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A real threat to APB
Rhianne
Member UncommonPosts: 58
I really want to love this game. And a good part of the time, I do. I appreciate the engineering that went into the game and consider it very well constructed, mechanically speaking. There are some really innovative features that many people take for granted that are really quite good.
That said, I'm still surprised that some basic and glaring frustrating issues made it past beta. Things like the imbalances in favor of Enforcers and matchmaking that ignores upgrades.
But the real threat to APB is this: a**holes.
No, not the normal garden variety type. Sure, they exist in every game, especially in a game like this one. Oh, no. Not like the kind I'm talking about.
These people go beyond griefing, beyond hateful whispers.
This breed has decided that, since they get money and faction points whether they win or lose a mission, that they're going to create a character, call for backup on missions, and then DO JACK NOTHING, indefinitely.
If you're someone that is trying to have a good time, even going out of your way to help by responding to a call for backup, what you get is a mission where you are called in to help someone who is so utterly selfish, malicious, and inconsiderate, they'll happily ruin the game for dozens of people, mission after mission, for hours at a time.
You can't leave their illegitimate group in the middle of a mission and you're stuck for the next 20 minutes. Killing them doesn't accomplish anything. You can't pull them into another zone because they're the team leader. There are no moderators or GMs to shut the character down. They won't respond to any messages you send them. But they are there, awake only enough to call for more backup, automatically join your group, or switch back from Social if they do get pulled there.
Pretty soon, the few people that would normally accept a Call for Backup avoid it completely because this individual has spoiled it for everyone. No one wants to accidentally join with this person to lose yet another mission and feed them more points. So now the people who ARE actually playing and DO want backup are screwed.
To do this at the expense of so many other people is repugnant. I've put up with a lot of frustration with this game because I still manage to have a good time. But if people like this ruin the very core fun of the game, that's the end.
Comments
I've seen this myself and it is fairly annoying. It would be one thing if it was the occasional loser, but I've been in groups of 4+ where I was the only person on my side actually working towards any of the mission goals.
Is it possible to log out so you can ditch em?
"We got rid of the trinity." How'd you do that? "Now everyone can heal." Sounds like you just took the mechanic and spread it thin. "Well no, there's one class that can do it better than others." I see, so they're healers. "No. They're.." -mind asplode-
Sure, however:
I don't want frequent logging out to fix leeching to be required part of my gaming experience.
The existence of such people still has the long term effect of eliminating both Call for Backup missions and automatic Find a Group, which takes out a huge chunk of the game.
The leech doesn't care; in fact, if I log out, he gets his free points even faster and can then proceed to screw up someone else's next mission.
You don't even have to log out, just change districts.
They really should have put a system in place that rewards people for effort during missions, or at least doesn't give credit to afkers or leechers.
Alright fair enough. >_>
"We got rid of the trinity." How'd you do that? "Now everyone can heal." Sounds like you just took the mechanic and spread it thin. "Well no, there's one class that can do it better than others." I see, so they're healers. "No. They're.." -mind asplode-
That's just terrible.
Not only will that get more people to quit, it will cause those still player to never group/help for call for backup, thus causing a lot less people grouping, causing less people to spend time in action districts, ie spending less money.
You are surprised that players found out they can AFK and still progress? I'm surprised this mechanic is in any game after the World of Warcraft battleground fiasco.
Vault-Tec analysts have concluded that the odds of worldwide nuclear armaggeddon this decade are 17,143,762... to 1.
Can't change districts or abandon when on a mission that is opposed.
rofl... if you want a taste of the APB community, go read the APB forums. That'll make this look rather benign in comparision.
Then there are the people who purposely keep their threat very low, so when they actually do play the game, they can call for back-up no matter who they're against, and then they out-number their opponents. Everyone talks tough, but there aren't very many people who actually play the game in any manner which would be considered fair. Exploiters, cheaters using hacks, AFKers, griefers, etc, etc, etc... have pretty much ruined this game for me.
Whenever i run into a group where a player is afk and im the only one chasing the Enforcers i just let the Enforcers win and go kill the AFK players....
Someone else told me that you can add the afk person to your friends and then join Social Distict and invite them to your district and because they are usually afk running a script that keeps hitting Y you can invite them to the Social District removing them from action district's.Haven't tried it myself yet but the next afk idiot i run into im going to test this on.
Another thing that gets annoying is the idiots in the dump trucks ramming your car/killing you when you spawn it.I usually just find a patriot truck and flip the bastards over if they grief too much tho.
I feel bad for the crims sometimes because instead of getting a full group they often have people either stealing cars or ram raiding or are afk leveling. It is a major flaw in the game and needs to be rectified immediately. But in the meantime, these people can level 24/7 while the honest players have to play ridiculous hours to keep up. Well...you don't HAVE to, but you feel compelled to do to the competitive nature of the game.
Incidentally, this problem is not solely on the criminal side. The other day there was an enforcer that was leader and he wasn't in the game. He had some macro going and he would just accept missions, call for back up and never participate.
It's this kind of lack of attention to game design flaws that sink ships. It should have never gone into the live game.
Agreed, Terranah.
This problem has grown from a dangerous annoyance to a full-blown plague in a matter of days. Getting an afker or live parasite (someone who is at the keyboard but goes out of their way to run as far away from the battle as possible and either doesn't respond or responds hatefully if you try to talk to them) is now virtually guaranteed every single time on all instances if you are playing solo.
Here's a conversation with one that did respond:
Me: xxxxx, where are you going? (Watching the map, they are clear on the other side of the city.)
xxxxx: trying to find your mom
Me: You called for backup, why?
Me: We are on a mission, why are you not helping?
xxxxx: Because I need to find and **** your mom first.
Typical. It's sad, really, that people like this will never amount to anything at life but need to make sure that others get to experience their childishness, hate, and ignorance.
The game has been out less than a month, but it has been ruined in the last week.
All this work, years of effort from Realtime Worlds, lots of expense, and they let 12-year-olds ruin it all in a matter of days.
Sad thing is this also the reason a lot of MMOs suck nowadays. The general asshatedness of kids. I was just about to load this game up. I appreciate your post so I can now take the game back and not waste my money.