I think alerts should be removed because the same side wins them 99% of the time. This has the effect of slowly enhancing the winning sides abilities and inevitably population, because people like to be on a winning team. And the other sides get more and more discouraged, I often see a 30% population fall to low 20s when major assets get lost during an alert. It's not fair if one side generally has a bigger population to keep rewarding them further with bonuses that are (for the most part) directly related to population size.
or just give the bigger population 10k xp every 2 hours or something, at least then it won't mess with the gameplay. (or give an incentive for the low pops, like double xp while fighting the biggest faction. 1 to 2% isn't enough)
ya we need a much bigger +xp for the under-pop factions fighting the bigger ones, otherwise we will just have 4th faction problems (take a look at woodman the vanu used to win with like 45% world pop nc and tr are pushing against vs together and now vs is having 20% during the alerts)
Global alerts are what needs to be removed, they favor the faction with biggest amount of spineless 4th factioneers. Single continent alerts are actually pretty fun when every faction is willing to participate.
There is a solution for alerts - changing character on the same server should be locked for 12 hours.
once one faction is 10% over the 2nd large they still win it. they start to gate the lowest faction and getting help a lot of stupid platoon leader of the 2nd large faction. they lose some land to them but dosn't bother - the small faction leave the continent, a lot of ppl loged to the strongest faction and they start to take everything back. that's fun. ah and on 2 servers its always them against the vanu. oh, the terrans are majority and the vanu is allready attacking them. Lets hit the vanu. im so ashamed of my faction on this server.
that wouldn't help, then the 4th faction will just permanently side with the largest faction. Give people incentive to fight for the underpopulated faction. Give them incentive to fight for the underdog. Give them rewards for fighting against unwinnable odds. So people will try and fight. And the 4th faction would join the underdog because they would get more certs then with the over popped faction. And thus equalizing the populations.
Can we just do this instead? The flow of battles being disrupted by these commercial breaks is tedious. Sucks when Cobalt is low pop at night time and suddenly all the VS disappear to go win an alert and we have to wait for the alert to be done before they come back and we get to fighting again.
The alerts make the population imbalance much much worse. A noob starting with TR on Miller with the advantage of alert bonuses, better weapons and higher population will advance at least 100x faster than with another faction. So why would noobs go anywhere else? Alerts are so obviously wrong when you have a consistent population imbalance only SOE could keep them in.
Or, at least, make it where the objective sites only count for your side if they are connected to your warpgate. Then, at least, you'd have an incentive to play over the entire map as you try to keep a hold of that second biolab on a continent-alert.
This is a really huge problem that greatly upsets me and i'm sure upsets the players of their servers. On Waterson TR has nested themselves into cert gathering it just seems outright silly, an alert comes on and suddenly you have dozens upon dozens of TR rushing towards the continent and both NC and VS stay at their warpgate. Losing so many times can really lower your moral, this isn't a simple lose twice, it is more like lose always.
When are you playing? As that sounds like a much different VS and NC than exists during the primetime hours of, say, 7-12 pm east coast time. Like last night, though we were at a big population disadvantage, the VS kept a good fight against the TR for Allatum and even drove up to Suarva; and, in the end, the NC pulled out a win, even though their population was slightly behind the TR. Though I will admit that on the handful of times I've logged on at odd hours, the population can swing wildly, but I'm sure that's because there are only a few people online at, say, two or three in the morning. It's a bit like Miller, but with fewer political screeds over /yell.
I really enjoy the alerts. They are one of the really good things about the game. They are fun even if you lose because at least you are fighting for set objectives - you get a real sense of commanders reacting and forces being moved around. The all continent alerts are excellent for this - the people who move quickly and are organised have the best chance of winning.
I enjoy the global alerts the most. They are great fun and really empahise logistics - getting a platoon to move between continents every 10 minutes to defend where required.
I agree that the few times that happened was fun. But it's rare, very rare. Like once a month or less rare.
Sounds more like refusal to act than lack of incentive, other than act in defiance cuz "boo hoo they got more guys than us why try?" Quite a few single continent alerts, especially Indar 3-facility, end in a tie because the TR push, and the VS/NC just hold for 2 hours. The VS are especially talented in holding, one biolab alert they held up against 2 platoons, TR couldn't get past the landing bay. Sounds like if the other two would leave their warp gates or switch continent on the alert, they'd win a few. Maybe they need some more dedicated outfits, TR waterson has ODAM which almost always has alert squads up and they're constantly applying pressure on areas even when getting pushed back. Outfits like those are what wins alerts, they don't sit in the warp gate and cry when it gets hard.
But it's the only time people fight on Amerish! IMO the alerts should always be on the lowest pop continent, and don't announce them ahead of time.
