Red Alert System (at least on Mattherson) is terrible

I'm torn on the alerts myself. I love them in the sense that the gameplay is much more exciting and we get to fight on different continents. But I hate them for the lag they produce if you are lucky enough to get on the alert continent.

A few days ago I happen to be fighting on an Amerish alert. I was well past my "PS2 one-hour memory-loss" timeframe and the lag from all the players made my controls so sluggish I felt like I was fighting in mud. Needless to say, I was giving more people XP then I was earning and it was frustrating. So, I logged off knowing I wouldn't be able to get back on the continent and tried the only other continent with a fight, Indar. Of course, Indar as a server is simply garbage even without an alert so I quickly left out of frustration yet again.

I'm definitely curious to see how the alerts work with the new lattice system though. That structure appears to be much more defensible so if an alert starts on a continent where one empire owns a lot of the territory already, I would think it would be extra difficult to move the front lines forward. I almost wonder if the continent should go neutral when an alert starts, giving all empires an equal shot?

I am with you 100%. What happened to fighting over territory, resources, objectives? Now it's flock here for XP. XP everybody!!...bah.

If you want to have this planetside gameshow event, atleast make it a once a week event, not every damn day. Every day I log on I'm left with two continents and a diminished player count until the alert is over. What am I paying for here?

The problem is that on Mattherson when the red alerts happen the Queue System breaks almost 90% of the time. So you HAVE to stand there and keep clicking INDAR INDAR INDAR INDAR.

If you don't believe me try it!

I think you must be intentionally dense. The problem isn't that the pop is too high. I LOVED Mattherson after the merge. The problem is the red-alert creates a "fun bottleneck" by putting EVERYONE on the same continent. Then you can't play with your outfit/friends!

Yeah that was pretty obvious and my comment was sarcastic.

Thank god, you've redeemed my faith in internet posters!

The biggest que I have been on is about 300 people. If they increased max pop size to 3000 (add about 333 for each team), this wouldn't be an issue. That's my tree-fitty on this topic.

You may be right. I'm not sure what will help at this point. I'm just frustrated with the status quo.

Day two:

The minute that the continent is not capped then the whine turns to the population imbalance.

Guess what you can't have everything you want right when you want it.

I've never had to wait longer then 15 min and to me that is worth the alternative which is Indar side 24/7.

If the Q is broken warp to the other continent the Q again it took me like 5 min to figure that out how completely inept are people at problem solving today?

Inept? How bad is your reading comprehension?? The real problem is the queue is so long on mattherson you miss the event completely! Getting in queue would not help! You need to reevaluate your life man and relax.

Alerts happen too frequently.

My source of frustration is the constant herd of players that just sit in the warpgate waiting to jump to the Alert continent instead of taking advantage of the fact we now outnumber the enemies on THIS continent and can capture it instead. All the more frustrating when the wait time is longer than the time left in the alert.

It makes me want to orbital strike the continent terminals.

I've purchased a large amount of station cash and have tons of hours played. When I see a long queue time I log off the game. I find myself logging off a lot lately. No complaints... just sayin..

the queues aren't the real issue here. the real issue is a new alert triggering causes 99% of players to drop their weapons in the middle of battle, abandon the fight, and head for the warpgate to another continent, leaving you to get steamrolled if you don't follow mindlessly. another example of a great concept with terrible implementation.

Had a great time on the Esamir alert Sunday night. It was nice to play on a continent with 33/33/33 and see the TR take the win, snatching it from the VS in the last minute. Good times.

First thing they need to do, is to fix the queue spawn timer. No one should have to spam the Warp button hundreds of times to even get the pop-up timer.

I bought the Premium membership, so the queues are not typically bad, but, I know as a free member, it was tough seeing an hour+ queue.

Good thing, all on the server get the XP bonus....even if it 20% less for not being able to get there.

In the long run, a busy server is a good thing.

Now correct me if I am wrong but it was my understanding that continents have a faction cap so that one faction can't steamroll another by having a larger population. I understand it sucks not being able to join a server if your friends are on it but I don't think allowing the faction of the month to win based on population would be any better.

.....and I think this is what causes the need for Warp Button spamming. It seems a system to allow player to queue based on current continent imbalances. Let's say SOE puts you in queue. If the pop is 40(a)-40(b)-20(c). They want to queue line to be c-c-a-c-b (or whatever order, but heavy on the low pop side, to load the lowest faction.

So, they will not let you in line to the queue until they have the players to balance the pop.

I dunno, maybe that is assuming too much from a technical stand point though.

Don't talk out of your ***. If there were meant to take place when server pop is low, why do they happen every 2 hours throughout the entire day? It's a poorly-design gimmick from SOE, that's all there is to it.