Making APB more fair towards all players

[mtz 496]

This thread is a consequence of a discussion that was initiated during my APB stream; the discussion concerned things such as the impression APB leaves on a new player.

During the talk, an idea emerged that I believe is worth discussing here on the forums.

 

As it stands right now, new players are at what they perceive to be - and what practically is - a massive disadvantage. Allow me to paint a picture:

You download the game, you start it up and you create a new character. Upon joining an action district, you are given one primary gun (before tutorials), one secondary gun, and a bit later you're given one orange mod and one grenade type. As you are put in a mission, you are put against people with flashy symbols before their names, driving massive cars that seem to eat your grenades and still be able to drive, flinging grenades that chew through you, and shooting weapons you haven't even had the chance to see until that point, 

After a streak of lost fights, the mission concludes - very probably with a loss for your team. As you open up the scoreboard - which is an inevitability, as the pop-up at the side of the screen simply won't go away until you press Tab - you see the cards of other players in your mission and you notice that nigh all of them are using weapons with three modification slots, running all possible character mods and consumables, Some of their weapons even have golden icons on the scoreboard.

The obvious conclusion is that they're using pay-to-win gear that you can't even reach, leading you to question whether staying in this game is even worth it, seeing as you're getting your butt handed back to you by those who have spent money on the game. Not to mention the fact that your team will probably jump to insults, demeaning you for daring to be new to the game.

 

The idea discussed in my stream concerned fixing the general attitudes of the community by readjusting the way content distribution works in APB in order to combat negative externalities (or, the process of making every player other than the paying one miserable in small ways). This consists of a few parts that I will try to explain in detail in the following few sections of this thread.

 

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1) Share unlocked content within missions and groups.

Make gameplay elements able to be used regardless of rank by people in the same mission and group.

 

Locking content to individual players depending on how far they've progressed in the game does not give the newcomers a level playing field. Comparing even just the orange character mod options, a new player will only have the Field Supplier at their disposal up until they reach Rank 195, at which the options really open up (e.g. Blowtorch) - and this is just one of the categories. We also have vehicle mods and weapon mods that are further limited by rank restrictions.

 

What I think would be a good way of fighting these limitations is to make the players share their (selected) weapon/mod/equipment/vehicle unlocks between people in the same mission. In other words, it would be a system where each player can influence the range of items which appear in their mission by contributing them to the mission pool.

 

Extending the same functionality to people within groups would incentivize teaming up and also allow players to "test-drive" weapons and other inventory options. This does not impair the experience of players who have purchased items from ARMAS, as they still have the rights to use the items.

A parallel can be drawn to Payday 2's monetization system and how it incentivizes paying for playable heist DLC. You can play all heists in the game even if you don't own their corresponding DLC - the only caveat is that someone else has to host the lobby for you. This can lead to people socializing (and sometimes even making friends) with other players who have spent money to unlock the content. Purchasing heist DLC gives you the privileges of hosting a lobby for it yourself, creating an example of a positive externality. Everyone benefits, no one loses out. (Maybe except for those who keep solely to themselves and don't spend/contribute anything.)

 

Obviously, this would require some changes to the gameplay flow - and perhaps most importantly, to the way missions are started.

 

2) Add a pre-game period before the mission begins AND let players blacklist items.

Give each player a warm-up period to analyze their options and prepare for the mission, while also letting them blacklist elements of gameplay.

 

Let's assume a scenario where the player is outside of a mission. They can choose to freely edit their inventory, change their equipped weaponry and the range of mods that will be mounted on their weapons.

 

Once a mission is initiated, the game also starts a pre-mission period during which the players can analyze the items contributed to the mission pool (and quickly readjust their inventory with the new options, if need be). When the actual mission begins, the players will be able to use the items within the mission pool, on both sides. Additionally, each player can blacklist one item (from any category) in the game - said item will not be able to be used by anyone in the mission, even if a duplicate or a reskin is provided.

(In order to counteract this system being misused to prevent new players from playing, the STAR 556 and the Obeya FBW would be unable to be blacklisted.)

 

Weapons with mods applied to them will not be able to have the mods removed or changed, even by their actual owners. If you mod a weapon, you have to commit to its mod setup for the rest of the mission.

 

Blacklisting a weapon is also a blanket blacklisting of all of its presets and reskins. For example, if the N-HVR 762 is blacklisted by a player, this also includes the PSR 'Harrier' R&D III.

 

If a weapon modification is blacklisted in the match, the effects of the mod would be cancelled for the length of the match. The weapon with a blacklisted modification would still be usable, provided it's not blacklisted by another player in the mission.

 

 

 

If a player is called in as backup and their blacklisted item is in the mission pool, players will receive a warning in the top middle section of the screen that their item will be forcibly unequipped after 60 seconds, forcing them to switch to another, non-blacklisted weapon. On the list of weapons on the inventory screen, blacklisted weapons would be explicitly depicted as "not available".

