Why are 24-48 TR ignoring an alert to sit in a cut base?

Why are 24-48 TR ignoring an alert to sit in a cut base?

Well it's because they don't give a flying money's about winning the alert.

They can play in some god forsaken corner of the map and not interact with the alert because frankly interacting with it isn't rewarding. Or at least isn't much more rewarding than ignoring it.

If you win you get 150 Certs and 300 ISO-4 but if you lose you STILL get 75 and 150 respectively. And from their perspective there's always a chance their allies might clinch the win anyway and get them the extra bonus.

Firstly that's messed up the loss reward should be something like 25 ISO-4 and maybe 25 Certs. The win can be boosted by the difference so that players are on average receiving the same amount assuming equal win rates. So winning would net 550 ISO-4 and 250 Certs. A meaningful difference in results to encourage a faction to WANT to win.

I'm actually almost at the point for flat out advocating for a return to the old 50% off discounts for Air, Armour and Consumables for continent locks. Sure they were a little prone to snowballing but at least people cared.

I've suggested before a tiered system where a factions 1st lock gets a great lock bonus, 2nd lock gets a reasonable lock bonus and a 3rd lock gets a mediocre lock bonus to minimize snowballing. Would it really be that hard to implement something that gave players something to care about?

Seriously, without looking them up who knows what the current lock bonuses are? Let alone which continents they belong to?

The chances are, many still won't care ...

1. Long time ASP 100 players don't need certs or ISO
2. They're probably farming for directives
3. Just find the large battle generally more interesting than the alert
4. Don't want the stress of trying to win the alert if they don't think they can win

And if enough do, this would be a major issue for under popped factions as they would likely come in last place depending on how bad their pop is. Also there is the double team problem where are the two highest pop factions would double team the lowest pop traction to ensure they get first or second place.

Rewarding for winning an alert will never be a good way to incentivice players fighting the alert.

Even in a best-case scenario with perfectly balanced gameplay, populations and skill distributions you have only a 33,33% chance of winning an alert. That's not an incentive that is a timed lootbox.

The only way to reward an alert is to make fighting the alert itself rewarding, not the end result. the reward for winning should be a small bonus, not the main goal of the player.
This should be somewhat obvious: it is currently more rewarding in enjoyment for players to fight in a cut off base than it is to fight the alert. And with how enthusiatic players were at joining alerts and potential team-based combat when Escalation promised to make that gameplay fun it should be a no-brainer that making it enjoyable is the first step, rewards are secondary.

Because it's more fun than playing the alert??

Agreed lock bonuses are a major incentive. I don't think it's the whole issue though, but definitely a good chunk of it.

I'll agree with Demigan that alert incentives won't be enough if the alert itself isn't fun to play. I won't even debate whether the current alert system is good or not because at this point it's a moot argument. We've had the same system for too long and it's gotten stale.

If I had the controls I would look to bring back micro alerts. I'd play test the live server a bit and see if they preferred 1 hour micro alerts with first to two wins takes the continent or 45 minute alerts and first to three wins takes it. A 15ish minute grace period when the continent opens would also be needed. People need their breaks, PLs need to figure out who they're keeping and who's leaving after the last lock etc.

The thing about this concept is that it's flexible. New alert types can be added in on the fly. If an alert type is bad it can be removed. The other point I honestly do want back is the kill score alert. With that one double teamers either need to back off the double team, or give a free alert to a faction.

However since this thread started with the topic of incentives, perhaps our shiny new mission system could have a "win an alert" mission with decent payout. The act of clicking on it will make players remember that winning alerts is a thing.

Drgnx I appreciate that no single solution will draw everyone into caring about an alert, but if even 20% of those who currently ignore them focus on them that would be a major win IMO. In part because your 4th point is self perpetuating. If half your team is ignoring the alert then you can't win so why try... so you become another member of your team not trying.

As for the population issues... well that's it's own issue assuming we could magically ensure 33% for each faction alerts are still in need of work. So while I agree that it's a problem, it's a problem regardless of the continent locking mechanics and nothing you do to alerts is going to change that.

Demigan, you know as I wrote my post I did consider that rewarding only the winners doesn't actually solve the issue. Nothing feels like a kick in the teeth more than trying and being so close but then getting next to nothing for a reward. In truth it'd need to have a the rewards scaled to participation (eg earning experience at the frontline or some other metric) so that even if you're on the winning side you don't automatically get all the bonuses while messing around all day.
The flip side being that with such a system even a loser who tried hard could earn reasonable bonuses.

The 33% chance lootbox you talk about is the current structure. And yes my earlier post didn't address that. I hope the above would resolve some of that concern though. I'd argue that for a main alert (not a MAX or air alert) there's not much you can do to increase it's enjoyment, it's the game just asking you to fight specific fights.

