New Alert XP distribution mechanics encourage mass flight to likely victor

I've said right from the start of PS2 that underdog bonuses aren't remotely high enough.

I guess they are worried about people gaining too many certs, but it is far better to have people PLAYING and doing that than just NOT PLAYING at all.

Hi. I'm NC on Mattherson, where Vanu >> TR = NC. I only play occasionally now during peak hours, because the game is pretty one-sided otherwise to VS. I only read the first couple pages of this thread, but here is my overarching suggestion:

Just limit players to one faction on a particular server. Yes, revert! Go back to the way it was on release. As people have said in this thread, most seasoned players know the faction they prefer now. Testing is over. I bet you don't even have to ask, just keep the character on each server per account that has the most time played, and delete all the others.

I know, it won't completely eliminate the 4th faction, but I am fine with players jumping through the hoops required to continue their fair weather faction play by making another account with another email and explaining themselves to friends and outfit mates over their respective VOIP clients that they have to log off completely to switch accounts every time an alert is about to end (or start now).

I know, I'm sorry NS weapons won't be as useful anymore! Oh well! There goes your above average to top in-class accuracy but average DPS weapon in favor of original flavor weapons (another good thing in my opinion)! Refund cert expenditures here, or don't. Give SC cash refunds if they bought with such, or don't. That said, a one-time full cert refund might be a gesture of good faith from SoE given the many changes in their "virtual products" within the time since release. I'm sure a lot of the underpopulated factions on each server would like the chance to re-focus themselves to combat larger factions (and have a reason to continue playing).

One faction per account per server? Oh, wait, we're too late for such an obvious fix...

Edit - No deleting of characters to accomplish this. Free transfers instead, to make up for the failure in design.

Fairly certain the reason they didn't keep the one character per server rule is that people were creating alt accounts to circumvent it anyway.

No real point having that rule in place if its so easy to circumvent.

Secondly, it also meant that if you wanted to try out different factions, which most people do when they first start playing, you had to try them out on different servers, or delete your toon every time you wanted to try a new faction on the same server. This would mean you wouldn't always be testing on the best server for you (lowest ping, best connection). For example I play on Briggs and have a VS, TR and NC all on the one server (yeah seems pointless right?). Main reason being, is that Briggs is the only server I get a 'good' connection to, and even its horrible at times.

The one character per server rule sounds good, but really there's no point to it.

Just lock out the other 2 factions like in the original, 12 hour lockout then we wont have to worry about this ******* factions switching BS

I'm fairly certain you only read the yellow text in my post. But, I suppose that's my fault for making it so conspicuous.

And what about players who started their alts on different servers but got combined? What about players who only have access to one low ping server? What about the 5th faction? How about just remove the reason for 4th factioning instead of p*ssing off a portion of their paying player base to reduce it.

Just one character. That's all I'm saying. I know SoE would want you to have more because that means more $$$. But, why do you need more? Ambivalence? Sometimes lasers, sometimes bullet hose, sometimes boom boom?

I'd like to see SoE do a ton of advertising then try the one faction per server idea for a couple months, but ultimately it won't matter. Come winter, new consoles and new games only make PS2 that much more moribund.

Some people just want to try all factions, why should 4th factioners stop this? Some people want to swap to the underdog faction, why should 4th factioners stop that?

The answer is stupidly simple, remove alert xp. Up xp boost for participating. What will the 4th faction do then?