How could Indar ever get locked?

Hello,

I have a question regarding the new continent locking which is to be released in few months. The goal is to be able to lock a continent to move the fights elsewhere.

My question is: how will Indar ever get locked? How often do you see any empire getting the continent bonus from Indar now? Even if one faction has a great overpop, I never see the other two factions being warpgated on Indar, even though it regularly happens on other continents.

So what will change about Indar when the continent locking comes? Because if nothing changes then it will end with Esamir, Amerish and Hossin being locked with only fights being on Indar.

Everybody and his dog is on Indar now, this won't change with Hossin, everyone will play on Hossin for a week then back to Indar (like when other continents got revamped). Not only everyone will be on Indar, but other continents will not have a few small fights like now, they will be locked.

Please prove me wrong, but I don't see how this could work any other way. I have been thinking about this for a long time, and unless the cap percentage for Indar is like 60% bases to lock it, it will be the only continent being unlocked all the time, making the Indarside problem even worse.

They've said cont locking will work off Alerts that are triggered through special circumstances, but they're a bit light on exact the details of it.

It will probably happen in Connery on weekdays. There is a 4-5 hour time period when hordes of Asian players would login and boost VS population to over 60%. They can definitely get the whole continent if they are trying hard enough.

It will get locked when people are occupied somewhere else. This game is mostly about numbers. When you have more people on continent than two other factions combined, you tend to lock the continent. When you are trying to hold other continents, and if people are actually made to care about continent locking, they will flock to defend the vulnerable ones. In the process Indar will most likely be locked by the 3rd faction.

This is how it worked in Planetside 1. "Home" continents were obviously a little more difficult to lock. But back then in the later stage of the game there were 9 continents, 1 battle isle continent consisting of 4 isles and 5 caverns. 1 empire can't hold all 19 objectives at the same time against 2 other empires, unless they have serious advantage in the player count. This created a never ending cycle and many fun times.

I miss it.. Oh how I miss those days.

@ OP, I think you are missing the point.

There will no longer be a warp gate for each faction on Indar. Indar will be the home of ONE faction and there will only be one uncapturable warpgate on Indar. To get to Indar you will require to hold one of the two capturable warpgates on Indar, which means you will need the connecting warpgate on Hossin, Esimir or Amerish. This means that unless everyone just zergs against the one faction who lives on Indar (would expect the NC) the old "everyone to Indar" wont be possible.

http://planetside.wikia.com/wiki/Continent_Locking

There is the wiki link with a nice picture of how it will be layed out, just looking at that layout should tell you that zerging any continent will be difficult.

When they go the next step and add the battle island inbetween home continents it will become even more difficult to open up a zerg on any continent.

I would expect most zerg like fights to take place on Hossin.

The same way Indar got locked when PS2 was released; 3am ops with coordinated outfits capping down all lanes in one go.

I know, the Adversary Alerts when one faction has to cap certain % of continent to win, while the other two have to prevent the one faction to cap the continent to win the alert, effectively reducing the chance of Indar being capped even more.

Good for you, but we have nothing like that on Woodman. We have large NC and TR population of very bad players and VS who are slightly underpopped but have much greater organization and win most alerts. I don't see any of our factions capping Indar.

But what will move players from Indar elsewhere? What if they just keep playing on Indar like they do now, not even going to other continents for alerts like most people do, just stay on Indar all the time. There is constant population on Indar, unlike other continents. What will change between now and continent locking to make people move from Indar? Don't say Hossin that will last a week before players return to Indar

We won't even have Battle Islands at he start of Continent Locking. But the question is what will prevent people to lock all the continents except Indar which will be impossible to lock due to everyone being there?

From that picture, what will stop TR from stomping Esamir as that's their home continent and NO ONE except TR will be there as everyone else will be on Indar, controlling whole Esamir thus having the Indar warpgate, too. And the VS just stomp Amerish as no one gives a ***, control the other Indar warpgate. And now we have Esamir and Amerish locked, with 3 warpgates on Indar belonging to each of the factions, everyone is on Indar which is impossible to lock and all other continents are locked already, but nobody even tries to unlock them.

I just don't see all those people who are religiously spending all their time on Indar suddenly moving to other continents (which they must hate) when there is even better and fuller Indar now.

Do you see the problem? Why would Indar lovers even try to unlock other continents, when that just increases the chance of their bellowed Indar getting locked, even if the chance increases from 0.3% to 0.5%.

