The Alert system is a pile of crap in it's current form. I'll explain why through a basic timeline of every alert so far I've been a part of. Problem 1: The Warning The alert warning pops up and immediately everyone stops thinking about what they are currently achieving and starts planning a massive withdraw to the warpgate. This is kind of counterproductive to the normal fighting that should happen. Problem 2: The Alert goes live You have everyone sitting in front of the warp terminals hitting tab and trying to continent shift as fast as possible. The continent gets loaded to cap and platoons end up getting split up with some people in the queue. Problem 3: They last to long Two hours is waaaaay to long. Nothing else besides that needs to be said. Problem 4: There are to many alerts in a day As soon as one ends, a lot of people just seem to wait for the next one. Proposed fix: 1. Do not warn about them ahead of time. Simply have them pop up. 2. Do not make alerts continent based. Make them happen on all continents at the same time. 3. Change the alert to something along the lines of controlling a territory (or several) on each continent. 4. Shorten the duration to an hour or less, or have less alerts per day.
Making them occur on all conts defeats the purpose of getting people to find big fights. By changing them to suit what you want your proposing killing something that just came out. I think you should think long and hard before you propose a change less then a week after something came out. Maybe look at the proposed changes you want to make objectivly, instead of killing the whole concept because you don't like it.
#1) I agree. #2) That completely defeats the purpose of the system ( to make good large fights when there are none) Be ******* grateful your server can even pop lock 1 continent. #3) They claimed there would be other types of alerts and conditions, so just be patient for those systems to be setup. #4) You do realize that it takes minimum 10 min to cap some bases right? To short a time limit would just reward the faction that owned the most at the beginning of the event to much.
I like the idea of the alerts, but a whole continent is just too much. It would be better if the goal was to capture 3 key points on the map and hold them until the timer runs out. Timer could be a lot shorter then too.
I'm not sure how you feel that making them occur on multiple continents at once defeats the purpose. If anything it enables more people to get into large fights that otherwise would be looking at a queue to warp to the active alert continent. Also I am not proposing killing anything. I am offering ideas to improve it. They may not be the best ideas, and I would love to see other ideas proposed. On your second point, I understand the reason behind the system, but I think there is a probably a better way to make big fights happen without having everyone stop what they are currently doing. On your third point, I hope there is other types of alerts. The current system is leaving a bad taste in quite a few people that I've talked to in my outfit. As an FYI, I belong to the (I believe currently) 2nd largest active player outfit in the game. Most of them are similar to me in that they like the premise of making big fights happen, just not the current implementation. To be fair, some like the system just fine, and others want it out completely. As to your last point, the only time I've seen a base cap take that long (once the bar is moving) is with one of the larger bases and you have no adjacency. Granted it could take a long time to fight your way into a base to get to the control point(s). Keep in mind when I made this post it is just some rough ideas, which hopefully can be flushed out with some constructive feedback. If you like the system, that's fine. I like the premise of the system, just not how it was pulled off.
Re #3: If you make the goal of an alert to be capping a specific territory (for example, The Ascent) or type of territory (i.e. Amp stations), there could be problems with access to those territories, if your faction doesn't have an adjacent hex(es) prior to the start of the event. Then you'll have folks complaining it wasn't 'fair' for them to start off at a disadvantage (the same way people are now complaining about pre-capping for alerts). While this game is about territory control, it would be a bit more even to make alerts unit based - such as "first faction to kill 200 heavies" or "faction that gets no TK's for 20 mins" (which would prolly be impossible, come to think of it). What I'm getting at is challenges that have nothing to do with who has the most population or territory control at the start of the alert, but are achieveable by every faction.
That's a good point, but I've already seen people complain it isn't fair because they can't get to the continent the alert is on. This could be limited by having the alert be whoever controls the most amp stations, or bio labs or tech plants at the end of an alert. That way you have people fighting over all three continents trying to get as many of those bases as possible.
A major purpose of the alert system was to get people to play on other continents. If the alert was on all three at the same time, people would just continue to play on Indar.
