New Alert XP distribution mechanics encourage mass flight to likely victor

Its pretty much a self fulfilling prophecy.

Alert comes up. Players predict a faction will win alert. Knowing that they won't get the full XP for the alert if they don't play the full alert time, they switch factions, leaving their main faction underpopulated and weak.

Right now on Briggs, Vanu have 45% population. Earlier, it was almost hitting 50%. Other times on Briggs, its been TR. Rarely NC.

With this new alert XP distribution system, I'm certain we're going to continue to see an increase in one sided alerts, won by overpopulated factions.

This change needs to be reverted. At least will full alert XP for logging in, players can play on their mains, the switch factions last second to collect XP on their alts. Now, they just switch the second the alert starts instead.

Only 50%? That was standard for waterson and matherson pops for months now.

Then they obviously wanted to play on that character in the first place, right? Why else would they switch otherwise?

Already? I thought that this would only start after a week or so. Too bad everybody thinks that this is a great idea and attacked me when I said it wasn't.

Disqualify a player from receiving any reward xp/participation bonus xp from the alert if they switch characters on the same server during the alert?

Fair enough.

I think the 15 minute "ALERT INCOMING!" warning should be used for players to decide which faction they choose to play for that alert.

If you log in during an alert, it gives you 5 minutes to log out and log back in on another toon, or you've locked in your empire for that alert.

Problem solved.

So people switch and actually participate in the alert? As opposed to everyone just giving up and switching empires last minute to snag the XP. How is that worse?

I don't see myself care much about an alert if I log in and its at 30 minutes left, wow now I can get 25% of the 1.5- 2.5k exp my underpop faction manages usually,

think I rather seek an enemy sundy and get the same exp in 5 mins

As a player in an underpopulated empire, this change made alerts worse for me. It doesn't stop the 4th faction - it just makes them switch sooner. Still, as a player in an underpopulated empire, I stopped caring about alerts a long time ago, so I don't care how much they get screwed up.

Because people switch last minute to get the XP doesn't effect the outcome of the alert - its just people claiming points. But when people switch pre-emptively, assuming a certain empire will win, then it actually affects the outcome of the alert. People who switch factions to guarantee themselves some easy CERTs don't just sit in warpgate and wait for points, they go out and fight too.

I'd rather see people swap early and actually participate rather than do nothing and swap at the last minute to get XP they didn't earn. I see where you're coming from, but short of limiting 1 empire to server or swap timers at least, I don't think there's really a way to fix it.

So you prefer a huge population imbalance for the entire fight instead of just towards the end? Interesting. You must play an overpopulated empire.

I'd rather they just remove the ability to play across factions on the same server, as we tried to tell them in beta, yet they refused to listen.

Ah well, guess they were just getting ahead of the game for when there's only 3 live servers running due to these terrible decisions, at least they wont have to change anything then.

Called this even before the patch even went live. https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/waterson-alert-alliance.142513/

Really wish the devs would run changes by me before they make them.

I tried participating in an alert earlier on my NC main. Within 5 minutes of the alert start Vanu had ~60% of the continent population while NC was all the way down to ~10% (Can't remember the server pops, but Vanu did have a significant population advantage, though not nearly as extreme).

I think this changed did a lot more harm than good because now with everyone switching at the start of an alert, The other two factions don't have the manpower to fight back and end up getting absolutely nothing, making an uphill battle even steeper. TR/NC already seem disinterested in participating in alerts after months of Vanu dominance, and giving them even more players while the alert is being fought out just makes it even worse for the factions that were already struggling to get players to participate.

The alert system has been wearing on me quite a bit lately because since lattice, I have only seen NC win once, and that was just barely.

FFS just get rid of alerts already.

I'd rather not. That's terrible logic you're applying. 80% versus 20% is currently happening at literally every single base as a result of everyone picking sides early instead of fighting until the last minute to switch.

That's not fun in the slightest.

Fighting against those odds, good luck if you'll ever make it out of the spawn room.
Fighting with those odds, you're more likely to be team-killed than find an enemy to damage, as there's too many allies causing not enough enemies.


This right here is the reason we get these mythical fourth factions, they're players who faction switch to earn the most certs, and it's updates like these that encourage that. At least things were better before GU13, as people would actually fight on a lesser populated faction knowing it wouldn't effect their other faction slot's rewards.

Hooray lets jump to conclusions and ignore what I actually said!

Alerts will always be skewed as long as multiple empires per server/no swap timer persists.

Well, at least they are gambling on who's going to win. Even in the old system, people could still see when a faction was definitely getting the upper hand and switch then and there. If you've got a pop imbalance causing the alerts to always be won by one side, those last-minute switchers aren't really going to affect the outcome either way. And if the Vanu population is so high that they're going to win regardless whether they start early or late, might as well get the alert over with quickly and normalize the pops again.

You know what? I think that it is a good thing when all these fourth factioners who are exclusively in it to "win" start piling onto their favored faction and win alerts in no time at all, especially if everyone else starts ignoring them, and they are forced to ghostcap with a huge useless zerg. Then JUST MAYBE they'll start moving back to other factions to get away from the boredom.

If not, see point #1. At least once the alert is over the pops will start to normalize and we can play again.

Have we even had an alert since GU13 yet, geez give it a chance at least