GU13 killed Alerts.

I'm going to preface this by saying i don't care about Alerts. As a TR on Mattherson, Alerts only serve to annoy me by pulling enemies away from decent fights. I don't expect XP from them, and they really only exist to give inexperienced low BR VS massive XP boosts, which makes them better equipped than our low BR TR/NC players.

With GU13, the Devs decided to implement an anti 4th faction feature. You only get xp for time spent during the alert, and there is a timer added so you are penalized when you switch characters. Sounds like a good idea in theory.

What went wrong? Well, lets take the last Amerish territory alert on Mattherson as an example. I log in and there is about 15 minutes left on the alert. Now, that is a pretty critical time for an alert. Alerts often can be decided in the last half hour. I go, i fight with the terrans. When i logged we had 14% control and we ended with 18%. Thats barely anything, but hey, it should be worth maybe 3-4000 xp with my boosts and such. In fact, my outfit-mate on Esamir earned 4k, despite not being on the continent. he spent the entire alert farming with a harasser on Esamir. Me though. i got 448xp. Four hundred and forty eight measly xp. And let me be clear, the last time i had logged on to my VS character was 7 hours early, and that was for my 48 daily cert gain.

So. 448xp. I didn't care about alerts before but if i did, I certainly wouldn't care about them now. If you haven't been logged on the whole time, then there is no reason to help your faction out. And now, players know to switch factions at the start of the alert.

I'm sure its different for each server, but on mattherson, alerts = free xp for VS. In fact, i spoke to a new player who started the game about a week ago. He like TR, and the game suggested Mattherson. He switched to VS yesterday, for the free certs. I couldn't even blame him. It was the best move a new player could make.

It's truly puzzling. The move seems to stop people hopping on over to another character during the last bits of the alert to reap certs, but they chose possibly the most inelegant solution. Not everyone has all day to play, and two hours represents a fairly hefty chunk of time to anyone that might have responsibilities. Save for the XP boost, there isn't too much incentive. And mind you, that XP boost only applies if you happen to be in a facility that the alert has deemed important. Not in an amp station and fighting in surrounding territories during an amp alert? No bonus for you.

The simple solution to stop the swapping is to do what people have been begging for literally months: add a timer to switching factions on the same server. If you've chosen your NC, no moving to VS an hour after logging out of the NC toon. It's just...so easy. So simple. Hard to exploit. The only downside reaches into tin foil hat territory where I'd wildly exclaim that the reason not to is to earn more money from people wanting to be in the superior faction via SC purchases.

Well written Phygren. It's a flaw in their solution that I didn't think much about until you explain it.

Not that it matters to me. The only alerts I have participated in for the last two months are the ones that allow me to keep fighting on Indar. The only place TR cares about. Well, now we have Esamir so I guess that expands the alerts I get to play in while the novelty of walls still remain. But after that, back to Indar.

Ultimately, as the game is free-to-play, you can just create another account and completely disregard any timers, right?

Also, people who have characters in different factions cannot then easily login to collect their daily certs (like e.g. the OP), which will annoy some people.

The negative side of a timer, for me at least, is that if all I want to do is get my passive certs or check daily deals I might have to do that over an unfeasibly long period of time. The whole idea of a daily reward is to get people to log in regularly. In it's current state it works on me.

On that note, pre-patch if I did log in and there was an alert in progress, even if it was close to ending, it would often be a catalyst for me to play, despite not planning to. As above it's probably not worth the time now.

i have no idea how long the punishment timer for logging on to another character is. I would assume if the alert didn't start until 5 hours after the switch.. it should not make a difference.

I agree that there are probably better ways that this issue could be fixed but I still don't believe that people will swap from there main faction for every 2 hr alert. The % of VS didn't really go up a lot towards the end of the Alert and the only reason VS had more players was because for some reason on mattherson a lot of TR seem to refuse to leave indar, alert or no alert.
Do agree though that the reduce of Xp just because you couldn't play the whole 2 hours is pretty crap.

