Alerts being the bandaid fix for the lack of meta game or overall purpose in the game is very much hurting this game. It highlights and encourages one of the biggest problems in the game, and that is population inbalance. You are hand feeding the over populated faction certs and it's getting tiring. There is not a single thing a player can do against the overwhelming odds on a lot of server and you SOE as a company are enabling the very thing that is slowly killing your game.
With Continental Lattice coming up in November or so, Alerts would have to be redone anyway, seeing as a lot of them would lead to unfun and/or impossible situations. For example, capturing a non-Hossin continent gives a huge advantage to the home faction, global facility capture would probably lead to everyone fighting over the few facilities that aren't in any home faction and gives the advantage to the one faction that has locked their home continent, continent facility capture could only be done on the continents that have all three factions fighting (so Hossin and one other continent) and gives a slight advantage to the home faction, etc.
Alerts are an opportunity to earn bonus XP and certs doing something you'd be doing anyway. I play on Mattherson, and whether we win or lose, it's usually a good time.
Well alerts are fun to play since they give you some sort of a goal and a satisfaction in achieving it. The problem is not in the alerts themselves, but in population disbalance.
As much as I like alerts because of the amount of forth faction noobs I get to kill easily, it does seem disappointing to the unbalanced side because it's 3:1. There would be no point or fun out of leading a platoon, when it's obvious you are going to lose. I only participate on an squad/platoon during alerts when there is a slight chance of winning, or there are a lot of free kills. Other than that the imbalance of alerts is a turnoff for leaders who wants to plan organized platoons. Maybe continent locking will play a huge role in balancing an army and leading a squad, instead of zerging playing a huge role in battle tactics.
I find it interesting how alerts are the exact opposite of underpopulation XP. Alerts are basically overpopulation XP.
Except alerts on Waterson go something like this, TR has a slight pop advantage, maybe 3-4%, alert starts TR pop advantage explodes to 10%, TR get dominating victory. The only time alerts are even remotely balanced on waterson is during primetime and only on Indar so that the continent is locked from all the TR lemmings flooding it.
Every time an alert happens I have to quit playing. It's not "Oh, sometimes alerts are overwhelming" It's GG every single time that alert happens. Its a mechanic made to ruin everything good as fast as possible. Heres the typical scenario... Were fighting TR on indar. It's a good fight, relatively balanced. They have a small pop bonus, but every faction holding north indar always does. Regardless, the fighting is good, and lots of XP is being had. We're enjoying ourselves then... ALERT ALERT Immediately all of the TR leave to Esimir and were left with 24-48 allies fighting 1-12 enemies, so, do we leave to Esimir? TR pop is 58% VS pop is 18% We've all figured out that participating in these gets you farmed. You can have some success as a sniper, or a stealth vehicle, but actually participating is out the window. So I have to just quit playing... every time. Sometimes I'll roll a skyguard and just mess with the enemy, and such, but its mostly GG, I'll check in later. Now you figure were getting these alerts every 2 hours...
hey, I like alerts. I go some where else and roll over bases, easy and more relaxing action. (well, sometimes, sometimes not.) could care less about xp, i don't play for that.
I understand that...same with VS on Mattherson. But during the Alert, you get extra XP for doing the same thing you'd be doing anyway...fighting. You don't have to fight in the large lopsided battles. I go to other less-contested bases and fight where the numbers are more even. I'm not saying that they're fun for everyone, but then again, everyone can't win. Life's not fair, so I take advantage where I can. If SOE wants to boost my XP earning potential and call it an Alert, I'm taking it.
