Raap

Diversity keeps things interesting and encourages players to change up their tactics every match. As I said before though, it is important to uphold the concept of 'core gameplay' which should not be touched on a per-map basis due to the confusion and frustration this would cause. But engaging gameplay objectives and mechanics, now that's where no real limitations apply - outside of script availability and performance. This just brings me back again to my long standing request of map-specific HUD components and an in-game level map with building status and such. If W3D featured those things then we can add more objectives in a consistent formula (so not like right now where every designer just does it in their own way, causing inconsistencies). Down the line this would then open the doorway to create event hooks for conditional achievements as well.

I'd really consider doing a few myself, once I figure out how to solve the very dark shadowplay recordings. I'll delve into that again eventually.

Not surprised. My brain is wired to remember environments and images. But ask me what I ate two days ago and I'll be . I'm so weird, I can't remember street names, but I do remember the entire design of my city. I'm also the only person in my entire country that travels via the notions of north, east, south, and west. Yeah, great conversions occur when strangers ask me for directions! Edit: Now you know why I can never bloody remember server commands.

Please delete from existence my following old mapsisbad: Desolation FirewoodForest FrozenWasteland Noddingham SnowHills (fun fact: Present day Wasteland is SnowHills) TreeTopJungle I'm not sure if I made Maze, I certainly made a maze map once, just can't remember naming it so or releasing it. (Edit: was it the map with bases on two platforms with a canyon in between?) I guess I'm fortunate you didn't have the other half of my ancient trash maps, phew!

Any publicity is good publicity. Although APB's activity has dramatically improved in the recent weeks, the server is more packed than empty now and I personally believe that is due to game and server visibility issues being resolved. Frequent patches also help.

This is why I put that list in there. I designed the map to be a vehicle meatgrinder, sort of a spiritual successor to Classic Fjord, but unlike that old map, I made sure to include a lot of infantry passages because throwing infantry into the courtyard with the vehicles exclusively would be like throwing a pet dog to a den of wild lions (aww!). Hopefully now after this thread, people will feel 'inspired' to use some different approaches. The cannons can probably still do with the changes I mentioned however, since that was based on a collection of feedback from a few matches, as well as my own thoughts after having played the map a few times in larger population matches. You know I'm always in favor of map-specific gameplay. Hostile Waters featured capturable buildings using script logic created by Danpaul, as well as the obvious emphasis on naval combat, naval transportation and offensive air support (Chinooks unavailable). And Siege features a relatively lightweight bonus objective via repairable cannons, which I intentionally employed to differentiate from the HW capture logic. It sort of once again highlights the gameplay design flexibility of W3D - one of it's true strong points. However... I feel I must draw a line somewhere. Special primary and secondary objectives are great for diversity and I'd love to see more of them in other maps not made by myself, however... Modifying CORE GAMEPLAY on a per-map basis would make the game very hard to learn for players and more likely very frustrating as well. But if you'd like to see more secondary objectives then the sky is essentially the limit (or, at least ones imagination is). If we had a way to create map-specific HUD elements (this is a very long standing personal request of myself), then we'd be able to clearly communicate map specific gameplay to players. Once that layer of gameplay transparency is in place, I could talk with Pushwall about adding some to other maps. But right now I'm dependent on messages to communicate gameplay, which is not ideal at all. Speaking of the interface, the GUI really needs dynamic level maps to replace the current building health status page. If we had this, we could highlight for example who owns the abandoned Refill Pad on Hostile Waters, or if one of the cannons on Siege is manned by anyone.

It was actually a distraction from core gameplay. It was a proof of concept, it showed that mechanically we can do some weird shit in W3D, however performance didn't lie; As soon as such a large number of scripts get pushed to a server environment, the client performance suffers and reaches unacceptable levels. There might be some secrets in the future but nothing quite as complicated as what Siege had, not until the engine team can fix things. Side note, there is still a secret left in Siege that nobody seems to have discovered yet. It's not a big one though. Anyhow, you seemed to have quite a distaste of the map via IRC commentary, did you know everything I listed in the opening post? Perhaps you'll find the map less grindy if you try to use infantry more. I'd say Siege is the most infantry-biased map in all of APB, but few people seem to know that. Edit: Sprinting is key! Were it not for sprinting, the game would have ended via script sequence following the destruction of the War Factory. But sprinting is a thing, so use it!

Hey guys, A few people seem quite unhappy about the map, particularly the ground based vehicle meatgrinder that it was designed to be. I'm making this topic now to see how many people actually dislike the map. If the vote for removal has no-voters in the lead, then I recommend the removal. I won't be asking what issues some people have with this map, because I will not be doing a major revision. I'm currently working on the Hostile Waters revamp which means I don't have time for another revamp. Further more if both my contributions are unpopular enough to both be pulled, I might as well stop bothering as clearly something is going wrong. As a quick solution to part of the criticism, my proposition for @Pushwall would be that the Siege cannon primary damage against buildings and defenses is reduced by 1/3rd, and the projectile extension of the shrapnel blast increased to allow for a better chance to hit moving and small targets, in order to properly make it function as anti-infantry up close. Additionally, increase the health pool on both 'destroyed' cannon presets times two, in order to make a destroyed cannon stay destroyed longer, which will also help deal with 'ninja Engineers'. This should make them more manageable and still not completely useless. Map education: Did you know there are several ways for infantry to avoid the courtyard vehicle meatgrinder? You can use the ore mine tunnels as infantry to breach the courtyard and attack a vehicle blockade in their rear? The ore mine tunnels connect to a central trench, which has a ruined tunnel on the other side, allowing infantry to go from their base to the enemy base and nearly completely avoid all enemy vehicles in the process. You could even destroy the enemy Ore Truck with an infantry rush, something nobody ever seems to consider doing! Both teams got a small side way passage near the main vehicle entry point into the courtyard. Infantry can cross the beach and attack the Flametower and Pillbox with infantry from near the water. Both teams have access to Chinook Transport helicopters. They don't exist for no reason, so you can use them to completely bypass the courtyard vehicle meatgrinder. You also don't have to fly your Chinook directly into an enemy base; You can drop off infantry near the Soviet beach or on the Allied cliff, fly back, and carry the next load without losing the Chinook. There are no ground base defenses near these locations! You can also attempt to ninja the long way around, past the rear of the castle. The scaffold bridges are destructible through anti-structure damage, destroying both further limits vehicle maneuverability. The castle walls are a fully connected circle with several entry points including two ladders at the main building. From up here, infantry are well protected from vehicles and can easily attack them back.