 

 

Once a mission is over, all items "borrowed" from other players are forcibly unequipped from the players (unless they are in a group with the owner of the items).

 

It's also important to note that any and all blacklist restrictions would only apply within a given mission and that mission only. If you finish a mission with someone who blacklisted Car Surfer, then start another mission without that person, Car Surfer will not be blacklisted in that second mission.

 

3) Display item use/blacklist statistics in-game and on ARMAS.

Have each item's description display clearly how often it's blacklisted in recent matches.

 

With the implementation of this system, it would be possible for the game to, in a way, balance itself. Checking an item's properties both in the game and on ARMAS should display usage statistics, more specifically how often the items are blacklisted from matches. This would give both the players and the developers an idea of which items are considered problematic.

 

• Mock-up of a part of an ARMAS page for a preset weapon:
   

 

With this type of information, it would be easy to find out which item is the most often blacklisted by players. A 2% margin can be chalked up to preference, but an item getting blacklisted in 40% of all matches in one week would be grounds for concern*.

(*Numbers are not exact figures and are only meant to illustrate the thought process.)

 

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•  The expected changes:

 

In its current situation, APB as a whole feels almost deliberately stacked towards making every non-paying player's life worse. The only party which benefits from any non-cosmetic purchase is the paying player, and even when we talk about things that are not related to paying (and instead are locked behind progression), much of the content is exclusive to players who have grinded enough to reach the endgame/rank 195+.

The introduction of the changes suggested in this thread would hopefully have the following results:

 

• Players who spend lots of money on the game (colloquially speaking, "whales") would no longer be the only beneficiaries of ARMAS purchases. Their purchasing power also becomes an asset to other community members, turning the public view of a whale from "a selfish big spender" into "a sought-after player who opens up a large variety of options", both to the whale's team and to the opposing team.
  This also does not take away anything from the players who have spent money on the game. A non-paying player can only have access to a weapon if they are in the presence (in a group or in a mission) of someone with that weapon - or if they actually buy the weapon themselves.
• The ability to shape the flow of the game by blacklisting items gives an opportunity for the underused equipment to be viable. As a specific weapon gets banned, it may become a necessity to use its alternatives that serve the same purpose. As a result, players may turn to using weapons they normally never use - or buy more options in the same field, which have a lower chance of getting blacklisted, but perform the same job just as well. Similar logic would apply to vehicles - if the Pioneer or the Espacio were suddenly a prominently blacklisted item, players would turn to other alternatives,
• Players are given an incentive to group up, or even join clans with others, regardless of their paying status. Those who pay, will provide their team with benefits. Those who don't, will put themselves forward as potential team/group/clan members.
• Inviting friends into the game becomes easier, as when you group up with them, you also automatically give them a free lease of your inventory while you're in the same group with them. This lets new players test out gear in the game without spending money or hours of their time on grinding for it. It also gives the players an incentive to play the game together without having to worry significantly about one player falling behind on loadout options.
• Most of the content becomes truly available to the players regardless of their time investment, making the game more approachable, Modifications usually understood to be gameplay changing - and which are only really available to R195+ players - become more commonplace and the players can personally gauge each mod's, vehicle's, or weapon's viability without having to grind for it.

 

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I believe that the introduction of the system described in this thread could be beneficial to the community and to the game as a whole. However, I'm not presenting this as an infallible plan. If you see issues with this idea, please feel free to voice your concerns. We can only create change by providing feedback to each other. If you agree or disagree with something written in this thread, leave a post explaining why, and make your voice heard.

 

 

 

Edited May 20, 2019 by MartinPL
Misplaced one small paragraph.

[YeOldLegends 51]

Holy shit this is amazing. Detonator blacklisted every match.

I also completely agree on the unlocking all content to all players as that would make it feel like a less pay2win game (don't rush to conclusions on this) I feel like the locked content kind forces people to buy premium to unlock content faster which makes it feel pay to win. If you were to unlock most content to all players It would make it a free to play the game more and that would bring people to try the new content that they may have not gotten to if they played got their asses whooped by golds and quit. Also would suggest lowering the rank of the osmaw and nade launcher unlock as that would also interest new players I feel like. When I first started the game that was all I was thinking of. Unlocking the osmaw and I feel like a lot of new players see higher rank players with these op patootie explosives then when they realize that its going to take them forever to unlock these weapons they have less interest in the game.

[Diabeetus_X 10]

2 hours ago, YeOldLegends said:

Also would suggest lowering the rank of the osmaw and nade launcher unlock as that would also interest new players I feel like. When I first started the game that was all I was thinking of. Unlocking the osmaw and I feel like a lot of new players see higher rank players with these op patootie explosives then when they realize that its going to take them forever to unlock these weapons they have less interest in the game.

when i started playing the only thing i wanted to unlock was osmaw, so i ended up grinding 2,5k joker tickets and buy the golden osmaw and get the Demolitions Rank 3.

