I think I kinda like the new system, thanks, well done, but there is (imo) one big flaw ..

What do we do now?

Wait for 4 hours? Then another 1h30 ?

(VS)

I said it this morning in /yell... Why do NC/TR refuse to fight VS? the world pops dictate that 2 factions should not be warp gated. If both factions would just push back even a tiny bit, that would not happen. However if you look on the map, NC/TR is still fighting each other.

that may be true, but my point wasn't that at all


Basically, before the patch, once a faction started dominating the map (usually once above 41), it would be time to build HIVEs and a whole bunch of HIVEs would soon pop up, farming the cortium until soon the alert started.

Now, with the new system, depending on how long the warpgates have been charging already, the dominating faction has to wait and keep dominating up to 4 HOURS for the Alert to start, and once it does, that's another 1h30.


I don't know, it feels like I'm the only one seeing the issue here? oO

The habit of staying where the farm is best is strong in the PS2 community; there's little incentive to make any tactically sound decisions when zerging is the best tactic and it's such a massive grind to get achievements and unlock new gear.

So if the NC and TR have a good-sized farm going, they'll largely ignore VS as they proceed to ghost-cap the continent. Until the two finally realize they're getting warpgated, then they'll double-team the VS into oblivion until the alert starts.

And I wouldn't be the least surprised if VS ended up third in that alert later on...

they removed subscriptions, thus you get gamers with very low IQs playing this game. When people had to pay to play, there was a certain civility to the game that you can't find now. Its full of twitch shooters that care about KD over strategy.

This is why most Planetside 2 players give ZERO FACKS about the map and territory. As long as there is a CALL OF DUTY size base to play in, who cares.

Starting an alert to go to a new continent will not fix the issue. NC/TR will just fight each other on the next continent. I guess I do fail to see the issue that you're addressing.

Another big issue (that was already present but is now amplified)
when the whopping 2 hour continent lock alert finally ends the server pop PLUMMETS.
Most people will have stuck around for the whole thing, aiming for that big payday at the end,
so after 2 hours when 2/3 of the server pop are given a measly 70 iso for their time, they log off.
It's good that continents aren't constantly locking, it just feels like everyone gets burnt out after the alert ends.
The "Winner takes all" approach isn't good, the winner should get a little extra,
but everyone who participated for the majority of a 2 hour event should feel rewarded at the end.

I also dislike the lost of teretory value, since one simply doesnt know when a alert will pop up. sure, it does have benefits to hold more, but in the end 1,5h are plenty of time to get things "right".
This is the cause for many players to just farm the hell out of stale fights. Tbh, this is part of the sandbox principle and i like it in some way. It will balance itself, latest at the point where the 3rd fraction starts interfering with the "farmfight".

Yup it gets a tad boring now.
Last night we got essentially warp-gated by VS (we were NC) and still no alert popped so we were stuck getting farmed with no hope of a breakout and couldn't move to another continent.

There needs to be some way to start the "final countdown" on continents that are totally overrun faster than the current system. Once someone pushes to 50% control it should start the alert automatically.

There is no incentive to fight the faction that is winning. (besides it was clearly bad when 2v1's were a thing)
VS are by far the most annoying and when i think about it, immersion breaking faction to fight against (tanks dont move sideways, guns dont make pew pew sounds, projectiles dont look like discoballs).

they are impossible to see at night in their default camo, which will be half of your play time, and extremely bright pew pew lasers almost completely hide the black smudge that is firing at you which can make things very disorientating and needlessly frustrating. 90-80% of NC players can not hit a magrider beyond 30M, so they get murdered by them repeatedly with little to no recourse disincentivising mobilisation against that threat.

VS guns are very noob friendly, meaning more of the VS from the lowest to highest skill are able to competently perform in the ensuing battle than either two other sides.


