APB: Finally, I Can Be A PUNK!

[Surlyboi]

Two high, one low. Probably testing server locations.

[Mrbloodworth]

Closed Beta 1 - Public Release Notes
Progression
Reworked from the ground up, primary changes are as follows:

    * Organisation Levelling has been removed from game.
    * Leagues removed from the game until we can implement in a less exploitable way (League Display points are now either free or purchasable from the auction house).
    * Contacts split into Weapon and Vehicle contacts, rewards split accordingly.
    * Adjusted rating requirements for each contact level.  This has decreased at low levels and increased at high levels.
    * Majority of Existing Roles moved to Achievements.  All achievements moved to 1 level only and rewards removed.
          o Rebalanced Achievement requirements.
          o This includes Car Thief.
    * Added Roles for each piece of equipment and each weapon niche.  Advancing these roles unlocks weapon upgrades and high level equipment/open slot weapons.
    * Levels in Roles and Achievements no longer count towards your rating.  It is now purely based on contact progression.
    * Added Random Rewards (that are only gifted once), for unlocking each symbol, some pieces of jewellery, and emotes. Each contact unlocks different random rewards (around 50% chance at mission end, depending on mission performance).
    * Reworked item costs for all items. Preset cost lowered, Customisable Asset prices increased. Weapon prices increased, Upgrade prices increased.
    * Reduced Costs of Heat Buyoff to a trivial level.
    * Removed unused tutorial contacts (Simon Tran/Pagan Bloodrose) from progression trees.


Gameplay and Miscellaneous

    * Your group members now show on your radar.
    * Fixed the issue where players would accidentally get into the back seat of cars when their characters were next to the front doors (original calculation was based on reticule location). Now only the front doors are considered valid options if the car is empty (note: did anyone ever really want to hang out alone in the back-seat? if so – Closed Beta participants are welcome to weigh in).
    * The death camera now rotates towards your killer instead of looking at your ragdoll to provide better awareness of how you died.
    * Fixed the railing grid material used extensively in Waterfront originally not allowing bullets to pass through it. Now player can shoot through railings properly.
    * Added new roof access to the San Paro Port Authority building in Waterfront.
    * Added new splash screen images.
    * Added objects to block vehicles from using certain Waterfront areas to jump on rooftops and then exploiting other rooftops with no collision.
    * Fixed collision issues on trees that allowed players to sit ‘inside’ them.
    * Fixed the Ammo Vending Machine having a far too complex collision mesh.
    * Made certain in-game items tradable between players that were previously not tradable.
    * Progress indicators (X/Y) added to Roles and Achievement pages to provide clearer progress status.

    * Camera position moved out slightly to avoid player’s head overlapping crosshair when moving right (comments for new camera position sought from Closed Beta participants).
    * Damage taken from falling increased. It’s now possible to die from impact after falling great heights.
    * Slightly increased the distance players need to fall before playing the ‘heavy landing’ animation.
    * Negative medals (Teamkill, Killing arrested player, Suicide) are now marked as such and have had their negative effect on rewards heavily increased.
    * VoIP now defaults to ‘Push to Talk’ instead of microphone activated (now using “Z” button by default).
    * Player now stays in strafe mode for 5 seconds rather than 2 after firing/reloading.
    * Pickup task items now lie close to the ground instead of floating at waist height.
    * Updated Open World drop off location names; now named ‘Fence’, ‘Chop Shop’, ‘Impound’ and ‘Evidence Locker’.
    * Increased Loading Tip Time to 15 seconds from 5.
    * Loading tooltips added, describing premium and leased content.
    * Players can now jump and fall in marksmanship mode (jump accuracy modifier still takes effect)
    * Weapons now have a separate modifier for moving at walking speed (such as when crouching or in marksmanship mode).
    * Customisation pods removed from the factional areas in the Social District.
    * Disabled Witnessing temporarily until we can fix it (Ready system broke it pretty heavily).
    * Players who have been freed from arrest no longer give rewards for arresting or freeing until they die.
    * Default keybindings have been changed to more logical layout. See chart for details.


Weapons
All Weapons rebalanced, changing accuracy, shot damage, firing rate etc.