[swft 356]

No, this ain't the way to do it. I do think that progression needs a rework but shared unlocks doesn't look like the way to handle this and I have a feeling it wouldn't be clearly presented to the players, specially with the current UI.

I don't think LO should reinvent the wheel with progression, they should just follow what other small free 2 play games do: reward players for playing, even for their very small time investments, not make players play to finally reach an "even" playing field like it currently is. A good example of this is Black Squad, where you really don't have to progress much to unlock the guns and be able to play at an "even" playing field against everyone else. I do think they did exaggerated a bit by allowing players to buy weapon skins for a couple cents on the steam market which also unlock the actual gun permanently, but other than that the progression is fine for the type of game it is, and if you're wondering, it's a CS type clone.

 

So, my actual opinion is: modifications shouldn't be locked to a certain rating at all, nor should weapons (but maybe their slots). I think the grind needs to be somewhere else, maybe cosmetics (such as weapon skins and other things LO could think of) and just plain skill itself. APB needs to be easier to get into, but not easier to be good at.

 

EDIT: Oh, I forgot to comment about blacklisting, yeah, that would be frustrating if you wanted to fuck around for a couple missions since most annoying things would be blacklisted in every mission. Knowing LO they probably wouldn't even look at the blacklisting percentage per item and balance them accordingly, but that would be a cool feature in a ranked environment though.

Edited May 20, 2019 by swft

[RCooper 182]

I dont think that shared content it is a good idea basically because to be able to get better you relay in other persons things because u wont get the level of the person that have that item permanent,for example in my opinion it will be a waste of time spending time for example getting better with the atac  when if u focus in the ntec it would be better because u have it available all the time

[mtz 496]

13 hours ago, swft said:

No, this ain't the way to do it. I do think that progression needs a rework but shared unlocks doesn't look like the way to handle this and I have a feeling it wouldn't be clearly presented to the players, specially with the current UI. 

I don't think LO should reinvent the wheel with progression, they should just follow what other small free 2 play games do: reward players for playing, even for their very small time investments, not make players play to finally reach an "even" playing field like it currently is.

I agree on the UI front here. I don't think that changes of this caliber would be possible with the current interface/UI.

 

On the subject of rewarding even the smallest time investment - I believe the weapon lease prices (and the whole thing with mod slot versions being locked behind a role grind) can be discouraging to newcomers. You get a temporary version of a gun by investing money that probably took you at least two missions to accumulate (assuming we're talking about a completely new player with nothing on the account), you don't have a way of giving it a test drive, and if you don't like the weapon for any reason, you can drop it and decide that you wasted your money - or you can suck it up and play even more with it, in hopes of eventually getting enough kills to unlock mod slots. (And after that you have to grind even more for mods.)

However, I don't have any idea of fixing this issue. Raising the normal monetary rewards for missions (i.e. the money you get without premium) sounds like a great way to devalue everything and cause problems with the Marketplace economy.

 

13 hours ago, swft said:

So, my actual opinion is: modifications shouldn't be locked to a certain rating at all, nor should weapons (but maybe their slots). I think the grind needs to be somewhere else, maybe cosmetics (such as weapon skins and other things LO could think of) and just plain skill itself. APB needs to be easier to get into, but not easier to be good at.

Rating/Rank locks have always felt arbitrary to me, and I think the game would benefit from their removal.

About grinding - yes. Even though I may have given off a different impression earlier in this post, I think the grind isn't an inherently bad thing; having it in the game could get people to spend their time in the game, however I think it would be beneficial to everyone if it was kept to cosmetic rewards only, so that actual gameplay changes are more easily available.

 

On the topic of making APB easier to get into - that was one of the key thoughts behind the shared inventories idea. In-game gear turns from "things that only I can use to my advantage" into "things that my entire team can use to our advantage".

If you are playing the game in a close group of friends who are also new to APB, you can buy one car by yourself and make it a spawnable option for other players in your team too (as long as you're all online together at the same time, obviously).

If you are joining a friend who has already been playing APB for a while, you can use your friend's gear when you're both playing together.

 

13 hours ago, swft said:

Oh, I forgot to comment about blacklisting, yeah, that would be frustrating if you wanted to fuck around for a couple missions since most annoying things would be blacklisted in every mission. Knowing LO they probably wouldn't even look at the blacklisting percentage per item and balance them accordingly, but that would be a cool feature in a ranked environment though.

This system largely depends on people trying to work around the mission limitations by looking into buying more diverse gear. If an N-TEC gets blacklisted, teams might see it fit to turn to the STAR or the FAR in order to still have the same weapon role in the team. Similarly, if an ALIG gets blacklisted, it might be a good idea to invest into a DMR-AV or the Dog-Ear.