VS is often not advertised as part of planetside. most probably when people join planetside they want to do so for the huge battles, when they imagine huge battles they will probably imagine the battles of modern war with traditional tanks, jets, helicopters, infantry all duking it out. the TR / NC front absolutely delivers on this escapism to the battlefield, any front with VS does not because you're no longer fighting against the traditional military foes of old, you're fighting against this dazzling, zubzub pewpew side strafing discotech force from hell. I honestly believe it to be an annoyance/immersion issue.

Rly?
That sound whiny and typical of "that fraction is OP". If you rly have problems with visibilty, may i suggest changing settings? IF you play on low quality night doesnt even get dark, but a little dizzy. Also set terrain quality to low, models high make them literaly stick out. Decide: Nice looks OR usefull looks!

On topic:
I also noticed, that sometimes an alert holds unfullillable goals. Such as not in timelimit capable bases (realistic) /Thank you, lattice. The alert should be triggerable by players before the timelimit, either by capping eg

3 facities (bio/amp/tech) of the same type
5 facility in total
60% of terretory
time based (as it is now)

hammer on the nail (as they say)

I didn't mention the other side, only talked about the winning point of view, but it's equally relevant for side that is losign.

The old system had this issue from time to time, on my server nobody enjoys hossin, they prefer indar. If the map was indar you might have seen one faction sitting pretty with almost all of the territory capped but the dedicated base builders would not build bases or farm corticum because they didn't want the map to change. Just lately it wasn't a huge issue but I remember months back when it really ruined the system.

I do think if both teams get warpgated though, it's near impossible not to capture back, you're essentially 2 teams against 1 the moment they've broken the connection between the two of you. For instance in the picture you present, if the VS had of made it to the bio lab, it would have become 35% vs 65%, fighting TR to the south and NC to the north and then both teams probably would have pushed out to their amp station.

You win the prize for the most one dimensional post of today.
That no bullet drop(for a lot of guns. Magrider on the other hand has a CRAZY bullet drop for a vehicle) is great for noobs is true. But how long do you stay a noob? Experienced players can compensate and then it's not really an advantage anymore.
If noobs would think that the VS trait(and their toys) is so great, then why is VS the smallest faction?

You think glowing balls are making them hard to see? Well, imagine how it is if you are at the shooting end and your target vanishes behind a glowing ball. You at least know where the shot came from...the shooter on the other hand has no idea where you are after his first shot and has a much, much harder time to spot your shots. It's downright crazy how you try to make an advantage out of a serious disadvantage.

If you can't hit a magrider on long distance, try hitting with those slow balls of the magrider. Other MBTs can move too, they usually don't do tho cause they are used to win even without moving(and moving makes aiming harder for both sides).

Yes, they got a decent camo for the night. I don't feel that we are fighting a lot in darkest night tho. And seriously, it's not like TR or NC are glowing at night or something. I think that may be an issue in like 0.5% of the fights at night. There are different camos by the way.

VS got an immersion issue because you think the sounds should be like in WWII? And that's why people don't fight against them? Well...no comment....

On topic: For veterans the ever same zerg at the ever same biolab gets boring. We need other incentives. Currently those incentives are pretty limited tho. Right after the end of an alert there is no incentive beyond zerging. It feels like 6 hours till the next alert and the next event is like an hour away...on top of that are facility events (they usually end in a draw with no rewards. In case you started off with no facility you got no chance to win anything anyway) a waste of time after the last patch and anomaly is mainly dependent on where it spawns. Whatever you do before the alert does not matter cause the alerts are long enough to turn ANYTHING around(usually you get a 2vs1 zerg versus 1 faction going and those players often log out. Especially when they already got the lowest pop and then get hit by 75% overpop for an hour.). People may have to play several days on the same continent cause they get unlucky and the continent is always open when they play.
The current locking system is a huge step back and rather boring. Players lost interest in anomaly events pretty quickly(lag doesn't help there) and the facility events have already been a fail the first time around and didn't get any better. It generally seems that 95% of players do not care for events or alerts at all...except when they are a close fight in the last 10 minutes. So those seem to be the situations the devs need to create...