That is really terrible, relying on night players/Chinese/Russians to help during the night. Just to get the indar unlocked as soon as prime time gets close, as Indar lovers will do anything to be able to play on Indar.

I'm pretty sure that's not how they're going to work, because that'd be completely stupid.

What? That's like one of the very few confirmed and official pieces of information out there about continent locking. Are you serious? Because this is how it WILL work for sure.

Those alerts will start automatically when one faction gets close enough to cap a continent, and alerts will be continent based so there can be more alerts/adversary alerts at the same time.

Source.

I don't know how SOE can think "An event that basically assures a double team" is in any way a good idea.

It is a great idea in cases of extreme overpop, and to stop a faction from stomping the other two, it discourages fighting between the two underpopped factions and assures a tough and fun fight for everyone, even though a meat grinder.

It is not as great if the pops are equal as that reduces chances of one faction capping a continent, but it's not like the players participating in this adversary defense alert wouldn't be defending the continent anyway... Is it's non-Indar continent than those defending it are not Indar-addicts and would defend a continent from being lost over fighting uselessly on Indar anyway, and if it's Indar aversary alert then those Indar lovers would be defending Indar anyway, as they don't ever fight anywhere else. So the Adversary alerts are just making what players would do anyway "official" and give reward at the end. Not much of a impact, if the alerts wasn't there but otherwise the locking would work the same, about same amount of people would attend the event IMHO.

It'll happen in the middle of the night.

We used to cap Indar all the time when the continent cap level was 100%. You just have to work harder.

I would personally attend to such event even though it would cost me sleep, just to lock the s*** out of Indar.

Can you imagine how great it would be to have those large scale fights anywhere else than Indar?

The problem is Indar would get unlocked as soon as prime time begins, as Indar lovers would steamroll other continent with giant zergs as fast as possible to get their Indar back...

Im purely speculating here because we havent enough info to make an educated decission:

I must admit it confuses me a little how it will work, but one thing is obvious, it will be extremely difficult to get all factions fighting on Indar (or any cont) at once like we do now.
If nothing else because you will require to capture a warpgate to even spawn there and if you deploy all you faction there the NC will just go via another lattice and back cap you on Hossin or the VS will take your warpgate. This means your warpgate will be dissconneted meaning you will need to go back and capture your hossin gate again before being able to capture ANYTHING on Indar. You will still need connection to YOUR warpgate (in the case of the TR your home warpgate on Esamir) to capture anything on Indar.

The only way we would get the Indar farm we have now (god knows why people do that its the worst of all three), is if the TR and VS grouped up to capture all their home continents and the all of Hossin and agreed to share Hossin in order to warpgate the NC. I very much doubt those spandex wearing girls would entertain not shooting the oppressors for a second.

My worry is actualluy that there will be nothing but Hossin fights and the old continets will be empty!

I guess we are both just going to have to wait and see.

Lets look at this picture:

Now lets ignore there will be no Battle Islands when the continent locking launches, hopefully the Hossin will be there.

What stops Vanu from dominating Amerish and TR from dominating Esamir? These days only a few dozens of players go to those continents, what reason would they have to go there after Continent locking?

What does capping a continent means anyway in this map? Imagine the Battle Islands are not there. What if VS cap Amerish and TR cap Esamir, do they now have each WG on Indar? If this happenes due to nobody defending Esamir and Amerish (like it's now) then VS will have south-western Indar WG and TR will have south-eastern Indar WG, but those two are both connected to Hossin western WG!

I really don't understand how this could work, but I want Indarside to die, I want those big fights anywhere else.

It will get locked by people who play late at night until the next morning, when a mass rush to cap another continent will take place.

So what you are saying is we will be back to Indarside?

It will never be "like it is now" that is the whole point.

Now you can just select the continent you want to fight on, redeploy to your factions warpgate on the continent and fight EVEN if the only land you own on indar is your factions warpgate.
This will not be posible when continent locking comes out as you will have to fight in order to gain a lattice.

The one thing that isnt clear to me is capturing of wargates. What happens when one end of the link is owned by NC and the other is owned by TR? No one can travel between those warpgates i guess!?

Thing is, the first "locking" will be simply disabling a continent that was captured, until the other continent is captured, there will be no lattices in the beginning for a good while. So it will still be Indarside for some time.

So the battle islands are not coming with the first iteration of continent locking? I thought the continent locking feature takes so long because the battle islands need to be built. What are the devs doing then?? Hossin is already in development over a year.