And about competitive/ranked environments - oh yes. I would love to see teams adapt to the dynamic rulesets. You can blacklist the N-HVR, but this would mean that your team can't use it either. You can bring an N-TEC with a meta mod loadout, but it would mean that your enemies can use it too (provided that someone doesn't blacklist one of its mods altogether).

 

All that said - thank you for contributing to the thread! (I've given you a reaction to match )

 

12 hours ago, RCooper said:

I dont think that shared content it is a good idea basically because to be able to get better you relay in other persons things because u wont get the level of the person that have that item permanent,for example in my opinion it will be a waste of time spending time for example getting better with the atac  when if u focus in the ntec it would be better because u have it available all the time

This is something that I've mentioned in the final section of the opening post. Giving players an opportunity to try out weapons owned by their teammates (or enemies) can invite said players to buy a weapon they find interesting at a later time, in order not to have to rely on others having it. Buying an ARMAS weapon for yourself would also give you the option of applying mods of your choosing to it - as mentioned before, shared weaponry could not have its mod setup changed by anyone other than its owner.

 

[Crunk 88]

I heavily disagree with multiple instances of this suggestion, but most importantly my biggest disagreement is the entitlement that new players seem to have, despite the fact every official trailer for this game says the exact opposite of what you/they are proposing. The game and everything about it clearly states that you start as a nobody, and work up to being a somebody, that is literally the basis for this entire game. You start with nothing, you earn your keep, be it using your hard earned money in real life, or in-game. I'm all for incentives for new players to fulfill their grind of an APB journey, perhaps through free login rewards, and the option to spend in-game money on permanent no-slot weapons, but putting restrictions on things i've paid money for, giving others a free ride in an already dying game, and most of all, removing progression locks that were put in place to ***PREVENT CHEATS FROM BEING HARDER TO IDENTIFY*** is not how to go about this, from both the standpoint of a business, and a consumer.

If you ask anyone who was in closed beta, and even some from early open beta, you would know the 195 cap on certain modifications was a very basic building block of a tactic to "Gate" cheaters. Cheater makes account, does things that don't make sense *without certain mods* cheater gets banned before getting to use certain mods. The level cap was agreed upon by the community over many tests to be both fulfilling, and not too difficult to get to, and it remained 195 for all mods released after that for that reason, have you ever put any thought to the fact that blowtorch was released side by side with the 255 level cap, yet can be bought on the market and used at 195?

Lastly 3 hour trials after paying a total amount of 7 dollars to a game is more than enough to have every benefit to your proposal on a weapon share system, and doesn't allow free to play players to abuse the servers without paying to help keep them up. The idea would be good for maybe certain events, but even then the Open Test World still exists for any weapon test ever.

[SirVilla 18]

1089/5000

Yesterday I tried to talk to the players in the silver district, case 0 what we do then, they will not cooperate in any way! I suggested that this weekend we tried to get the golds to the gold servers, because they say no, that even though there are more than 160 real and not invented players, they say they are very comfortable where they are, what we do, if there are hundreds of of suggestions! It's not even worth the effort, let's leave that couple of districts for them with not enough, we have no players, poor gold, I'm gold and I want my fellow golds to play in the fucking gold I do not have to drag a Silver full of gold you are lacking in knowledge, They are two districts that are filled with gold! even 3 seems little truth, in each district the population is 40/40 because I see many people who are gold, do not tell me that the districts are not filled gold because we are not enough, there are plenty of people, and this leads So for 7 years we changed the attitude or this would end up closing and it would be a shame

[mtz 496]

6 hours ago, BlitzKitty said:

my biggest disagreement is the entitlement that new players seem to have

Is it really entitlement, to want a fair fight when you enter a game? There is a significant difference in the capabilities of a R9 player with the unslotted STAR 556 and no character mods except for the Field Supplier when you match them against a R255 player with all character mod slots unlocked and a 3-slotted weapon. These match-ups unfortunately do happen.

The promise of "eventually working up to be a somebody" isn't an appealing prospect when a brand new player is matched up against max rank players with endgame modifications and there seems to be no end to the initial losing. It's as if you were tied to a chair and continuously slapped in the face, with the slapper insisting that if you persist for long enough, maybe you'll have a chance of slapping back too.

 

6 hours ago, BlitzKitty said:

I'm all for incentives for new players to fulfill their grind of an APB journey, perhaps through free login rewards, and the option to spend in-game money on permanent no-slot weapons, but putting restrictions on things i've paid money for, giving others a free ride in an already dying game, and most of all, removing progression locks that were put in place to ***PREVENT CHEATS FROM BEING HARDER TO IDENTIFY*** is not how to go about this, from both the standpoint of a business, and a consumer.

You seem to be misinterpreting the whole point of 1) minimizing negative externalities, 2) giving players a way of balancing gameplay through blacklisting.

