....sigh. These were the most fun alerts. One simple reason: These alerts were still viable for underpop factions, as we could focus all our forces on the facility and still have a good fight. Multi-continent facility alerts or continent capture alerts are very biased towards the overpopulated faction, as they can divide their superior forces over the different territories. This change makes it so most alerts will be won by the overpopulated faction (even more than now), furthering the issues of population balance that some servers have. Please give the underdog factions a chance. Can we at least know why this change was made?
Why has duration been cut in half? This is just more dumbing down. 2hrs was the perfect amount of time to allow proper development of strategy. With 1hr what's the point ffs? Something else NOBODY asked for.
I would like to hear SOE's explanation of why the duration and XP reward of these alerts was deemed problematic. What do you think, oh Forumside? What do you think of facility continental alerts compared to the rest?
agreed with the basic sentiment of max above - I don't remember asking for this, I don't remember hearing anyone else ask about it or want it, I don't remember finding any particular fault with it, and in fact, I always breathed a minor sigh of *relief* when it was a single continent alert, as it seemed like this was the most likely way to ensure the closest thing to a continent-wide population balance. now, it's possible I *missed* some large scale community outcry for a change to single-continent alerts, but for the moment, based on my own perception of the community, of the 10,000 things that people complain about (or, more likely, the 100 things people complain about a thousand times), single-continent alerts wasn't one that made the top ten, so I ALSO have to wonder why *this* is the thing they chose to change?...
A faction that uses pop to its advantage and has a good start on an alert like this, can easily wrap it up in a few minutes and win dominating victories all day long. Unless its Indar - might be a bit harder, but even then, they're a cakewalk.
well when overpoped factions won alerts with dominating victories a few times a day, they got 10,000 xp each time, which was quite unfair for the other factions...examples are the VS on Mattherson
2 hours was too long. 1 hour is good. It allows you to participate without having to give up all your free time. How many times has someone logged on and seen an alert about to happen and think " I dont have 2 hours to sit on my ****" Maybe they should mix up alerts. Some 1 hour 2 hour and a 4 hour mega battle for primetime weekends.
I like it. Not everyone is a 12-17yr old that has 6hrs of free time after school to play a video game. I will be lucky if I can get in over an hour on the week day. Shorting the alert means I can finally be in a alert from beginning to end. As it is now I join the game when an alert is taking place then I have to leave before the alert is over. Good move SOE.
I don't really care about the time difference, but I think the multi-continent alerts are the ones that should've been nerfed. The single continent ones are simply more fun. Everyone funnels onto a single continent and there's always BIG action. With the multi-continent alerts, however, everyone is separated and it's not nearly as fun to play.
So far this change doesn't seem to be working. 2 alerts so far, both still 2 hours, both still have the same reward. Even the game knew it was a bad call.
Seems like you may be onto something there if SOE was seeing certain factions just running away with crazy cert incentives...
Thats only about the duration, which I don't care that much about. The alert's main decisive battles all happen in the last 45 minutes or so, anyways. But I don't see how single continent facility alerts should be more rare than multi continent ones, which pander to the overpopulated faction. "Control all amp stations" is not winnable for an underpopulated faction, while "Control 3 amp stations on Esamir" is winnable or at least you can deny the overpopulated faction a victory.
I'm happy with making them less common, as these were the most boring zergiest alerts. Much prefer the continent capture alerts, and even the worldwide facility alerts. I haven't actually seen one of the latter for about 2 months, and thought Briggs may be bugged but apparently we have had one or two.
Whoever owns 2/3 of bio/amp/etc at the start time and has atleast evenish pop will win the time limited alerts. So only difference is instead of domination victory, now likely a shared xp 66/33%.
