Since Critical Mass I've logged in fewer and fewer times and often logged out at seeing the current state of map. Now that alerts require 25k cortium, often I'll log in and see whilst we may have 35-45% territory, our cortium level is 150/25,000 with 0 hives active. In this case I'll just log out. I can't be bothered waiting and fighting aimlessly for 2 hours while hives are built and cortium is mined. I probably now spend less than a third the time I originally did playing PS each week. How have you been effected by Critical Mass? Do you play more or less now?
I generally play as I want without bothering from the alert : 50-300 ISO + decal cosmetic are cool, but aren't the reason I'm keep playing PS2. When I want to play for the alerts, I build HIVE (which often took me 1h30 for disastrous result) or go chase enemy HIVE so my faction can build more HIVE. The new alerts are great things IMO, but devs should react quickly to the main drawback it have. Queue system for faction population combined with continent lock is an awful idea and that will lead soon or later to the end of PS2. New alert system push the problem even further since people for who alert reward matter will switch faction or log off because it's pointless to play for now, this lead to even bigger faction population umbalance and the way to counter it is frustrating as hell. Solving the new alert system problem (faction switcher) may be resolved by increasing the reward for the faction that win the alert while didn't trigger the alert.
Purgatory absolutely has to go. But populations still NEED to be more balanced than before Critical Mass. The only solution I see is upping the under-pop XP bonus through the roof like I've always said, and giving more ISO to the alert losers. All that said, the Alert fights are some of the best battles I've seen in this game. No more zergs, just an over-pop faction spreading out and desperately trying to hold as many bases as possible. I think Daybreak screwed that up too though. They extended the to compensate for the other two factions not fighting the starter, but now that they've figured it out it's too long for an alert. They should have kept them short and given an XP bonus when fighting the alert starter. It's all a mess, but it's salvageable.
Generally play as I would normally. NC never wins alerts when I'm online, so there's no point in acting any differently. Can't say I even stick around any longer for all of 50 ISO-4 either.
That's another thing the white knights ignore. During Asian prime time NC has a 5% or so win rate for alerts. The rest of the day makes up for some of it. It all depends on which faction the zergfits choose that night, and it's either VS or TR where I'm at. It's all so pathetic.
I'm definitely playing quite a lot more since the Meltdown alerts came in. Better fights (mostly) and more incentive to stay until the end to get the little rewards.
^^^ That is actually a great idea! 150 ISO for the win no matter if you start the alert would be cool, I don't think the decal would be missed as much as having the opportunity to make the same amount of ISO.
I play about the same number of times as before through the week but for longer each time. In between alerts feels about the same on EU servers but the fights during alerts are much more fun regardless of which side I am on. I don't think I have spent more than three or four minutes, tops, in VR although I start there more often now. I spend the time brushing up my ADAD and hip shooting skills. When I CBA to check, the faction pops are pretty even on EU servers. The only way I can see a big difference occurring is if people start bailing out from a faction, not that they can then swap to the winning faction because queue (I guess). I'm not too bothered about which faction gets how much ISO for this or that. It's nice to get anything for taking part in an alert, win or lose, after having a good fight into the bargain. And with those big, sustained fights I am raking in the certs as well. I would rather choose the reward for winning an alert i.e. choosing from an unspecified infantry, vehicle or aircraft reward as I currently have Harasser wheel trims and Scythe glass decal I have no use for but that is a trivial complaint really.
After about a week or 2 after the update, i suddenly stopped completely. Went back on for a mere 5 minutes today but i just don't feel like playing anymore. Decided to uninstall it and move on.