    * Weapon Time to Kill lowered across the board (without adding extra 1 hit KO weapons)
    * Accuracy model adjusted to put more importance on burst firing with most weaponry.  Weapons mostly start accurate then very quickly hit their minimum accuracy threshold.  The rate at which accuracy is regained after stopping firing is also much increased.
    * Balancing with Effective Range reduced somewhat in favour of mainly using accuracy to determine effective range.
    * SHAW moved from an anti-vehicle weapon to anti-personnel suppression weapon.
    * STAR moved from slow firing long range rifle (analogous to OBEYA/OBIR) to a fast firing assault rifle (same niche as NTEC. Less accurate to begin with, but can handle being fired full auto at close/medium range without becoming unwieldy).
    * HVR can once again not switch to pistol until it has completed bolting the next round.
    * New weapons added to progression:
    * Colby PMG-28: Low Cyclic Rate SMG.
    * Joker SR-15 Carbine: Mobile close-medium range semi auto rifle.
    * ALIG-762: Low Cyclic Rate LMG, anti-vehicle weapon primarily.


 Vehicles

    * Han Cellente (original starting vehicle) removed from game.
    * Added engine cut out at 20% vehicle health.
    * Improved Turning speed of all low end vehicles.
    * Macchina Calabria 127 added to the game as the new default vehicle.  This is a small coupe with decent acceleration, stable and responsive handling, though a low top speed.
    * Balkan Kolva (Truck): Heavily Increased Weight of Vehicle.  This improves its ramming power immensely, but heavily reduces its initial acceleration.  Also heavily increased HP.
    * Bishada GX 8800 : Renamed to Bishada Rapier and reduced maximum health.
    * Patriot Jericho : Reduced maximum health, increased torque in gear 1 (improving starting acceleration)
    * Patriot Vegas: Slightly improved health, acceleration heavily increased and weight increased.
    * Dolton Montaine (Pickup): Improved health. Increased Top Speed to be on par with Patriot T-25 (King Cab). Increased trunk Capacity to be more than King Cab, Reduced Damping on suspension to make it a little more bouncy. Changed from Rear Wheel to Front Wheel Drive.
    * Increased Weight and Health of Dolton Fresno while keeping acceleration and speed the same. Also reduced suspension damping significantly.
    * Packer Ceresco (Standard Van) is now Front Wheel Drive and has the best Carrying Capacity in the game (25, compared to Armoured Van 20)
    * Charge Mikro: Health very slightly down so it’s just below average vehicle health, rather than just above.  Grip heavily improved. Top speed reduced.
    * Packer Vaquero: Health very slightly down. Top speed reduced. Incredibly bouncy suspension.
    * Very minor tweaks to Sungnyemun Moirai (Exec Saloon). Upped Wheel turn distance and slightly reduced suspension stiffness.
    * Upped weight of Seiyo Espacio
    * Updated Nulander Pioneer.  Now a bit slower, with a lower clearance, but a lot heavier (so it doesn't mount cars any more). Also enabled the Limited Slip Differential, making handling easier on rough terrain.
    * Enabled the Limited Slip Differential for both SUVs (Charge Sentinel and Nulander Kurai), making handling easier on rough terrain.
    * Updated Nulander Kurai.  Pretty much untippable now.  Much bouncier now as well. Ride height increased significantly but suspension stiffness decreased, so it'll rock and sway.  Also, increased cargo capacity from 8 to 10.
    * Ambulance updated. Ambulance is now a fast but very light large vehicle.  It leans around corners pretty spectacularly, but doesn't really fall over much.
    * Added rating requirement to previously existing pre-order vehicles.  Now can be used at the same level as the normal Cisco/Morai.
    * Updated Nitro Effect.  Now much higher effect but much shorter duration and cooldown.


 Items

    * Renamed majority of upgrades.
    * Renamed all Preset clothing items to better highlight which outfit they belong to.
    * Added ‘Creator Names’ for each Vehicle and Preset clothing piece.
    * Adjusted descriptions for all Upgrades and Weapons.
    * The majority of weapon presets have been renamed.


