it will be online and players will buy various items in Armas.
I'm personally ready to buy something in Armas once every 1-2 months if the game starts to bring me pleasure as it did with a working balance.

Spot on. 

 

I agree with your friends. Balance is definitely lacking and was deemed low priority for a long time.

[DenVx 12]

14 hours ago, LilyRain said:

Spot on. 

 

I agree with your friends. Balance is definitely lacking and was deemed low priority for a long time.

Now you can see that 50-100 players on average leave the game every week.
I think we need to push the idea of the game balance as much as possible, as it was before (at least).

It would also be useful to have AI, to simply collect information about how players usually play, their paths to points, and create an AI behavior pattern from this information.

[LilyRain 680]

11 hours ago, DenVx said:

Now you can see that 50-100 players on average leave the game every week.

That's much higher than the true-rate but yes. Players are indeed backing away. 

 

Realistically speaking, 50 Players WILL dip for sure once they reach the new Max Rank.

 

11 hours ago, DenVx said:

I think we need to push the idea of the game balance as much as possible, as it was before (at least).

We have but it felt on deaf ears. At least we reverted the nonsensical x2 Med Spray healing speed as well as managed to introduce a downside to Highburn Fuel.

 

LO didn't display balancing efforts beyond minor or illogical tweaks.

 

For now, there should be a balance patch this September. Let's see what they will do this time. I genuinely hope it would be a step in the right direction but I wouldn't celebrate till it actually turns out good.

 

11 hours ago, DenVx said:

It would also be useful to have AI, to simply collect information about how players usually play, their paths to points, and create an AI behavior pattern from this information.

LO was never good with experimenting. It is also not a good idea to have AI learn from all active players. A good number isn't good enough to be an example for AI to learn from. 

 

It would be faster and more consistent to do something standard for AI PvE NPCs.

[DenVx 12]

2 hours ago, LilyRain said:

14 hours ago, DenVx said:

Now you can see that 50-100 players on average leave the game every week.

That's much higher than the true-rate but yes. Players are indeed backing away. 

 

Maybe, but we still have the problem where the online drops due to broken balance and quite quickly, in some missions I just want to leave the mission so tryhards play tryhards,

I don't want to waste my time dying and dying, but I will come back to try another mission, but other players won't.

 

Here we see players leaving:

 

I'm currently at 270R but I don't think players will leave once they hit max rank.

I only see gold in districts now because all the players like me (low skill and just wanting to chill) just stop playing.

Most of these golds don't even use Armas so they don't contribute money (THEY DON'T HAVE TO) to help APB pay the bills.

 

I have a lot of Armas reskins because I like the immersion and how I can cosplay, I'd like to buy more weapon reskins but I don't see the point in spending money on a game that doesn't want me to play.

 

It's sad to say but I think if the balance isn't fixed the game will die.

[LilyRain 680]

7 minutes ago, DenVx said:

It's sad to say but I think if the balance isn't fixed the game will die.

Pure fact right here. Again, it simply amazes me how low-priority this was given. APB would now be retaining much more players if this nonsensical and aimless Matchmaking-effort was instead directed towards balance that isn't just shit.

 

Regarding player-counts, August-September not only showed a surge due to the 2 Waterfront Contacts but also because of the unban-wave (EAC → SARD). Next month will tell more accurately as not all these players are unique (multiple accounts).