Long term with what I've been seeing across the NA servers, this update has been a step backwards. Faction swapping when the game had you know 5x the population wasn't felt as much as it is today. As much as I hate to say it the Alerts before made people play for an hour stint and after it was over it was time to log out. The extended alerts now tend to have swapping or logging out and I don't believe that was the intended outlook when this was implemented. The reality outside of primetime this game pretty hard to play for me anyways when I look at the map and there's 2 zerg fights going on and onezies and twozies trying to ghostcap other open points instead of small groups trying to take the bases. This is where PS1 is superior, the zerg wasn't the crutch that it's become in this game and they have designed the game around the zerg. When you design a game around population and the population dwindles below a certain threshold, the design is going to collapse. This update is starting a bad trend they don't need because if people don't wanna play alerts because of faction swapping, time commitment or w/e other reason. Population is declining and lets be honest the vets aren't helping bring new players into the game, it's also in a way not the vets fault. As the fights get smaller and people start getting destroyed by the people that have 5k+ hours into the game this is a deterrent to new players. Whom more than likely will quit to never return. So for the third time I bring back the idea of using Koltyr since the maps already created of course. And making 1v1 faction que timers for factions to battle it out. Have two factions go after 3 capture points that use counter bar over a 30 minute span. This should help with afew things, the most important one to me which may or may not be important is having controlled environments to see if equipment is actually balanced or not. Cuz you know the scatmax doesn't melt the other maxes in cqc. The other is this should be something that has incentive for the vets to play. As the population declines at least when it hits the low point us vets will still have a smaller scale deathmatch to enjoy.
I don't think the vets are at fault for either how they play the game (as long as they're not hacking) or their recruiting efforts. With a few notable exceptions, the gameplay I've seen is pretty common throughout the game. 1 vet holding back from playing the game 100% is not really gonna make a big difference, and they're gonna have a less fun play experience. And I have seen plenty of times in game where a vet offers support or advice to a new player. And with regards to getting other people to try the game, many vets have tried this. But the game is such a horrible toxic blender of most new players types, there never is really a chance for those new players to find a place to belong in the game. I do fault players when they lobby for toxic gameplay. None of the issues you cover are new problems. PS2 is like a pantry. Over years, the canned stuff nobody wants to eat just accumulates, and grows and grows to fill more of the pantry. Until one day you open the pantry and it's full of stuff you don't want to eat. PS2 is full of all the accumulated problems that the PS2 Devs couldn't fix over the years, and now players often log on to find a game with stuff they don't want to play. I am 1000% for PS2 Devs taking the PS2 gameplay and assets, and building smaller scale FPS gameplay experiences with it. Ideally, they'd just find a way to make low pop gameplay on the main Continents work, but after 5 years of making low pop gameplay worse, I don't think that is a potential outcome. So yeah, all access Koltyr, Battle Islands, whatever. I'm totally down for them to give it a shot.
The good: Ambusher jet packs - having loads of fun with those. ISO 4 rewards for alerts. Burster fix for VS max - seems a lot more accurate now. The bad: Swarm nerf - totally unnecessary change to what was already an underwhelming (and underperforming) weapon. Base AV turret nerf vs infantry - just why, it's not like they were hard to avoid and take out. Spawning into VR training probably 1 out of every 4 logins. Bloody Hossin seems to be the only continent unlocked far more than before the patch. Sometimes I just log straight back out again.
I play to get good fights, who gives a **** about the map / alert. If we win we win, if we don't who cares. My opinion is that there are more good, populated fights now and these fights are at a much wider range of bases. These are all good things. This is a minor griper for me but my only real issue is the amount of territory you need to maintain to win an alert. You have to stand 45 minutes with both factions attacking you (thats a 2 - 1 over pop) and loose no more than 5% (if you start at the lowest %). All this does is encourage ghost capping of continents to ensure the alert is started at like 60% territory so you don't loose.... that aint fun for anybody. The alerts need to be taken back to 30 minutes, OR the amount of territory you need to maintain should be reduced drastically.
I guess I play the same as before, except that now, much more often than before, I ragequit the game and go do something else.
currently i play less ... but that´s rather a phase of not playin much in general ... otherwise i would kinda say i just play as much as i usualy do ..