Upgrades

    * Grouped Upgrades: Only one upgrade of each group can be used at a time. This is a little excessive right off the bat (especially for Character upgrades), but will become a lot more important as we add extra modifications.  Groups are…
          o Health (Character): Coagulant, Kevlar Implants
          o Utility (Character): Happy Landings
          o Activated (Character): Field Supplier
          o Generic (Vehicle): Explosives, Fast-Fix Chassis
          o Chassis (Vehicle) : Chassis Strengthening, Ramming Plate, Steel Plating
          o Engine (Vehicle): Armoured Engine, Fireproofing
          o Trunk (Vehicle):  Extra Cargo Capacity
          o Activated (Vehicle): Nitro Booster
          o Magazine (Weapon): Bandolier, Extended Magazine, Magazine Pull
          o Barrel (Weapon): Heavy Barrel, Improved Rifling, Cooling Jacket
          o Upper Rail (Weapon): Reflex Sight, Hunting Sight
          o Receiver (Weapon): Three Point Sling.
    * Added tutorial mail explaining upgrades, how to equip, and what groups mean.
    * Removed Monolith upgrade (functionally it was identical to survivor).
    * Removed Energizer upgrade (LTLs are now weaker than their lethal counterparts).


Premium Accounts & Leased Items

    * Set Max Primitive Limits for Free Accounts on Symbol Editor, Garage and Clothing Editor. Initially free player limits set at 25, 5 and 5 respectively. Premium Accounts get 100 primitives per Symbol, 50 Symbols per Vehicle and 50 Symbols per piece of Clothing
    * Leased Weapons Added (will be random rewards initially, until the Armas Underground weapons dealer is implemented in the Social District to provide leased weapons):
          o N-HVR 243 Scout: A bolt action sniper rifle with a lower calibre round than the 762, but with the ability to sprint and hang out of vehicle windows with.
          o OCA-626 ‘Whisper’: A silenced SMG with a scope (we’re still waiting for the audio for this, so initially it might not be silenced).  Silenced weapons no longer have tracers.
          o Colby CSG-20 Shotgun: A shotgun that fires a lot more pellets than the JG.  It has the same damage output, but the shot dispersal is a lot more fine so you’re less likely to lose a ton of damage if a pellet misses.
          o Scoped N-TEC 5:  An NTEC with a scope on it for a higher level of zoom.  It’s also got slightly less recoil so it feels the same despite the lower FOV.
          o ACT44 GM: A gold plated ACT44 with an elongated barrel and a scope.  Same damage potential as the normal pistol, but with an improved zoom and slightly better stability.
          o STAR 556 ‘LCR’:  In APB Reloaded, the normal STAR 556 has a comparable fire rate to the NTEC. We’ve added the LCR for players who really liked the old one.
          o OSMAW / O-PGL:  Just the base Rocket Launcher / Grenade Launcher.  We’ve allowed players to purchase them as leased weapons if they can’t wait to get them


Client Size, Performance and Other

    * Integrated the game with GamersFirst accounts and backend systems.
    * Updated and activated PunkBuster.
    * Various small run-time memory usage savings totalling ~50MB.
    * Client size has been reduced from 8GB for the original game to 5GB for the Closed Beta RC1 (note: with future procedural texture inclusion and patch modifications, the target is to get the full client download to 3 GB without noticeable quality reductions).
    * Updated VoIP system to address various voice issues.
    * Improved the in-game compatibility checks at startup and install:
          o Updated the list of detected graphics cards from the latest compat file from Epic, as well as published lists of cards from amd.com and nvidia.com.
          o Updated the preferred compat level for each card to roughly match the expected performance.
          o Updated lots of cards that wouldn't be able to run the game but were originally given a supported compat level. Those cards probably crashed in the earlier release (without warning).
          o If a component doesn't meet the minimum requirements we now tell the user which component is the problem, instead of just displaying a generic error message.


Updated Control Scheme
Updates to the control scheme are below but all bindings can be customised by the player. A full listing of the default controls is later in this document.