As RabidIBM mentioned, the alerts feel stale, IMO it's because they've taken what used to be a component of continent locking and made it the entire system. We could probably just go back to the Victory Point system where alerts weren't automatic continent locks and resolve quite a few of these issues.

JustGotSuspended agreed. I'm thinking back to when Esamir gave 50% off of ground vehicles, it was sometimes as much about denying one faction the snowball as it was trying to win for yourself. It added a richness and depth where you considered each factions standing globally as well as their standing on the current continent before deciding who/where to attack. It's a feeling that's just been missing in recent years.

RabidIBM don't worry, I'll debate it. The current alert system sucks and they should retun to Victory Points! It was only removed was because Hive spam made it a game of whack-a-mole rather than about capturing lattice bases.

I agree, the micro alerts were fun and flexible, I like your idea of having a first to X system, it's actually not too dissimilar to the VP system of old either you could maybe combine the concepts by making specific alerts worth certain amounts of VP such that for example winning 3 of a given type would push you over the winning threshold.

Haha, it's okay. I'm happy enough to derail the thread slightly if it means discussing interesting ways to improve the game. I like your ideas. I'm recently back from a hiatus from the game and haven't looked too much into the missions system yet, it could be a good idea.

it is always sad to see those discussions. Strictly speaking as Infantryman:

I would think that around BR70-80 you have gained enough certs to have all the weapons, equipment and implants you need for your particular game-play. Not all the implants but the ones you use.

So you do not need more certs or ISO. The alert from that perspective has nothing special to offer. You can get certs by killing or rezzing or repairing or whatever, so you find you something you enjoy more than an alert, then you will do it.

if you are below that rank you may need certs. But again, if I kill someone I get certs immediately. if I participate to an Alert I may get something at the end (or not so much). So, if I find something to do that gives me reward and I like it, why should I follow an alert?

What about Alerts to give something different? E.g. some special weapon or camo or equipment or implant or title or whatever not obtainable in other ways? Maybe something you can keep for a limited amount of time so if you like and you want to keep it you will do more alerts?

My point here was about lowering rewards for losing teams. Servers where one faction consistently has the lowest pop would likely see this faction suffering tremendously if you implemented a reward system as you recommend and get the results you're looking for.

You can make more certs and gain more experience points by farming a bio lab then you can winning an alert, as it is.
if you lower the certs for losers, its more incentive to farm if you think you can't win.
in my opinion, all directives should have incorporated alert battles in them: but also make sure people want to go to those other fights

also keep in mind there is strategy in defending a cut off base if you think you can reconnect it.

Ok, so you want the current system gone because you think it's bad and I want it gone because it's stale. Different roads, same destination.
I like your idea of hybrid objectives. If we had VPs with alerts being worth VP it would give a faction who are out of the alert something to do. Been smaked out of the air in the air alert? Grab the tech plants for 3VP. Free air alerts with bastions would be interesting, the bastion would be a local spawn, but the bastion killers would be free. On that note, alerts should probably be 50% discount rather than free.

My point is more that an XP reward can only really be an incentive, rather than the reason to play a certain part of the game. While you can start up the game thinking "I'm going to get enough XP to do X", you want to enjoy getting there. If the best way to get XP was to sit in a corner of the map and repeat a game of rock-paper-scissors with an enemy for an hour straight my guess is you would stop playing soon enough.

The first and foremost reward players come for is the MMOFPS gameplay the game has. All other things like KD, Directives, certs and other resources or rewards are only there to give players goals to seek out during their play. The XP/special item during and at the end of an alert is just another incentive to achieve the goal, but if the players experience it as a slightly better version of rock-paper-scissors in a map corner, why would they engage in that? Why should they leave the gameplay that rewards them with enjoyment over gameplay that they don't enjoy?

The alerts prioritize players to take bases. The fastest current way is to avoid the main MMOFPS elements of the game: attack easy bases, attack the weakest faction, use all tricks to prevent the enemy from being able to do anything at all, overpop places and whatever else you can imagine. Fighting a fair fight is the last thing that will earn you an alert victory.

You need to make the gameplay for alerts more fun to play. Make sure that winning the alert encourages you to create more fair and equal battles, make sure the gameplay flow doesn't halt constantly between captures or when the defenders are holed up in a spawnbunker designed to keep defenders in rather than a springboard to retake the base from and all that stuff. Fun is what the reward needs to be first and foremost. An XP reward that encourages players to join a gameplay they don't like is never good!

Honestly I have seen it allot. Having a significant portion of two factions in a farm fight means those two factions will loose the alert. I have seen TR fight NC in a biolab that was cut off before the alert started for the whole alert, so VS wins the alert. VS best chance at winning an alert is a TR NC bio lab fight.