On the note of progression locks, what would you say about the fact that the most commonly used weapon modifications (Hunting Sight 3, Reflex Sight 3, Improved Rifling 3) have a severely reduced rank cap (R60, if my memory serves me right) in comparison to R195?

 

As a sidenote, I'm honestly not a fan of the holier-than-thou patronising tone you seem to take on in your post.

[Crunk 88]

2 hours ago, MartinPL said:

Is it really entitlement, to want a fair fight when you enter a game? There is a significant difference in the capabilities of a R9 player with the unslotted STAR 556 and no character mods except for the Field Supplier when you match them against a R255 player with all character mod slots unlocked and a 3-slotted weapon. These match-ups unfortunately do happen.

The promise of "eventually working up to be a somebody" isn't an appealing prospect when a brand new player is matched up against max rank players with endgame modifications and there seems to be no end to the initial losing. It's as if you were tied to a chair and continuously slapped in the face, with the slapper insisting that if you persist for long enough, maybe you'll have a chance of slapping back too.

 

You seem to be misinterpreting the whole point of 1) minimizing negative externalities, 2) giving players a way of balancing gameplay through blacklisting.

On the note of progression locks, what would you say about the fact that the most commonly used weapon modifications (Hunting Sight 3, Reflex Sight 3, Improved Rifling 3) have a severely reduced rank cap (R60, if my memory serves me right) in comparison to R195?

 

As a sidenote, I'm honestly not a fan of the holier-than-thou patronising tone you seem to take on in your post.

This is the official trailer, this is the mindset new players should adopt when coming into this game. Nowhere does it even hint that it would hold your hand.

R255s fighting R9s is part of it, even if it happens a little too frequently due to current population issues.

Level 60 mods have always been level 60 mods, but let's go into that deeper, level 60 mods, as you said, are very common, but they also have very WELL defined definitions of what they do, there's no arguing the semantics on Hunting Sight, Reflex Sight, Improved Rifling, Heavy Barrel, Cooling Jacket, Sling, Extended Magazine, Bandolier, and Magazine Pull, just to bring all the most common weapon mods that are not rank locked in.
To compare, imagine a newer R150 player goes up against someone using MuzzleBreak- for one the mod actually says it reduces recoil, one doesn't read "how" and maybe a cheater gets away with using no-recoil-cheats. allowing rank 60s to use these mods that are locked under progression gates will make discerning cheaters that much harder.

 

Also people who skim and take very VERY insignificant snips from posts to argue points that have already been answered really really piss me off.

Edited May 30, 2019 by BlitzKitty

[mtz 496]

26 minutes ago, BlitzKitty said:

R255s fighting R9s is part of it, even if it happens a little too frequently due to current population issues.

This basically boils down to ignoring the problem and calling it a feature.

 

29 minutes ago, BlitzKitty said:

imagine a newer R150 player goes up against someone using MuzzleBreak- for one the mod actually says it reduces recoil, one doesn't read "how" and maybe a cheater gets away with using no-recoil-cheats.

Modifications have their mechanics explicitly stated in their description. Even the specific example used here - Muzzle Brake - specifically says that it reduces horizontal recoil at the expense of vertical recoil. I don't understand your argumentation (or phrasing) here - how would someone not reading item descriptions lead to cheaters getting away with their cheats?

 

6 minutes ago, BlitzKitty said:

Also people who skim and take very VERY insignificant snips from posts to argue points that have already been answered really really piss me off. 

1) Now you're just using ad personam. You can do better than that.

2) Selective quoting makes posts occupy less space and clarifies which part of the post is being addressed in a given paragraph.

3) If I needed to address a point with a reply, then by definition it hadn't been clarified enough, nor was it insignificant to the point of not warranting further discussion.

[Crunk 88]

MuzzleBreak states it reduces recoil, however it does NOT, it only re disperses it, due to the way it is described, it can give a cheater the power to say "oh i hit all my shots because of that"
Obviously you haven't actually been playing this game since 2012 like your profile muses.
I just spent an hour and a half or so in bronze using nothing but a STAR, FBW, and Field Supplier, and still made bronze people angry and even ragequit.
If being 255 is the actual problem here, there is no solution.

Next time i'll record it if need be.

Also if I read "negative externalities" again on a free 2 play platform i'm going to hurl an economics book at you.
 

Edited May 30, 2019 by BlitzKitty

[mtz 496]

1 hour ago, BlitzKitty said:

MuzzleBreak states it reduces recoil, however it does NOT, it only re disperses it

...what are you even trying to say here? "Muzzle Brake (Horizontal)" redistributes (or redisperses) recoil. More vertical recoil, less horizontal recoil. It's not a flat reduction to statistics; it never was one.

And how exactly does my playtime factor into being able to read item descriptions?

 

1 hour ago, BlitzKitty said:

I just spent an hour and a half or so in bronze using nothing but a STAR, FBW, and Field Supplier, and still made bronze people angry and even ragequit.
If being 255 is the actual problem here, there is no solution.