    * Movement – “Crouch” is now bound to ‘Left Control’ as well as ‘C’.
    * Movement – “Walk” has been unbound from ‘X’. Players can manually rebind this if they wish.
    * Combat – “Activate/Deactivate Field Supplier” has been moved from ‘F1’ to ‘5’.
    * Combat – “Throw Grenade” has been moved from ‘Left Control’ to ‘G’, and is also bound to the Middle Mouse Button.
    * Combat – “Switch Weapons” has also been bound to ‘2’, so that players can use ‘1’, ‘2’, or the Mouse Wheel to switch weapons.
    * Actions – “Drop Item” has been moved from ‘Z’ to ‘X’.
    * Actions – The “Player Interaction Menu” has been moved from ‘V’ to ‘.’ (period).
    * Actions – “Ready for Mission” has been moved from ‘O’ to ‘K’, to avoid confusion with ‘0’ (zero).
    * Actions – “Voice – Push to Talk” has been moved from ‘7’ to ‘Z’ to make it reachable without having to move one of your hands.
    * Camera – “Look Behind” has been moved from ‘G’ to ‘Alt’.
    * Camera – “Switch Camera Side” has been moved from ‘4’ to ‘V’.
    * Music – “Previous Track” has been moved from ‘,’ (comma) to ‘[‘.
    * Music – “Next Track” has been moved from ‘.’ (period) To ‘]’.
    * Music – “Pause/Resume Playback” has also been bound to ‘\’, so that players can use that or ‘Right Control’.
    * Interface – “Clan Management” has been moved from ‘[‘ to ‘,’ (comma).
    * Interface – “View Support Pages” (Help) has been moved from ‘K’ to ‘F1’.
    * Interface – “View Leagues/High Score Tables” has been moved from ‘F4’ to ‘F6’.
    * Interface – “Chat Channel Commands” has been moved from ‘F6’ to ‘F9’.
    * Interface – “Chat Console Commands” has been moved from ‘F7’ to ‘F10’.
    * Interface – “Chat Emote Commands” has been moved from ‘F8’ to ‘F11’.
    * Interface – “Screenshot” has been moved from ‘Pause’ to ‘Print Screen’.
    * Interface – “Toggle HUD” display has been moved from ‘End’ to ‘F12’.

[NiX]

Damn, they're really changing a lot. Kinda sad I didn't get in this round.

[Furiously]

They seem to be making decent changes. They might actually make it work. I really thought it was going to be a half-assed thing.

[TripleDES]

Their vehicle code simulates various differentials? That's... unexpected  

Also, didn't get in the first round. Hope that's due to luck and not dismissing my specs as bullshit (top end Sandy Bridge and 16gigs of RAM).

[Chinchilla]

I didn't get in either :-(.

[Sheepherder]

Their vehicle code simulates various differentials? That's... unexpected  

If the game tracks the power and traction of each wheel independently it takes next to nothing to also account for differential gears.

[Sky]

It's really cool how much goes into making APB suck.

[Mrbloodworth]

Fixes, fixes and fixes
Performance Tuning - Part Deux

In the last 36 hours we have been working on performance tuning, new patch changes and a whole series of changes to the game that will improve server side performance over the next 24 hours. We just made one critical change to how cheat detection is handled, and that was rolled out in the last hour (yes, we are watching what people are doing, just not banning anyone, and that's on purpose...), and next up we are going to perform configuration changes tomorrow afternoon, which we believe will further improve district performance and get us to the stable release we are looking for.

Once we have the new tuned hardware in place tomorrow, we also plan to release the next set of patches. Below are the patch notes for the next patch. I will spend some time AFTER the next update to put together a more detailed status and roadmap for the next few weeks, especially since once we have tested all the core functions, we then plan to roll out all the NEW functions (yay!), starting in Closed Beta, and then moving in to Open Beta.

Again - thanks to everyone who is testing the game out daily. We REALLY appreciate the feedback, and will continue to make quick patches to address some of the basic items.

Personally I cannot wait until we have the NEW GAME MODES in the game, and after Closed Beta has been fully validated, THEN we are going to focus on that as the next really big project.

