As each player from each faction will naturally choose a continent in which they are doing good. I have seen many times now like 40% overpop on Indar for one faction, on Amerish for another and if there is a 3rd continent, then that goes for the 3rd faction. Not sure how you could resolve this, I'm just pointing my finger and saying "look" !
One solution is to provide rewards for being underdog, and to diminish rewards for being overkill. To influence the choices of players, and motivate them to organize in more balanced fights. Another solution is to recognize that some players like this type of gameplay, and to continue to offer this type of gameplay. Until the remaining ongoing playerbase is players who like this kind of gameplay, and others that fit within this model.
The thing is that players are rational and seek to maximize their reward; ISO4 and cosmetics. Therefore when an alert is initiated on a continent, most players from the initiating faction will flock to that continent. In turn this might provide enough leeway on the remaining continent(s) to trigger an alert there, making the opposition on the first continent leave completely. To prevent the winning side from flocking, one might give the alert-win reward to all players regardless of which continent they are on. This would also not encourage the loosing side to seek better opportunities elsewhere
I played in an alert last night, NC had something 84% and VS had the rest, you couldn't even see the TR section on the bar. And again tonight NC just steamrolled through base after base with dozens of tanks, aircraft and max units. There was nothing anybody could do except bend over and take it. Totally unbalanced.
Which server was this on? I have seen another post from someone on Connery where the faction that triggered an alert got steamrollered as well. someone else predicted this sort of behaviour before the patch and DBG did contribute to the thread saying they would monitor such a thing if it happened. I do hope they come up with something because my only experience so far has been on EU servers where the five or six alerts I've taken part in were tremendous fun and were fought between relatively balanced faction populations. It would sadden me if others don't get the same, good experience or if these tactics spread to Miller/Cobalt and undermine a positive new feature.
Depends on the time of day; TR tends to do quite good in prime time along with NC. TR/NC tends to swing back and forth during the day (two days there were 4 TR alerts completed during the day, yesterday it was all NC instead) but yea outside a prime continent in prime time (i.e. Indar or Esamir) chances are who ever triggers the alert will steamroll it to victory on Miller atm. What's more annoying is no one bothers building bases as they will get automatically blown up once the alert is over where (on all factions) you can hold 50%+ of land and the base exp is below 3k ticking up at 2 bases at 4 points a tick.
I was thinking: I wonder if deliberately losing alerts might be a more efficient way to gain ISO-4... I know everyone is dead set on winning, but getting Cortium to max, then hitting the 41% line, only to lose shortly after, would allow more alerts to be triggered in quick succession (each faction can trigger them) and increase the inflow of ISO-4 to each player. As everyone gets a reward, even if you lose; are lots of losses better than one win? Not to mention the XP bonus during alerts, keeping that running gives everyone more xp (and thus certs) at the same time. Can we game the game, and win by losing? (Though the amount of collaboration required to achieve this is probably beyond the player base in PS2 I suspect!)
its an inevitaility that when you give free loot to the "winners" everyone will switch to the winning side..., they should already know this because it happened during the WDS, TR ended up winning with a higher score than NC and VS combined. offer free loot to the winning side and everyone will switch to whatever side is winning... they're rewarding zergy overpop and punishing players who play the underdog factions, its entirely opposite to what it should be.
The alert will run for the fixed duration even if the triggering faction wipes out completely and hence this will not work in practice. This will also get even more annoying with the new 45 min duration alerts on a ghost continent; I've already seen alerts ending with one side holding 80%+ of the continent and now you get to spend another 15 min twiddling your thumbs at the last bases with even fewer people around to fight (due to longer alerts chances are higher they will overlap even more).
I suppose I should be surprised at hearing this, but for some reason I'm not. I saw the exact same thing happen on Emerald yesterday, only here VS was at around 76 NC was about 17 and TR had 7. You had to look at the map to see what TR had as they were not showing a number on the bar. However its important to note that this was not population, but territory controlled. Today I logged in and noticed TR have an up to 15% total population advantage over both NC and VS and were steamrolling us with sheer numbers. You could take down 1 or 2 enemies only to have 3 others waiting behind them to take you out, and more behind them again line a never ending wave. It makes the game unplayable for those on the receiving end and quite frankly just makes me log off and play something else. Its not that I mind losing, losing to a foe with superior tactics I can respect, but losing to a foe that just steamrolls you with vastly superior numbers i no fun and better tactics dont work when they outnumber you to such an extent.
