New Alert XP distribution mechanics encourage mass flight to likely victor

Alerts are a bad mechanic to begin with. I suppose it's fun if you're the faction that gets a free 20k XP (or whatever your value is) every few hours... but now we can't even get the XP with our alts. Well - I guess we can - but like the OP said, now we have to login right away. I suppose I'll have to start doing this... if SOE won't fix the problem - then I suppose the only thing players can do is make the problem as awful as possible and force their hand.

We were promised no KILL 10 RATS quests.

We got capture 3 Amp Stations.

My biggest gripe about this is that you are required to participate for 2 hours to get 100% of those 3000 experience which equals up to a whooping 25 experience a minute. In a normal working week, there is no way in hell that wasting that much time for next-to-nothing would be a good payoff. It just is not an incentive to stick around and fight for your faction, especially when it is as underpopulated as mine is. :/

Even fighting for a good, solid, hour on my server would only be 50% out of the usual 20-30% (if territorial domination, if it's capture points, it's usually no experience for us..) for a grand total of 1000 experience, meaning what, 8-13 experience a minute?

There is something wrong when a server-wide alert which is meant to encourage a massive war for important resources, are less rewarding for the players than to log in, find an undefended Bio Lab, and then capture it in 3 minutes for the exact same experience you would get for toiling in an alert for an hour. Even just squad deploying into a Tech Plant or an Amp Station which is about to be captured is far better than trying to help your team. How on Earth is that supposed to make sense?

What also sucks is that it's still given out as one big lump at the end. So, play for 1 hour and 50 minutes, but Real Life forces you to leave with 10 minutes left on the clock? Or worse, your client crashes with 10 seconds left? Sucks to be you.

I think they need to break it down into smaller chunks, distributed throughout the Alert, so that people are rewarded for fighting it even if they can't be there for the end. If a win condition is achieved that cuts the alert short, then the winning faction gets the big chunk of EXP. As a bonus, doing that would reward underpop factions for holding the line as long as possible even if they get rolled in the end.

It might be time to finally implement the empire switch timer like in PS1. It was a 6 hour timer I believe.

Before, there was no reason because people could just create multiple accounts, but now with account wide unlocks, there is much more inventive to stay on a single account, so most people will have multiple characters on one account, meaning the switch timer would actually have an effect.

Sure, you could switch to another account, but then you can't take advantage of all your account-wide unlocks.

Maybe, maybe there would be a handful of people with money to burn that would just spend money on multiple accounts, but so what? They would be insignificant.

Personally, I like being able to chose my empire at whim on Connery, because I pick the empire that has a good fight going (not who's overpopped or whatever), but I'd be willing to sacrifice that convenience if it meant better fights for everyone.

I hate the alert system. In my opinion, we're better off without it.

The other factions don't even try anymore on Mattherson. They just let Vanu win all the alerts. If it's anywhere but Indar, they'll just let us have it. I look at the continent population and we have like 45%. I look at the worldwide population, and it's more or less even. Vanu is actually slightly underpop worldwide during the day now, because of the attempts at server balancing. Half of NC and TR are not even participating in alerts. If they tried, they might win! And then right near the end they all switch factions, and we win with 75% pop. Woooo... :|

This suggestion might be relevant to a lot of people in here:

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2...-xp-time-bonus-in-alerts.143031/#post-2004386

this

vanu is only world underpopped during the day because all the new BR 1 characters role on it.

Vs on matherson always Zergs like crazy , since they got a decent pops and when the enclave as left the game it got worst lol The vs the entire empire as adopted (the enclave playstyle ) i mean by that lots of heavy , lots of maxs , and 2 X or 3X time players , everyfigths even the smallers outpost , end up been a 48+/48+ 70 % vs 30 % NC lol its almost like a never ending maxs crash lol

nothing as change , they need a in game mechanics that FORCE players to spread the figths in order to suceed , so having mutltiples capture point that need to be capture and hold all at once is needed kinda king of the hills , but spread on some special capture point that can be capture only durring the alert and who must be captured and hold all at once in order to raise a energy bar level that grant the victory if your empire suceed , numbers of capture point must be trigger based on the populations level on the server

The problem is the difference between winning and losing is TOO high sometimes.

If you have choose between 10k and 1k, That is too much exp for some people to pass up.

Just change it so the difference between 1st place and last place can't be more the 3k. So players don't feel like they are losing a ton of exp for simplifying not picking the winning team

It's self-fulfilling.

Say TR are really organised on your server, and tend to win when alerts are balanced. You're on your NC character and an alert is called. You jump to your TR character in the hope of the XP; most people also feel the same way. Now where before TR would probably win, and see a spike in population in the last 2 minutes for people to take the XP, you're actually guaranteeing 'the favourite' to be the winner, because where before pops were 33/33/33 but TR were perceived to have more organisation, now the fourth faction have spoken and are playing on TR, giving you 25/25/50 or worse.

There's no effect on the fun/outcome of the alert in the old system; people just switch for the XP if they deem it profitable. Now people switch pre-emptively, and yes they play the alert, but not on the side that the server 'expects' them to be on (in terms of its attempts to balance populations). This negatively impacts the fun of the event by further imbalancing populations for the whole 2 hours, and thus thends to guarantee an outcome.

I'veo nly played a couple hours since the patch, but saw two alerts that both went exactly like this. Not saying it's a global issue, but I can't see why it wouldn't be.

Technically they are participating for the duration of the alert. They still have to put the work in. I don't think I have a problem with that.

Prior, it was literally free exp.

Rather they switch before the alert than wait til the last 30 minutes like the do on Waterson.

There is also a risk they might not be interested in going through the progress of building yet another character, and actually leaving the game.

Well, you have to understand Briggs isn't really overpop with really balanced pop at most times. So when it all jumps to one faction it gets really obvious and everyone hates it.

Yup, there was a minority that called it, and had been doing so when it was suggested even before it was implemented. Bets on how long it takes to be reverted? I'd like to say patch pre GU14 (hotfix is too much to ask for), but I think GU16 is probably more likely.

That's not strictly true, at least where Briggs is concerned. There were obvious population changes during alerts pre-patch when it became clear that one faction had gained an ascendancy, not just in the last few minutes. Whether this is due to people switching to the winning faction or just leaving the alert continent I can't say for sure. You would at least often get a good period of fighting first, that may no longer be the case. I haven't played post patch so I can't really comment on this.

Briggs may be a bit of a special case here because it's the only AU server, and as a result people may be more likely to have multiple characters on the same server. Is this an issue for other servers?

He plays Matherson VS, of course he likes to roll over people with double the numbers.

I have 453 facility captures at BR100 compared to your 1,323 facility captures at BR67. But yeah, clearly I'm the one that likes to roll around with the zerg.

Try again!