I've gotten plenty of certs (and informed friends to log in at the right time as well) by noting how long an alert is and jumping on during the last 5 minutes or so, even though I didn't play an ounce during the alert. No longer rewarded for that, which is good in my book. It seems to count total playtime during the alert, so crashing or logging out for a bit in the middle isn't a huge penalty.

It could probably be a bit more generous on participation (logged in) time though, maybe give the full reward if you're been around for at least 50% or so of the alert duration (so 1 hour normally, or less if it ends early due to a dominating win).

The 20% bonus should be made continent wide during facility alerts, though. You can't take another faction's facility unless you push across the continent to get there, during which there's no bonus for trying to achieve the alert objective - it just encourages people to turtle in the facility and not push out.

They must implement a faction swap timer. During Mattherson alerts you can literally monitor population and watch TR and NC pop dive relative to VS pop rising.

Lets get this right.
The op is upset that he decided to participate 1/8th of an alert and he now only gets 1/8th the certs/EXP
Cry me a river.

As an aside.
Do players who have to leave early get their certs for the portion of time they participated? (wouldn't show up until next log on)
If so, great! This is the best solution instead of the stupid alternative of account locking or timeouts.

Faction imbalance issues IMHO would be better resolved through Exp bonuses / penalties rather than Faction locks.
You need to motivate players to switch away from over populated factions to underpopulated ones.
Locking just reinforces a overpopulated faction, as those there finding themselves stuck in the underdogs don't bother to participate / log out, and get upset that they just didn't log into the populated faction at the start.
Soon their character on the populated faction has all the exp/certs and is the default main.

At this point it seems people are more interested in making virtual money in the most efficient way possible.

Well actually GU12 killed alerts
Gu13 just finished em off

This new change makes perfect sense to me... you get what you put into it. You shouldn't log in to an alert in the last 5 minutes and go all "John Terry" expecting to get the full prize just as those who stay an hour then leave shouldn't get anything. I think the 20% bonus exp is worth going for if nothing else.

The only issue I can see is if people who have put the time in crash and lose their contribution bonus.

The one thing I do agree on with the OP is that people on other continents shouldn't get exp for alerts.

My biggest pet peeve with their "fix" is that it just means people swap characters at the start of the alert not the end.

Like right now VS has 41% of the pop on Matherson because all the 4th faction just jump ship as soon as the alert starts.

So I was about to get onto Mattherson today and I see Vanu at 47%. "I suppose fourth faction is here for the alert." I log in and sure enough there is about 50 minutes left on an alert.

Pros: discourages last minute login for easy certs, I was guilty of that lame trick.

Cons: you have to stay and farm a facility alert, rather than push out, if you want full reward.
People leave for overpop sooner to increase reward.

You got it wrong. Next time bother reading the entire post. Better yet, just don't post at all.

I think your outfit-mate had the right idea. Go about doing your thing farming kills, having fun, whatever.... because participating in most alerts as TR on Mattherson is a waste of time. I feel your pain.

GU13 might also have killed their recently repaired pop balance since it now encourages the people who have made a VS alt and only used it to collect alert certs at the end, to actually play that alt for the full duration.

45~% Vanu pop for the last HOUR of an alert is pretty odd this time of day.

This. Its really sad that players don't play or are unhappy unless they get "paid". Even worse when they feel other players are getting "paid" for not playing they way that is deemed the wrong way to play.

If you looked at the other continents on the specific alert the op is talking about the VS actually had hardly anyone on them, VS just decided to participate in the alert. NC had 71% on Esamir and TR had a majority on Indar but were also evenly spread on all zones. This says to me that it wasn't about 4th faction players jumping ship at the start of the alert, it was purely that the existing VS players take the alert more seriously than the other factions.

Maybe if the other factions participated abit more then Alerts would be more even but instead a majority of them stay on other zones and don't participate so it mean on mattherson anyway VS still seem to have a majority of players on alerts. That's TR and NC problem, if there players don't take part.

except you are wrong on all counts