The Wewds Today.

I know it's not in-the-box functionality but the code guys could probably hijack the C4 logic to instead of becoming the 'placed object' near the end of the projectile lifetime, it'd actually turn into an ammunition type. But hey, off-topic and completely pointless! Splitting ammunition would be cool to have as a W3D engine feature nonetheless.

Nah, make it go straight up and then split into a multi-missile. Much moar balans.

It could probably do with harming ships and subs. Earthquakes generally cause big waves! Besides, giving the MAD Tank some mid-field purpose wouldn't be a terrible thing... Although how many Tech 5 maps do we have that also feature naval combat? Coastal Influence is the only one, right?

On overhaul re-balancing Pushwaffles raises an excellent point, they should be avoid where possible, but mainly because it is a known point of frustration in games if players have to constantly re-learn their preferred gameplay style. In W3D's case, quite a few other means of balancing are available, means which do not affect the general use of a weapon, vehicle, or character.

Adding something like a slow down and full stop in ~two seconds would require the physics model to be updated. I'm not sure how difficult that is, but I do see obvious benefits from having it, for wheeled physics. Something like that would ideally be trigger by double tapping the S key (re-bindable). Overlap with existing known key functions like Q would cause problems.

If you're thinking Artillery is too powerful then regardless of whether or not I agree with that the answer cannot be to buff V2 damage across the board. Any more damage from such units would mean their burst potential becomes very hard to react to and matches could end a lot sooner (or worse; matches could cause server depletion due to early loss of key structures). But I think they are in a decent spot at the moment. Maybe V2's could do a bit more damage to vehicles to compensate for the longer reload, movement handling, and projectile avoid-ability. But in terms of structure damage I think these units reached a ceiling. Lastly, let's not have map-specific balance bleed into game balance. I'm guessing this topic came to be after a RiverRaid match. If so, the problem would be with that map and how it favors camping.

Character art is APB's graphical weakness at the moment. Also consider that characters are the first thing people look at when they join the game. Impressions are everything, and even two new 'basic infantry' models would do wonders... But hey, I didn't want to hijack this thread. I'll look forward to seeing some environments created. Hopefully your art direction is solid on them.

If a problem exists only within a certain quantity of server population, my go-to solution is unit scaling. I love scaling, I believe it is key to keeping the game consistently fun across all population matches. Unfortunately not everyone shares my opinion. Edit: Accidental double post (forum is lagging badly for me atm).

Sounds terrible. Have fun!

I've used and seen other people use both types of minelayer in both large and small scale matches. Actually, I personally believe mines are a key part of the diminished performance in larger matches in the last 20 minutes. If my suspicion is correct, minelayers would need a combination of a capacity nerf as well as a boost to compensate for that in the form of some added survivability, although they are not combat vehicles, so this should be kept in mind. Frontline minelayers shouldn't be a thing... Keep in mind I'm not a developer and I do not sit on the server unit statistics, but this is just my observations.

That's not a valid way of balancing a session based shooter game. Both teams need to be equally viable no matter what time in a match it is or what level it is. Differentiation must come in flavor, not core mechanic balancing. A team can excel at a specific subject, as long as the other team excels at something else. The trick is to not design these perks as hard-counters to the other teams arsenal, and also not to mess up fundamental gameplay pillars.

It's a fair point, there should be a more notable incentive to retreat vehicles from frontlines all the way back to the base in order to repair the unit on a Service Depot. Right now the incentive isn't quite there, suiciding the units is easier. Maybe Service Depot repair costs need to be reduced a bit, at least for ground and naval vehicles.

That's the opposite of gutting it to be sure, but hey, try it. I didn't even know you capped the kill-cash out like that. Always figured it was based on raw health damage so units with more health = more credits. I haven't looked into the present data for the specifics on that before.

I edited my post with a new paragraph, might be worth considering.

Combat cash is the sole thing that allows a silo and refinery-less team to mount any sort of offense or defense. Gutting it would have widespread consequences. If you're axing it, consider adding a compensatory game-wide passive credit tickle that doesn't require any structure to provide it. I'm thinking 1 credit per 2 seconds give or take. By being passive and equal between both teams, it makes all income controllable by the level designer, and disconnected from player input, ore mining aside (which would become a lot more relevant).

Ore Trucks will be the most overpowered ground vehicle on Hostile Waters, so those attacks might need to be nerfed.