Is Continent Locking rigged?

Yesterday Indar was locked most of the day, even though there were dominating empires on both Esimir and Amerish. Yet somehow, locking alerts weren't being triggered on those continents, so in spite of heavy domination by one empire or another, they stayed open. Then, when Indar finally did open last night it wasn't opened for long at all before it was already in an alert to lock it again, even though the territory was virtually equal between the three factions. Why?

It may be my imagination, but the system doesn't seem to be treating the continents equally and actually seemed (yesterday, at least) to be biased against allowing Indar to be open. The RGN and weighting for the alert system has to go. All of the continents, even Hossin, needs to play by the same rules.

There should also be a timer to cap a continent lock. No continent should stay locked all damned day.

"Indar is locked...... theres something wrong....."

I can't believe we are going to have to deal with another continent locking post.

when can we go back to indar... NEVER

... because continent locking is feature complete, perfect as it is, and warrants no further discussion as to how it should be carried out?

We know it's flawed but please do not continue this thread. We already had to deal with one person posting twice about it. I'm sure Higby knows about the flaws. This argument is dead, please give it a rest.

No, because this is a transitional system in which the developers want to emphasize that continent can be locked, in lieu of the more dynamic system where pushing between continents along the global lattice will exist. As for Alerts, the developers want to continue the sense of competition between the factions.

As for the rules: outside of an Alert situation, the continent must be ~95% controlled to be locked; at the conclusion of an Alert, or if the ~95% mark rule is achieved early, the faction with the most percentage territory control locks the continent. This is not an anti-Indar plot, although the global lattice may eventually make fighting on Indar much trickier since part of the complexitiy will involve fighting to Indar from somewhere else. I am not aware if Hossin has Alerts yet but they initially excluded them so that there is enough feedback about what has already been completed.

because alerts continent lock system doesn't work well

Every time when someone is complaining about continent locking, it's just because they can't play on Indar. I really can't understand people who would rather just play a small part of the game over and over again...like "I just want to farm XP with my tank outside of Indar bases. Can't do that on other continents so I hate other continents"

A) The server you play on is quite bad considering the population imbalance. B) You are playing at midnight so obviously you'll have a population imbalance C) You are playing on a server where your faction is very uncoordinated. Please don't start blaming the game before you see what problems there are within yourself and your faction's actions.

Okay, I'm not going to push it, but this thread wasn't about the reality of continent locking, which is clearly here to stay. Rather, I'm simply wondering if there is some sort of deliberate bias in the system intended to make players play where the devs want as opposed to an unbiased system that reflects the gameplay of the players.

As to 'this argument is dead', how is it any more dead than virtually every other discussion on the boards? Everything from spawn room camping to the balance of various weapons against each other has been talked to death as well, but I don't see anyone trying to stifle those discussions.

The majority demands to shut down this thread and do you think the devs can control players without killing the game in the process? You cannot and will not control another human being across the interwebs directly. If SOE was blackmailing or bribing than yes we would have players play where the devs want. However there is none of that and it would probably be illegal. If you think that the devs are controlling the players then your being way to paranoid. They aren't controlling anyone in whatever way.

currently Cobalt more balanced but there no alert. and i saw alerts during deep night\early morning while collecting certs.
and i'm not blaming game, im blaming ALERT system that triggers without any sense, it wasn't critical before continent lock but now it more critical, factions getting more pop, suddenly you will realize one has tons of cheap armor, other has tons of cheap aircraft and its all because of few players who were ghost cap empty bases during ghost alert

My apologies to the forum community. Apparently, I was inarticulate and didn't state my question clearly. For that I am truly sorry.

What I'm trying to figure out is exactly how the system works. Last night Indar went on alert not long after opening, even though the territory was pretty evenly split. All day yesterday, Amerish and Esimir were dominated by one faction or another that controlled an absolute majority of the territory there, but there was no alerts.

The question: What was the condition that trigged the alert on an evenly split continent that wasn't true on the two dominated continents that wasn't getting the alerts?

Some guy gets the short end of the stick and in this case its you guys. This is a pretty hard truth but no matter what this will happen so tough luck.

Here is some data for you, it's not approved by SOE, it's simply my personal information gathering.

Capture Continent X: starts =>

When: 1hour after precedent alert

If:

-At least two factions owns similar % of territory. eg: 40/18/42 , 44/23/33

--But the faction with the least territory HAS TO HAVE a minimum of territory. so no alert when e.g:45/5/50

-At least two factions got similar population on continent and between 500-1000(*) people total online.

if all the conditions are met, the alert starts.

(*): Server Ceres

WHAT CAN HAPPEN IS:
One hour passed after the precedent alert, and then one continent gets locked VIA TOTAL DOMINATION.
=> One alert can BE TRIGGERED ON THE NEWLY OPEN CONTINENT WITHIN MINUTES.

The best is to have your "fav" continent be opened after an alert ended, that way you can enjoy it for at least 3hours (more, if you can keep it under heavy assault but not total domination).

Again, this is all about my personal information gathering, you may or may not agree with me.

Just wait for this:
https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/july-continent-locking-alerts.192298/

There wouldn't be much game on the other 2 continents since as soon as the people join they see that the alert is lost as the battle is lopsided. You would still have a chance but people are turned off when they see the majority of the continent taken by the enemy. You would at least have more chances on an evenly balanced continent and it would look possible as well.

That largely makes sense, if it's true that the weakest faction has to have a minimum amount of territory for the alert to trigger. It does seem like on Amerish and Esamir yesterday at least one faction was practically backed up to its warpgate and may have fallen below some minimum. That could explain why those continents never went on alert.

Thanks for the reply. This was the kind of info I was looking for.

Because the other maps is boring :/, if I play Tribes Ascend or CS I dont play on a boring map, I switch server till I find a fun map. In PS2 I got 3 maps to chose from in 1.5 year, but now I only have 2 maps and its boring (because 90% of the time Hossin and Esamir is open at prime time on Ceres). If it was possible to transfer my char from 1 server to another I should do that till I found a fun server but I cant do that in PS2 so if Indar is locked at prime time or when I want to play I log off.

Why are you comparing this to Tribes Ascend and CS. They are totally different than what PS2 is.

What got me was the alert triggered just minutes after we capped Esamir for the vehicle benefit. Granted we were able to use that benefit for the alert (which may have contributed to our win), but we focused on Esamir FOR the benefit, only to have it taken away almost immediately.

Of course the alert would trigger, we had just unlocked Indar. All the territory was ~equal.