/TechMech

 1.4.3 (66) External Release Notes

General

    * Fixed the mission ‘Just Like Momma Used to Make’, where only one item would drop but two would be required.
    * Corrected Enforcer Bomb Defusal role (starting at 50 rather than 500).
    * Fixed minor typo with Display Points (was using 'Spray' rather than 'Activate', which is not valid in social).
    * Added a building site in the 'killbox' warehouse area behind Wilson Leboyce's spawn zone to add cover and interest to the area.
    * Fixed two district server crashes.
    * Improvements to the FPS display:
          o Moved the /fps and /fpsdetail displays down slightly so they don't render over the HUD.
          o Memory usage is now displayed in MB instead of bytes so it’s easier to read.
          o We now always render the memory usage in green on 64-bit systems.
    * Rewritten the LATENCY calculation code to use less bandwidth and give results closer to the real round-trip time of client-server network traffic.

Vehicles

    * Fixed Macchina Calabria 127 criminal variant showing enforcer front police lights as an option in the Garage.

Weapons

    * Small fix to rewards to unlock LTL weapons at Ty rather than Grissom. Also tweaked it slightly so the primary comes from Ty and the secondary comes from Chung Hee.
    * Fix for Colby PMG-28 open slot versions not having any open slots.
    * NTEC: Slightly lower damage, worse base accuracy, worse minimum accuracy, worse movement accuracy, Reduced effective range to 50m
    * STAR: Reduced effective range to 50m. Slightly worse minimum accuracy. Slightly better running accuracy (to make up for the min accuracy loss, roughly the same overall)
    * Obeya: Worse movement accuracy.
    * NFAS: Slightly improved damage per pellet.
    * ALIG 762: Worse Damage against players. Increased base accuracy, slightly increased rate of fire (overall a positive effect)
    * OBIR: Slightly increased damage. Significantly reduced accuracy loss per shot, Worse movement accuracy (overall a positive effect)
    * Joker SR-15:  Significantly improved base accuracy.

I'm just going to quite this again, just because.

We just made one critical change to how cheat detection is handled, and that was rolled out in the last hour (yes, we are watching what people are doing, just not banning anyone, and that's on purpose...)

Imagine that.

[NiX]

We just made one critical change to how cheat detection is handled, and that was rolled out in the last hour (yes, we are watching what people are doing, just not banning anyone, and that's on purpose...)

Imagine that.

Didn't RTW say they weren't banning people on purpose?

[Mrbloodworth]

We just made one critical change to how cheat detection is handled, and that was rolled out in the last hour (yes, we are watching what people are doing, just not banning anyone, and that's on purpose...)

Imagine that.

Didn't RTW say they weren't banning people on purpose?

Certainly not that would unthinkable!

[Lantyssa]

Didn't RTW say they weren't banning people on purpose?

Cheat detection not working would be a purpose for not banning...

[Furiously]

Having 4000 customers and cheaters being 1/4 of them MIGHT make some beancounter rethink it....

[NiX]

Having 4000 customers and cheaters being 1/4 of them MIGHT make some beancounter rethink it....

Ah, ok. Now I'm remembering. They didn't flip the switch on anti-cheat until after launch and didn't ban.

Oh well, I'll enjoy the beta and if it becomes rampant I'll not any money.

[Mrbloodworth]

Both companies are not banning to build profiles. Like I said before, and got razzed about. Not turning on said hack software for whatever reason ( that has been told now ) is a different issue, and by all accounts the original issue it was not on, has been solved by the new game holders.

[Mrbloodworth]

"It is reloaded; it's a whole new product in terms of how it's been approached," says Merriex as we settle in to look at a demo build and chat up a few of the revamped title's new trappings.

GamersFirst hasn't simply purchased a dead game and turned the servers back on but rather is engaged in wholesale rewrites of game code, systems, and in some cases, the very design tenets of the original title. While former APB players will no doubt recognize much of the surroundings, many core gameplay changes have been made and continue to be iterated upon, including a totally revamped progression system, extensive changes to vehicles and weapons, and a bevy of new gameplay additions in the current beta as well as a few more scheduled to take a bow after the projected summer launch date.

In terms of progression, GamersFirst made no bones about the fact that it basically blew everything up and started over. "Progression used to be convoluted, rating increase was confusing, there was something to do with achievements, roles, contacts and organizations; we changed all that," Merriex told us.