So you proved that low threat players struggle against experienced people... by deliberately getting matched up against low threat players as an experienced player.

...congratulations on perpetuating the problem, I suppose?

 

1 hour ago, BlitzKitty said:

Also if I read "negative externalities" again on a free 2 play platform i'm going to hurl an economics book at you.

Care to actually elaborate on that thought instead of trying to act all smug and superior? The thread could use genuine contributions instead of more of you punching down and trying to establish superiority.

[Crunk 88]

10 hours ago, MartinPL said:

Care to actually elaborate on that thought instead of trying to act all smug and superior? The thread could use genuine contributions instead of more of you punching down and trying to establish superiority.

A new player cannot possibly be a negative externality, as they are not, I repeat, not a third party in any way, shape, or form. They have the same choices as any other player, as well as the freedom to incur or not incur any expense, they are a second party, and Little Orbit is the first, just like any other player. A negative externality is more like having a certain road that cannot be bypassed, with which it is forced to purchase a tesla vehicle to drive on, where there is a transaction between said road with tesla, that forces (litterally FORCES) third party travelers to incur an expense. I'm not establishing superiority, I understand why you might feel that way, but i'm only pointing out facts.

 

10 hours ago, MartinPL said:

So you proved that low threat players struggle against experienced people... by deliberately getting matched up against low threat players as an experienced player.

...congratulations on perpetuating the problem, I suppose?

So the problem really is experience and not weapons being locked via progression? Congrats on giving me this entire post. Won't be responding anymore, @CookiePuss Add this to the pile.

Edited May 31, 2019 by BlitzKitty

[mtz 496]

1 hour ago, BlitzKitty said:

A new player cannot possibly be a negative externality, as they are not, I repeat, not a third party in any way, shape, or form. They have the same choices as any other player, as well as the freedom to incur or not incur any expense, they are a second party, and Little Orbit is the first, just like any other player.

The post never presented players as a negative externality (because how would that even work?); at all points this term referred to methods of inconveniencing new players, most commonly through setting them at a straight disadvantage compared to long-standing players. One of such disadvantage is the severe limitation of available options.

 

You're trying to rephrase the argument so that it fits your line of reasoning. Unfortunately, it doesn't work as you wish it would. In a transaction between Little Orbit (first party) and a specific player (second party), other players will be the third party, as they do not all receive the same benefits from the transaction.

 

1 hour ago, BlitzKitty said:

A negative externality is more like having a certain road that cannot be bypassed, with which it is forced to purchase a tesla vehicle to drive on, where there is a transaction between said road with tesla, that forces (litterally FORCES) third party travelers to incur an expense.

You're thinking of externalities exclusively as tangible/physical costs and ignoring the situations where they are effects. You don't need me to tell you that interpreting things at face value and through exact words is not the way to go.

 

1 hour ago, BlitzKitty said:

So the problem really is experience and not weapons being locked via progression?

I've been referring to the issue of our current matchmaking system, being that experienced players skew the threat system through forcing uneven matches by deliberately ruining their own threat. It's as if you punched a baby to prove that babies are able to participate in fights - 1) you forced one upon them for the sake of your argument, 2) they really shouldn't be participating in fights with presumably grown adults [at least not until they are adults themselves ',:) ] 3) congratulations on admitting to apparently playing matches far beyond your skill level instead of fighting equally-skilled people.

 

I've been willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, but at this point I am honestly convinced that you didn't actually read the thread and instead started responding to things that weren't actually said anywhere but in your imagination. I suggest that you compare your posts with the actual discussion before you start acting all triumphant about "winning" it (keep in mind: it was always meant to be just a discussion, but you felt the desperate urge to... prove your superiority through insults or something? instead of actually discussing what was said in the thread).

 

(Adorable ending there, trying to make yourself look like part of "the cool kids!". Would've worked better if you tagged the actual person who usually says that catchphrase.)

[AbuMohammad 104]

Firstly the game has 400-500 people online (counting near 100 in social), which isn't enough to maintain equality. Secondly, it is not a challenge to play with worse or equal players and without annoying guns, you'll never learn how to play like that

[Crunk 88]

On 5/20/2019 at 10:37 AM, MartinPL said:

As it stands right now, new players are at what they perceive to be - and what practically is - a massive disadvantage. Allow me to paint a picture:

You download the game, you start it up and you create a new character. Upon joining an action district, you are given one primary gun (before tutorials), one secondary gun, and a bit later you're given one orange mod and one grenade type. As you are put in a mission, you are put against people with flashy symbols before their names, driving massive cars that seem to eat your grenades and still be able to drive, flinging grenades that chew through you, and shooting weapons you haven't even had the chance to see until that point, 

^ Nope, i'm crazy, was never said, kool story 
(See below.)

