[Suggestion] Does anyone actually like 1.5 hour alerts ?

Have to admit it - i'm now very very fed up with 1.5 hour alerts.

The story is always the same:

Faction A builds up a nice continent portfolio
...1.5 hour alert starts...
Faction A is double-teamed and loses just about everything in an hour
Faction B and C potentially start fighting each other - although they'll switch back to A if they try to take anything back. Sometimes they just keep going and warpgate A 'for the fun of it'.

I'm sure the intention was to encourage greater teamwork, tactics, strategy but the reality is that none of that means anything when you have double the population against you. This was also true for the short alerts but the problem is severely exacerbated by the extra time - people just get fed up and log off.

At the moment the very best strategy is to ensure you start the alert as B or C with very little territory - which seems bonkers.

They either need to:

1. Shorten alerts again
2. Do something to stop double-teaming
3. Do something to address population imbalance
4. All of the above

Instead we get Pumpkins...

Personally, my only issue with 1.5 hour alerts is that they always seem to occur right when i'm thinking of hopping out for a bit. It's frustrating in that regard, since I know the rewards for the alert are great, but investing the 1.5 hours when im already a bit burnt out is a seriously tall order in many cases.

1.5 hour alerts are definitely too long.

Double teaming is a chronic problem. My solution is exponential Nanite generation once a faction falls below 25% territory. That combined with less XP for taking bases from weak factions, and more XP from taking bases from strong factions.

The more territory you have the slower nanite gain. War cost resources and logistics takes time.

That being said, with ASP and Implants and general open world we have I've given up any balance. It is all personal/squad/platoon/outfit meta at this point. I would appreciate long alerts if you were more directly rewarded for what you did when you were active during it. It shouldn't matter if you were there from the start or end, we should have an individual/squad/outfit based VP system.

TL;DR: In a persistent and eternally meaningless war the only things which matters are the people playing. Make your players feel good about contributing instead of "Oh, I won't get anything for this so I'm not going to care"-system DGB have now.

Meh. It works.

I find the dominant team is quickly double teamed into 3rd place in the first half of the alert. The remaining two then turn on each other and initially dominant, but now 3rd place team begins eating back territory.

In the last quarter of the alert a fresh reassessment of who should be double teamed occurs and things often get into a pretty tight tossup.

When the alerts were much shorter, yes, it was best to start the alert NOT in first place. You got double teamed and then couldn't recover.

It's way too long 45min is better, i feel forced to play for a """""""""possible"""""""""" acceptable reward, and feel like my time ruined when i lost with 1.5 timer..

I hate them and I also hate how long they take to trigger. I generally play between 10pm and 1am UK time and there's hardly ever an alert on when I play, they generally start too late for me to play them through.

45 minutes was much better, maybe 60 minutes would be a good compromise, but I still don't get why it takes like 5 hours for WG to charge, it's just meaningless.

I have to admit there are times when a 90 minute alert pops up and that's the deciding factor for logging out. I know I'm not going to finish it so I'll use it as excuse to log. Maybe if the Alert checked progress every thirty minutes and paid out smaller chunks instead of having to make it the whole time. IDK. Mostly I wish there was something to discourage jumping teams when it becomes clear who is going to win. The prized for being the victor seems to out weigh the time investment payout by a fair margin. (Though I'm new so this could just be a misconception on my part.)

Continents are always open too long too. Continents should be open no longer than 3 hours. It's just terrible to log on and see its a continent you dont like and to know that you might be stuck on said continent for the entirety of your play time.

Open the continent, immediately have one of the random new alerts, even though they are bad, and then have the lock alert start immediately after that. 2 hours would be even better than 3.

Agreed, 90 minute alerts are way too long. Even as someone with a lot of free time, it's not something I'll wait out when I'm thinking about logging off. 45 or 60 would be better.

45 minutes please.. 60 max. but hour and a half is incredibly too long. especially if you've sat in the game for an hour or two before that just to get the locking alert. The game isn't casual friendly and I really think it should be at least encouraging for casuals to play..

While largely semantic I would modify this to: the game at least shouldn't discourage casuals from playing. (Of course that creates a double negative... so I've failed at English. DAMN YOU GIN!)

That's one thing I love about the mini alerts. You often get those last minute clutch fights every 30 minutes. It would be nice if we had more if those and that they payed better, then a shorter main alert.

What's worse though, I got the fps bug while my faction was crushing it, after hours of losing. Everyone jumped ship from the losing side and we had considerably more pop than the other factions, so I knew if I relogged I would never get back in. Sure enough, an alert started 10 minutes later and I spent the entire thing at 4 fps watching YouTube and making sure I didn't get disconnected. Alerts are a little long, but Purgatory is a much worse problem.

Sucks when the only continent open for hours on end is Esamir. Bad enough with the blinding whiteness.