The often-confusing role mechanic from the original game has been reworked to function more like a traditional MMORPG class system, and APB Reloaded now features clearly delineated vehicle and weapon contact NPCs, which offer missions and subsequent standing increases (which are labeled on the UI for an easy progression gauge). Each time players rank up with a contact, new vehicle and equipment purchasing options become available, which ties in to the new progression curve as well as GamersFirst's "fun to pay" mantra.

"Fun to pay" is basically a way of acknowledging that if gamers aren't having fun almost immediately after logging in to the city of San Paro, they're extremely unlikely to upgrade and pay for various portions of the premium experience. Merriex pointed out that GamersFirst recently published nine pages of release notes for the first closed beta period, which was a pretty good indicator as to the level of tedium and exasperation experienced by APB's early adopters.

"Original reviewers basically got slaughtered instantly; they would've had to play for another 15 to 20 hours to even have access to the guns needed to be competitive," Merriex says. This type of unbalanced gameplay is out the window in APB Reloaded, and the devs have spent a considerable amount of time fixing "all the annoying crap" that made the game less than fun for many players.

As an example, damage has been increased across the board, and all of the game's guns are now lethal. Additionally, recoil has been adjusted, the reticle-blocking camera angle has been adjusted, and a boatload of bugs (such as the inability to fire through a chain-link fence) have been squashed.

APB Reloaded also features major changes to the original game's driving system, not the least of which is a complete reworking of handling characteristics (turning is now much faster across the board) and a brand-new starter vehicle.

GamersFirst is also expanding APB's content, focusing specifically on revamping the "boring" mission system from the original title, adding new mechanics like racing (which currently features 11 distinct tracks on each map along with time trials and head-to-head competition), and adding a meta-game element that involves sustained criminal activities and escalating rewards. The new system necessitates the collection of loot, the delivery of said loot to a fence NPC, and the potential for arrest or death at the hands of any enforcer players who happen to cross paths with a criminal player whose hand is in the proverbial cookie jar.

There's also a new heist mechanic that allows for criminal players to attack enforcer precincts (or enforcers to attack fence hideouts) in a district-wide attack/defend event that spills onto the streets and affects the availability of precincts and fences depending on which faction is victorious. Furthermore, APB Reloaded's launch will see a new turf wars mechanic which will open up PvP by allowing players to be attackable by the opposing faction at any time rather than limiting the danger to mission runs like the original game.

Finally, GamersFirst is making updates to the game's music studio functionality, and players will soon be able to throw down custom DJ sets and mix on the fly for their friends in the immediate vicinity. A DJ battle mechanic is also in the works, as is a revamp to the game's social district functionality.

In summary, yes, APB is coming back, but no, it's clearly not the same game. While the basic shooting and driving focus remains, GamersFirst is in the midst of an extreme makeover that could push APB Reloaded closer to the potential that many gamers recognized so many months ago.

Link.

[HaemishM]

Some of that sounds shithot, but only if they make the shooting and driving parts not suck.

[Chinchilla]

Booo yah I'm in :)!  Loving it a whole lot!

[Modern Angel]

Wait... don't tell me that they've actually turned the game into something awesome.

[NiX]

Wait... don't tell me that they've actually turned the game into something awesome.

Minus the N-TEC bullshit, the last beta was incredibly fun. It was post launch that sucked.

[Hoax]

I never had beef with the game, I had beef with the pricing scheme. I'm just not going to pay $60 for the right to use a beta client I already have for a month. Any MMO on that model can fuck itself.

[Lantyssa]

It did, too!

[Hoax]

It really is the reason most of them do. Nothing about the current buy a box with nothing in it for the right to play for a month makes any sense. You want to sell me the right to continue using the client I already have installed for $60 you should be giving me 6 months of use not one or you should let me pay $15 to use it for that first month not a 400% mark up. Honestly the six month idea might even help a handful of these games since people might check back once they've fixed the horrendous shit that is always uncovered at launch because afterall you have already paid for it and can access it for free.

[Azazel]

Good point and well said.

[Mrbloodworth]

The Missing Skill-Ratings, and a Thanks to Hackers
Ok - so time has come to lift the covers off one of the core problems in APB; the lack of meaningful ratings that underpin the "threat" and matchmaking systems.