 

7 hours ago, MartinPL said:

I've been referring to the issue of our current matchmaking system, being that experienced players skew the threat system through forcing uneven matches by deliberately ruining their own threat. It's as if you punched a baby to prove that babies are able to participate in fights - 1) you forced one upon them for the sake of your argument, 2) they really shouldn't be participating in fights with presumably grown adults [at least not until they are adults themselves ',:) ] 3) congratulations on admitting to apparently playing matches far beyond your skill level instead of fighting equally-skilled people.

See obviously the problem is skill, not new players being overwhelmed by in-game items! Thanks for the clarification!

I'm responding to IMAGINARY things right? No, I'm pointing out that the game itself is made to do what it's doing, as per every trailer, and feature in-game as well.
This is an MMO, sorry you can't buy a level 90 paladin here, go play WoW if you are coming in to this game with that mindset, especially after watching the trailer that says "right now, you're a nobody."

 

[mtz 496]

9 hours ago, BlitzKitty said:

Won't be responding anymore,

What happened to that promise? :[

 

2 minutes ago, BlitzKitty said:

See obviously the problem is skill, not new players being overwhelmed by in-game items! Thanks for the clarification!

Man, it'd be awesome if you actually tried to address what this thread is about instead of fighting strawmen.

 

New players have neither the equipment options to adequately fight higher skilled players, nor the experience with the game to put their equipment to good use. For the sake of desperately trying to say that this is not the case, you furthered the problem just so you could be able to bring up an anecdote.

 

6 minutes ago, BlitzKitty said:

I'm responding to IMAGINARY things right? No, I'm pointing out that the game itself is made to do what it's doing, as per every trailer, and feature in-game as well.

I fail to notice any marketing taglines of APB that encourage players to "be d-bags to new players"; the most you could point to here is the generic "from nobody to nightmare" stuff, and that's if you wanna be real stretchy.

 

8 minutes ago, BlitzKitty said:

This is an MMO, sorry you can't buy a level 90 paladin here, go play WoW if you are coming in to this game with that mindset, especially after watching the trailer that says "right now, you're a nobody."

Using ad personam again instead of addressing the key points of the thread. How many times is it now?

[Crunk 88]

7 minutes ago, MartinPL said:

Using ad personam again instead of addressing the key points of the thread. How many times is it now?

There is a big difference between "ad personam" and using analogies to explain how things take effect in this game, compared to others. I've addressed every key point in the post in my original post, you're the one coming off as a gosh darn in this thing coming up with latin words and economic catchphrases that literally have no meaning in this situation.

Edited May 31, 2019 by BlitzKitty

[mtz 496]

2 minutes ago, BlitzKitty said:

I've addressed every key point in the post in my original post,

...which is clearly why you posted five more times without actually contributing anything beyond personal attacks directed at me instead of arguing the things I've said.

 

5 minutes ago, BlitzKitty said:

you're the one coming off as a gosh darn in this thing coming up with latin words and economic catchphrases that literally have no meaning in this situation. 

1) My deepest apologies if the phrase "ad personam" is too complicated to comprehend. (Should I be saying "comprehend" or is that also too complicated to use in a discussion?)

2) One of the major points of this thread is the discussion of the negative influences of APB's current monetization model and how in a transaction between LO and Player1, these two parties are the ONLY sides that benefit from it, which in turn fosters an environment of hostility towards those who decide to spend money. If you consider this to "literally have no meaning", then I'm afraid this confirms my suspicions about you not actually having read the thread for what it is and instead picking a fight with strawmen.

[N66 99]

On 5/20/2019 at 6:37 PM, MartinPL said:

1) Share unlocked content within missions and groups.

 

2) Add a pre-game period before the mission begins AND let players blacklist items.

 

3) Display item use/blacklist statistics in-game and on ARMAS.

 

 

1- Why would I ever buy anything? What exclusivity does buying it give me? and how do I feel any value to it ?

2- Major change to APB play style to accommodate waiting periods and maybe a lobby to go with it. Make players wait more, fuck up matchmaking to find matching restrictions And why? to diminish gameplay mechanics & content

3- Maybe, but most of the time displaying usage statistics ends up making a negative feedback loop, oh that gun is shit because the usage stats say so, that gun is OP because more people use it, the community starts raging, such stats must exist, and must be reviewed by developers/game design, but they should not influence the community by themselves.

 

- I think a proper matchmaking system with a lot of new players would solve this problem better by matching them together

- If extra steps are to be taken, I think Armas trials are to be encouraged on new players, reward them now and then with a few days lease of some Armas gun so he can see what it is as well as return to the game to use it again and again before it expires.

[mtz 496]

1 minute ago, N66 said:

1- Why would I ever buy anything? What exclusivity does buying it give me? and how do I feel any value to it ?

Buying items would make you able to use them at any time without having to rely on others or praying that someone you're playing with will have the weapon; same principle would apply to modifying weapons.