Yeah, and that usually happens cause not everyone in a faction is smart enough to notice that warpgating an enemy or cutting them off will usually result in a 2vs1 and a very frustrating situation for the 1(being outnumbered 2 or 3to1 everywhere on the map for a longer period of time really isn't fun at all). From my experience on Cobalt I can say that VS is making such mistakes over and over and over and over again...no matter what you tell them. So the problem solves itself somehow.
On the other hand: You then got a situation where you first basicly ghostcap the continent and then get 2vs1 slaughtered. Which means you switch from one situation that ain't fun right to the next bad experience.

Seriously: If you wanted a continent to change then you could build a base yourself. It's not like placing a silo and a Hive needed skill. If you only have like 15 players per faction at night then it ain't surprising that you don't have 4 Hives up. Only a very small number cared enough for alerts to actually take part in base building. That's the "I could do it, but if I let you do it and I just profit then that's even better for me"-mentality. A lot of players behave like that...they want the benefits but do nothing for them.

Well you couldn't necessarily just go place one yourself if you were on the losing side, I also think its partially that the TR were winning a lot of alerts back then and they didn't need any more Iso-4 meanwhile I was on NC and I only had like 3 low tier implants. Since the launch of this event, I've almost gained every single basic implant. You get rewarded even in a draw, and I'm finding that most of the alerts that are control/capture tech/amp/bio labs will almost always end in a draw. The capture one is usually pretty even because everybody starts to get competitive about that one, when the reward is so high (what like 200-300 certs?). The air anomalies are just fun but if your faction doesn't want to participate then it's hopeless and well NC air is slightly inferior so not many people invest into it on my server. So it becomes another disadvantage of being outnumbered in the air as well. That and those who do fly tend to be pulling galaxies, might have 8k health but god they are so weak and require so many gunners.

Event draws don't give you anything after the last patch...and you got it right:The facility events usually end in a draw.
I would have guessed that 250 certs, 300 iso and some item(or boost) reward would make people caring for alerts...but those 90 minute alerts don't seem to do that. Last night opponents could basicly ghostcap(and I really mean ghostcap as they did not even have to stay in the territory) a large number of our territories and NOBODY cared although we had a great position(like 5% behind the leader) at the start of the alert and enough pop.

not that I mind, or that it bothers me, actually it makes me smile

BUT

pretty much all of you, every single reply, has entirely missed the point and is off topic (except for one or two)/

But by all means, continue, it's a free world

PS. By the way, star citizen seems to be moving along nicely, such a shame it misses content, I wonder when it will start to become "playable"?

VS infantry guns are good, and aside unstable ammo, to me feel well balanced for the game. NC guns have everything, fast firing, hard hitting, work well in all circumstances (FPS/latency affect high RPM guns the most) high RoF options, super accurate (Promise), overpowered CQ (Gladius), best velocity sniper, great addons (penetrating ammo), best 1vs1 medium/close range tank, the nightmare Mjolnir, Reaver with vertical thrust that exceeds max pitch up in close-medium engagements & with the fastest afterburners, instagib CQ scatmax, etc. etc. etc. etc.

The 'but that NC weapon recoil' is an old excuse now it falls on deaf ears as if nobody can ever learn when to tap fire or sustain-fire, which ALL auto weapons require depending on engagement scenario, even TR weapons (the blasphemy!).

This is good. Fewer lemmings following along popular streamers, more here to Praise Vanu and be fabulous in purple. Oh and exotic/alien tech it exists in many games, so there is a wide appeal in sci-fi. I like it a lot, got me hooked on this game besides the good sci-fi open world simulation, but more 'traditional' weaponry is nice too, cause diversity keeps things fresh.

Lol! I think many NC skins look juvenile, or just outright an eyesore. I pity their lack of styling - cause if it's deliberate disregard for anything in favor of raw power, I get that, but rugged or worn armor itself can be stylish, but this just lacking all-round.


On-topic: time frames for continent locks are way too long, forced timers out of your control are not fun, and the desire to stick around isn't high, which again makes for unbalanced play as population % can vary so wildly. I think I enjoyed the previous alert system more, 2vs1 and flaws and all, than this.