There are various important core issues that the team is working on (such as spawning in your enemy's face in particular, which the team has been working on some really elegant solutions for), but the lack of real ratings is critical since it causes a ripple-effect of problems. Matchmaking now consist of a very smart and sophisticated matchmaking algorithm, paired with a very "basic" (and maybe even "dumb") rating algorithm.

We are fixing all this as one of the reasonably early Open Beta tasks (not the very first OB release, but in the second round of OB or so), and at this point one of the core feedback items from Closed Beta is - "that's some crappy matchmaking." We agree. Let me explain.

No Real Skill-Rating
For a game that has some really cool and well engineered systems, it was a bit of a shocker to discover that in spite of relying almost exclusively on computer generated match making (unlike games like Counter-Strike where you make your own matches), no real thought was made to create a decent skill-rating system to feed those match-making decisions.

APB has a slew of different level and progression measurements visible to the player with titles like "threat", "rating" etc. This gets terribly confusing since "rating" as used in the APB UI actually means "progression" (or in MMO terms really "Level," not to be confused with APB's use of the word "Level"), and "Threat" is actually supposed to be a rough representation of "skill-rating" in more traditional game language.

Right now "Threat" - ie what 'should' be rating and what is the critical value used by the matchmaking system - is computed using a mechanic that tries to emulate Premiership League standings (or "soccer" to all the Americans reading this). A win gives you 3 points, a draw 1 point and a loss 0. Then APB takes that score over your last 50 matches, with a focus on the last 20 and figures out if you are above or below your opponents using this crude straight-win system. No regard is paid to how many matches you have played (is this match 52 or match 952?) and no regard for what level of player you have beat/lost to in the past. All wins and losses are treated equally. Even if you were to beat uneven odds (like 1 v 3).

Thus if you have 20 wins in a row, your "threat" (your skill-rating) balloons. Even if all you did was beat 20 newbies. And you will then be tossed into 1 v 3 or even 1 v 4 scenarios as you have a high threat level.  Killing newbies still shoots your "threat" level through the roof. If you had close fought losses against true veterans, those losses are still considered as bad as if you had lost to some really bad players.

Since there is no consideration for the skill of those you beat, the number of people you beat, nor the manner in which you beat them, you are not ever going to hone in on a TRUE skill rating in the current system, and it becomes easy to game the system. For anyone familiar with the XBox True Skill system the above system probably doesn't make a whole lot of sense. We agree.

Chess, Glicko and TrueSkill
The fundamental idea behind a good rating system is to let people slowly hone in on the rating they truly should be over a long period of time, and then try to predict matches that will provide the best experience to the players involved.

I have been involved in many different game companies in the past, and we always ended up going back to Chess ratings as the foundation for our rating algorithms ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_rating_system ). People have been extending chess ratings for a long time, most recently Microsoft's implementation of the TrueSkill rating system, which is a rather complex system, but fundamentally is an expression of Chess ratings applied in online matches.

There are less computationally intensive rating systems such as Glicko ( http://math.bu.edu/people/mg/glicko/glicko.doc/glicko.html ) which strike a balance between the "drifts" that tend to occur in pure Chess ratings and the complexities of the TrueSkill implementations.

So part of what we are trying out, will be a system that uses a LOT of the different characteristics of the above rating systems. It is still going to be a little while with the current wild Threat system (sure - go ahead and exploit it, lose 20 matches in a row, and then go kill newbies if you like since your threat will suddenly seem "low") - but clearly it's a top priority to get this worked out in Open Beta.

This leads to another requrement...

User Segmentation
In Most MMOs (like in Knight Online, another game that we publish) people tend to get grouped into distinctly different combat segments. In KOL the groupings are for levels 0-35, 35-60 and 60-83. The groupings divide players out based on the types of equipment they have and the amount of progression they have made in the game.

In APB this isn't strictly applicable given the hybrid nature of the Shooter/MMO and the greater emphasis on skill rather than progression, but at minimum "protecting" lower rated players from the being "hammered" turns out to be really important.

Therefore the next big thing is going to be creating some basic "skill-level districts." If a player doesn't 'volunteer' to join a higher skill-rated district, then he/she will be kept in the district with the most appropriate skill-ratings for his/her current skill-rating. We'll share more details on how this will be handled, as we get closer to releasing game changes that incorporate this.