 

4 minutes ago, N66 said:

3- Maybe, but most of the time displaying usage statistics ends up making a negative feedback loop, oh that gun is shit because the usage stats say so, that gun is OP because more people use it, the community starts raging, such stats must exist, and must be reviewed by developers/game design, but they should not influence the community by themselves.

I see your point and I partially agree, but personally I think the negative feedback loop you're describing would be a result of people misinterpreting simple statistics rather than the intended outcome. The idea is to encourage weapon diversity by pointing to varied options that APB offers.

 

7 minutes ago, N66 said:

- I think a proper matchmaking system with a lot of new players would solve this problem better by matching them together

I agree in a way. The current state of our matchmaking system is quite shoddy as a result of, among other things, rampant dethreating - but I wouldn't say we need a new system, but rather the current one to be fixed.

 

9 minutes ago, N66 said:

- If extra steps are to be taken, I think Armas trials are to be encouraged on new players, reward them now and then with a few days lease of some Armas gun so he can see what it is as well as return to the game to use it again and again before it expires.

I think one of the biggest barriers behind Armas trials being truly useful is how they're only really usable once a year for a very short period of time - which, depending on how long it takes for a mission to spin up, might not even be enough (if we talk about the 30 minute period for F2P players)... and let's not even discuss the situations when the weapons won't even be useful in a mission due to the circumstances (for example, getting a trial lease of an SMG and getting forced to play The Fast And The Incarcerated instead, where you would really be better off with an AV weapon).

[Crunk 88]

50 minutes ago, MartinPL said:

I think one of the biggest barriers behind Armas trials being truly useful is how they're only really usable once a year for a very short period of time - which, depending on how long it takes for a mission to spin up, might not even be enough (if we talk about the 30 minute period for F2P players)... and let's not even discuss the situations when the weapons won't even be useful in a mission due to the circumstances (for example, getting a trial lease of an SMG and getting forced to play The Fast And The Incarcerated instead, where you would really be better off with an AV weapon).

I think the biggest barrier for new players is understanding that just because a game is free to play doesn't mean if they should really like it they shouldn't drop a little bit of money into it. No offense but this game is 18+, and requires an internet connection, meaning a desired audience isn't exactly a scrub. ("Scrub" by the definition in TLC's "No Scrub".)

[N66 99]

6 hours ago, MartinPL said:

Buying items would make you able to use them at any time without having to rely on others or praying that someone you're playing with will have the weapon; same principle would apply to modifying weapons.

 

I see your point and I partially agree, but personally I think the negative feedback loop you're describing would be a result of people misinterpreting simple statistics rather than the intended outcome. The idea is to encourage weapon diversity by pointing to varied options that APB offers.

 

I agree in a way. The current state of our matchmaking system is quite shoddy as a result of, among other things, rampant dethreating - but I wouldn't say we need a new system, but rather the current one to be fixed.

 

I think one of the biggest barriers behind Armas trials being truly useful is how they're only really usable once a year for a very short period of time - which, depending on how long it takes for a mission to spin up, might not even be enough (if we talk about the 30 minute period for F2P players)... and let's not even discuss the situations when the weapons won't even be useful in a mission due to the circumstances (for example, getting a trial lease of an SMG and getting forced to play The Fast And The Incarcerated instead, where you would really be better off with an AV weapon).

 

Personally I wouldn't buy stuff for that honestly, I can't perceive the value of the purchase anymore

 

And then yea, ideally stats are always good, practically it's highly unlikely people don't start having placebos and raging about this and that

 

Threat system itself I think is very good,  it gives score to hidden things like saving a mission last moments, even if it never mentions it, so if you carry your team, your score will be really high even if you lose, the problem is the segments may be too few (though I think in the back it actually uses a ton more than 4 threats, + it almost certainly takes into consideration things like matching pings etc..), some things can be abused and need to be fixed, and it needs a lot more players to select from, 80 is simply not enough, most games select from a main lobby of hundreds if not thousands, I think Matt mentioned at some point a dynamic population merging solution (your district changes mid play with minor loading), that requires UE4, that, abuse fixes, and larger population would fix matchmaking

 

And regarding the Armas, what I meant was awards given to players, not trials, but gifts given for a few days, multiple of them, to keep them testing this and that weapon, while they also have multiple choices instead of star, even if the gifts stop later

Edited June 1, 2019 by N66

[VladimirChekhov 34]

I don't agree with blacklisting or sharing equipment, I want to feel my progression as I go not be able to leech off other players and gain stuff I normally wouldn't. I don't see how blacklisting is a good thing at all what if someone got a new gun and the first thing that happens is its blacklisted or you really like a specific weapon and game after game you cant use it. I think the real solution would be keep new players in their own district until they reach a certain rank or time played, this way they will be facing other new players and will be able to  get the hang of doing missions and learning how the game works. This will keep them at an even playing field.