45 minute alerts were bad too, because the faction with major control of their territory was able to hold the most of it by the end of that timer. That's because players are inertial, it's not that easy to get them to go and fight dominant faction, unless they are in coordinated zergfit. The idea of fighting dominant faction appeared on their mind only when there is 10 minutes left. Long alert allows for those players to "wake up" when they're still capable of making difference.

Also I wouldn't call that dominant faction gets doubleteamed this instant. At least not on Miller. The first thing that happens is that both VS and NC warpgating TR. Always. No matter how much territory do they have, it's like they're trying to get TR out of the game and then trying to compete with each other for the first and the second place.

I don't see a big problem with the long alert itself. As the triggering faction is meant to be doubleteamed, one has to make either sure that you are "way ahead" or "way behind". Actually i won more alerts coming from the Underdog postion as opposed to being the alert initiating faction.
The key to winning is always the same: make sure the other 2 are fighting. If not try to provoke them into fighting each other.

Is a 1,5 hour alert long? Yes.
Is it too long? No.
Are most Zergfits too stupid to grasp any of this? Yes.

I find it more depressing that i have to wait over 4 hours until an alert can even be triggered. And that i can do nohting to speed this up. I can also do nothing to prepare an advantage.

The old VP Point system wasn't great, but i built a lot and found it great that i can lock a continent if i manage to hold out with my base long enough. (Which sometimes worked.)
Now it is just waiting and then zerging. Nothing else. No tactics. No preparation. No thinking. Just "bring more people".

Sometimes you just cannot "dumb it down" any more, they reached the limit of simplicity already.
And while an easy system is great for beginners to understand, it is frustrating and boring for veterans.
Same goes for complex sytems like the old VP system. I was great, it offered multiple ways to win. But it was too complex for a big part of the playerbase, so they felt it being unfair because the veterans took advantage of it to its fullest.
So, this is the state we currently live in: Being more clever than your opponent is considered unfair. So in order to make the dumb not to feel played, you have to restict the more clever players options. In other words, forcefully dumb him down.
NOT FUN!

A lot of the events are also totally meaningless and simply are not winable. Those are in most cases all events around the amps, biolabs, techplants.

Events that work well:
Large outpost captures
Air anomaly

But the rewards, one or two implants. Oh boy. Always the same. Never any expectional implants.
Put in some variety please. It is not like getting implants 90% of the time as a reward isn't "fine" but having at least some chance to get something nice: A camo, A weapon unlocked, some certs, some visual stuff. This would make a difference so players would actually want to win an event. Today nobody cares about 2 implants... *Yawn*

Also i reached the point where i seem to have gotten everything instead of the rarest of the rewards (Still missing any alert reward weapons.) But i seem to get either; 100 certs or a xp booster. EVERY TIME. I am swimming in certs. I don't need 100 extra.
While some beginner sure likes getting 100 certs extra on top, i just feel insulted by it.

I like shorter alerts as well. When they occur, I feel like playing more to get the cert rewards but I end up getting sleepy and quitting before the alert ends. Maybe they should also add rewards depending on your contribution even if you go offline after a while.

Long alerts. Short alerts. That is only the selfish perception of people. Truly skilled players should be able to win with whatever tactics they put into motion. The endless rotation is pointless, however. In the end, the only reality is that players will say they want one thing during feature planning and then do something completely different with it during execution.

The alerts feel like you got no control over them at all. No matter what you do in the end it usually only matters who will be double teamed around the 45minutes mark when the 4th faction picks a side. I think I can predict the final winner by that time with a 90% accuracy.
What happens before the alert begins does not matter at all(aside from the fact that you are better not winning or your chances to win the alert are very slim...unless 2 continents are open in which case you still have a decent chance). I have seen a faction with 100% territory lose in less than 1h...so 90 minutes are way more time than needed to turn EYERYTHING around. Your influence on your own zergs is equal to 0(seems to count even for their "leaders")...and your influence on the zergs of the enemy factions is 0. Basicly you can lean back and watch.

Large outpost and air anomaly are as screwed as all other events. Just in a different way. Neither the air pads nor the large outpost have been spread equally over the map...so certain starting positions are at a serious disadvantage. It's the same like with alerts on Esamir: If you start in the upper left corner you will most likely not win that alert...no matter what you do.
On top of that air anomaly is usually won by the faction that brings in the largest zerg at the start of it(which often is the faction that gets the first or second anomaly in their territory). It's over after 5-10 minutes. From that point on you often got a deathball camping in the air and the 2 losing factions just trying to slip in an aircraft or 2 once in a while to secure second place.

And yes, it seems like you can only get the most common implants from events. So they get pretty uninteresting after a very short time.

I like it better than the previous system, but it could use some changes for sure. Every 5 hours minimum and 1.5 hr duration is just annoying. Every 3-4 and 1 hr duration at least would be nice. Even if it meant reducing the rewards a bit. Which I think they shouldn't do though =).