Sure a lower level player can VOLUNTARILY join a higher rated district (maybe his/her friends are there), but the default action would be to put you in a district that most closely matches your current skill.

User Control Debate
One of the key items we keep debating internally is the amount of end-user control we should expose to the players in parallel with the Open World systems that will always be the core of the system.

In other words, how "counter-strike-like" we should make the start up of some matches. In Counter-Strike, since you can determine the exact nature of the team and your opponents, you actually are less dependent on a good rating system. So, one potential fix is to permit players the ability to queue-up and start their own fights (of course NOT removing anything from the current city or mission systems, just adding this ability in addition to the the mission systems).

Even though that might seem counter to some of the original APB ideas of launching things under the veneer of the living city, giving people direct game control would potentially let players set up matches that the system would never really promote on its own (who would NOT like 14 v 14 fights if they were available?) Our addition of Chaos rules and Turf Wars certainly adds some elements of session fights, and Chaos and Turf Wars are certainly our next big focus, but in addition to those enhancements, we are also debating if we should add direct match tools to the game. That way you can decide to play Open Missions (the current system), Chaos/Turf Districts or Player Matches.

We are happy to take feedback on this point, though I have a feeling that the true feedback would come in terms of a user trial (ie - we might put some of that in there and see where players go). The timing however, is obviously a little foggy, given the enormous amount of changes we are already working on and the huge backlog of game changes we are working on right now.

Finally - Thanks to Hackers
For the past 3 weeks we have been watching and observing user behavior in Closed Beta. We'd like to extend a "thanks" to the 60 odd players that have been toying around with various hack tools (about 0.4% of the players). Thanks to your hard cheating work, we are now much better equipped to deal with you going forward. How? I guess you will find out.

[Samprimary]

taunting hackers, this has always gone over well.

[Furiously]

.4% = 60 people....

That means....1500 beta testers?

[UnSub]

The fun thing about that read is that it explains why the matchmaking system was so flawed. I remember the forum having a lot of complaints about being constantly sent in to 1 vs 3, 4, 5 situations and the above explains why.

[Kageru]

And even better it seems they realize the need to apply the ranking to the district as whole. Trying to do meaningful match-making from the random population in an instance, that isn't already engaged, was so obviously destined for failure.

[Nija]

I'm digging their transparency in this transition.

Never tried the game though. Look forward to checking it out at some point. I think it's better that I've never played it at this point considering how it quickly it caught fire and crashed.

[Threash]

Bah, i liked the old game.  Any word on when this is relaunching?

[Hoax]

Got into beta.

You are forced to install something called GamersFirst LIVE! to get the download. This has me a bit nervous. I don't like downloaders and I really hate ones I've never heard of that support a set of titles I've never heard of.

I had the installer running the background. It was at 100% I saw it was installing punkbuster, which also made me wonder why I was touching this fucking game.

It BSOD'd me, twice, while it was in the background I hadn't even run the game. This rig has probably BSOD'd one time in the years I've had it. Windows freaked out and disabled GamersFirst LIVE! which had entitled itself to run on startup without asking me about it. Now the machine posts fine. On the scale of bad first impressions this may be one of the worst possible.

[NiX]

Got into beta.

You are forced to install something called GamersFirst LIVE! to get the download. This has me a bit nervous. I don't like downloaders and I really hate ones I've never heard of that support a set of titles I've never heard of.

I had the installer running the background. It was at 100% I saw it was installing punkbuster, which also made me wonder why I was touching this fucking game.

It BSOD'd me, twice, while it was in the background I hadn't even run the game. This rig has probably BSOD'd one time in the years I've had it. Windows freaked out and disabled GamersFirst LIVE! which had entitled itself to run on startup without asking me about it. Now the machine posts fine. On the scale of bad first impressions this may be one of the worst possible.

At least it didn't corrupt your Windows install.

[Furiously]

I thought most of their games used hackshield or something? Which looked equally sketchy starting up with my system.

[HaemishM]

Got into the beta as well. Not seeing a whole lot of difference. It does seem to run smoother than it used to on better settings but I'm not feeling a huge screaming change from when I played in beta.