Honestly I do not think any incentive would stop the farm fight mentality. Even when they had the mini alerts the farm fight players stayed in their farm fights. -Bio lab farm fight does not care about vehicle spawn cost or bonuses from connected lanes. (IE base X provides Y to the faction as long as it is controlled and connected to warp gate.)

Removing the farm fight zones leads to heavy complaints.

While there are things that can be done to stop farm fights to get fights in to base capturing such actions would cause significant outcry and rage quite PS2.
example they could pull people out of a cut off base by limiting how many times people from a faction that is cut off can spawn in a zone. so lets say 100 that means once 100 people spawned in a cut off base it is no longer a viable spawn point. The fall out would be farm fight players leaving the game causing the already low pop of the servers.
Or if lets say limit how many spawns a faction has in X amount of time based on server pop, could make it so that farm fights are not sustainable. -again would cause people to leave the game.

there was a time when you could not spawn at a cut off base, but they added it back

Perhaps they could introduce a system where a cut base's respawn time gradually increases in relation to how long it's been cut. It'd be a way to emulate the effect of a cut off base running out of resources without adding a full system for it.

I like this idea

But does not affect sunderers, galaxies, spawn beacons, or logistics

True, I'd not considered those, that said I'd also argue that for the most part they're not permanent enough to sustain a fight on their own.
Besides, it could probably be made to include them, certainly they have the means to prevent me from deploying to a sunderer in a region where my faction is already overpopping. What reason is there that they couldn't add a similar region wide effect that adds say 1.5 seconds per minute to the time before any local respawn becomes available?

I think that'd be a reasonable time... after ten minutes players would be feeling the added 15 seconds.

Why don't we gradually decrease the amount of players in the game for each suggestion to completely destroy the gameplay many of them like while leaving alerts in the FU state it is in right now? Oh wait that is already happening!

Lets face it: alerts and capturing the continent are the worst designed features in the game.
- the rewards encourage backstabbing allies to get the outfit resources you want. On an individual level the rewards for winning in an equal fight can only be gained 33% of the time and don't reward the player for their effort.
- the gameplay flow of capturing bases encourages players to avoid fights through Ghost Caps or shut it down with Zergs. Spawnrooms then prevent defenders a solid chance of retaking the base. The gameplay flow of capturing bases is a constant jerky movement: wait for the timer to run down while nothing really happens, wait while the attackers get their spawns up and running since almost no base offers a solid way to spawn enough vehicles and counter the attacker ones in time. Redeploy across the grid or redeploy to a warpgate and drop with a Gal. It all takes time of just waiting around for something to happe . Players want continuous battles.


It is either this, or we could collectively start doing the exact same as you do: ask for gameplay features designed to limit alerts and continent captures or ask for parts of the alert features to be completely removed. If you feel that idea is completely idiotic, THAT'S THE POINT STOP SUGGESTING THE DESTRUCTION OF OTHER PEOPLE'S FUN AND START SUGGESTING TO MAKE YOUR GAMEPLAY ACTUALLY FUN.

Good god how many times do I need to suggest the simplest of simple idea's of "make it fun" before you guys get it?

Demigan. You know what, I actually agree with most of this. I'm an advocate for returning to the VP system where a factions ability to win depends on a range of factors not simply an alert. In that system there was much less impact from players choosing to fight in a cut base.

But under the current system it is frustrating.

Truthfully, were all just blowing off steam here because it's not like the Devs seem to care what anyone here says. They've been lurching this game from disaster to mishap to chaos for years. Everything is a bandaid, they don't have the manpower to chose to do anything but the simplest fixes.

It has always been a problem of Planetside that nothing gets truly fixed and in most cases made worse.
But they seem to have enough manpower to add new vehicles and factions and whatnot.
But you can't make money out of fun gameplay and fixes.

Sadly, I feel this is the biggest issue. When TI Alloys got disabled, people threw a fit because it was one of the best fights on the continent, even if it was a slow, messy affair that leeched players needed to win alerts. I'm 90% sure it got added back this patch. Biolabs got changed a bit this patch but they'll still probably be pop sinks. Just pop sinks that need territory around it to be capped too. These fights are ostensibly bad for the gameplay flow that has been designed, but they're also the best way to get the unique, high numbers experience Planetside offers outside of being on one end of a zerg. Fixing these problems will end up pissing off a fair number of people, still won't fix the games bigger issue of gameplay flow, and we will just spiral into shutdown faster than we would normally.

The NSOverhaul, for all its problems, has generated some hype. We will probably get an uptick of new and returning players, the devs will get enough money to continue working on the game, and the cycle will go on. Maybe if the game lasts long enough we can get a major overhaul, but until then, the Devs will go with what makes money and allows them to keep the game running. (And depending on how you feel, even then they can't do things right...)