Its a continent cap because trying to cram 2000 people into 3 or 4 hexes would make the game unplayable. And thought the idea of a capture and hold system was to give some love to Amerish and Esamir once in a while, which it is doing beautifully. Everytime an event pops up on one of those continents its full with big massive fights for the first time in forever. If you make the event capture and hold Indar & Esamir & Amerish all at once wouldn't we just be right back where we started? Indar being full 24/7, those who can't get in going to Esamir, and then Amerish maybe having a platoon's worth of players per faction ghost cap battling. Just isn't enough players at any given time to fill up all three continents like there was 4-5 months ago.
That may be, but wouldn't it be better to have a system in place to promote playing on all three continents all the time instead of just for a couple hours 2 out of every three alerts? I think people generally get sick on Indar. I know back at the merge people rejoiced having fights on Esamir for the first time in a long time. I just would like to see there be a reason to fight there all the time instead of only when there is an alert there. As it is now, people go to Indar because that is where the fighting usually is. Perhaps if there was more to owning a continent than a mere 10% resource savings.
I think the way forward is to have an alert for each continent, but not all cont-caps. Have a capture the continent alert on 1, and for the others, have less major objectives, with lower bonus XP. For example, if a base is surrounded, an alert could be focussed upon it, with the faction controlling it after 30 minutes getting 2000xp/player, with a 10% XP bonus to actions within that base and possibly within the surrounding bases. Also, no XP for the second/third place. You lose, you lose. It's your fault for not fighting hard enough. As to length, I'd prefer continents caps to be longer. You can't take an entire continent in 2 hours. Less important alerts should have shorter timers, though. I'd also love to see any and all alerts expanded upon lore-wise. So, let's say, you have 'Feeling the heat' - cap Indar. You click it, and up pops a brief lore message drawn randomly from an appropriate list. Something like this: This would give a sense of meaningfulness to Alerts. I do generally like the current implementation. I've had some great battles today, even on continents where there is no alert. Ribbons are part of it, as they provide an incentive to kill just a few more enemies! but Alerts are a great feature. I do want them to be fleshed out a bit more, especially with minor alerts for other continents.
should probably wait until we see what other types of alerts they are going to add to this very limited brand new mechanic before crying and calling for a complete overhaul
I think this is the major issue right now with getting people to other continents, there's just no incentive. Might as well stay on Indar where you know there will be fights. The alert system helps a little, but in the end it's just a two hour cert farm, then back to whatever else you were doing. There needs to be incentive to keep a continent, not just cap for an alert and leave.
I boycott "premium" Alert. This system in is curent state just ruin the game actualy. ex 1 : You play on Amerish with your outfit, now Alert on INDAR you redeploy asap all premium are on indar and non premium after 1min alert as begin got this: 2H ?!,? ex 2: You play on INDAR with your outfit, alert on indar, less than 10min later for some weird reason your game crash. when you go back in the game you are on another continent and when you want to regroup with your outfit: you got the 2h queue ex 3: You play in a good battle, alert come, suddently 2/3 players redeploy to the warpgate, leaving tank empty, sundy, ect This totaly splitting outfit in 2 group, premium and non premium... this is sad The only good idea IMO is to reward continent lock with a xp bonus, music or cookies. I'm not a premium but I have spend around 50E in game to support it, am I allowed to play the alert or it is just a premium machine?I understand dev want more premium but, it is who the dev want the game to be?be carefull, greed can kill good game
I'm not premium, and I am not against membership having perks such as this. Sure, premium accounts get experience much faster than non-subscribers, but then I hear alot of folks talking about "Well, I got everything certed that I want, so there's no point in paying for membership anymore." Perks such as queue preference give people another reason to keep paying for this game.
I have nothing against the work done to get more premium members, this is totaly normal and fair. But I disagree when this ruin the game experience, by making people leave in mass a good battle for a poor reason and split outfit.
BARBAK, what you have shown is the biggest reason for my post to begin with. When the alert has people changing continents it literally breaks up platoons because not all of them can move over. I am a premium member (and if you like the game I encourage doing so yourself) and have seen this happen to often. I see nonpremium players trying to game the system by going to one of the continents that the last alert wasn't on hoping to beat the queue. It borders on the rediculous. To the posters saying, give the system time, I can only respond with the following. While I understand it is a new system, if I am not vocal about it's flaws the may be perpetuated. It's better to point the problems out now so they don't get inserted into other types of alerts. If you are happy with the alert system so far, that's fine. I haven't seen one reply saying that though.
