So that's why the VS wins all the alerts.

Here's a story.

There was once a happy Planetside 2 player who logged in, looked at her mounting pile of certs, and laughed evilly at the fact that soon there would be enough to unlock something really nice from the 1000 shelf. She noticed that her outfit had a platoon active and joined it. It wasn't long before an alert started: Hold amp stations. This player's faction, the NC, was actually doing well for once and held 5 of the 9 amp stations which is a winning condition at the start of the alert.

The player worked hard for her squad, and the squad worked hard for the platoon leader, and the platoon leader coordinated with other platoons in the NC, and 30 minutes from the ending the NC still held 5 amp stations. Then it happened. The population of VS on the server went up to 40% in the span of only a few minutes. Our amp stations that we fought and died for so well were buried under the spandex-clad horde. It was completely and utterly impossible to do anything. We went from controlling 5 amp stations to controlling 2 in the course of about five minutes.

It's pretty clear what happened, and why. A huge chunk (possibly even a majority) of the TR players simply gave up because they weren't even going to get second place in the alert, and defected to the winning side to get their "reward", and turned NC's well earned victory into a complete and utter defeat. It's not just the calculated ruthlessness that bugs me; it's how blatantly transparent this is. The sheer speed of the migration was so well coordinated that I have no choice to believe that it was something that entire outfits do as standard procedure.

To everybody that jumps factions like this: You are a parasite. You are without any concept of sportsmanship or fair play and your short sighted self interest damages other people's desire to play this game.

To SOE: Fix. Your. Game. Turn off alerts until you implement some kind of system to prevent dishonest exploitation like this. A huge number of NC players simply logged off the game out of frustration when it became apparent what was happening. This is not a trend you want to set.

The reward is based on how much of the alert you participated in so they are screwing themselves if they switched late.

Is 5 mins even cap time on a major facility?

Last time I checked, amp stations were something like 7 or 8 minutes, from the point being flipped to base ownership changing. Though, this could be shortened if another attacking faction held it for a short time, long enough to deplete the owning faction's control, but not build up their own.

Sorry, I didn't mean that all the bases were captured in 5 minutes, I meant that we lost multiple amp stations within 5 minutes of eachother. In other words they fell at nearly the same time. Extremely coordinated population shift followed by extremely coordinated massive deployments by multiple groups.

this is why the vs wins all alerts. he's our gaurdian

Yea I saw this happen too. Sucked. I hadn't thought it could be the TR swapping though, makes sense, they always have the worst pop...

alerts broke a lot of stuff in the game.

I dunno, I logged on today and blue NC was sweeping over all three continents at once, crushing the Alert, a dominating victory after no more than 1 hour.

But yeah, usually on Connery we Vanu are doing the sweeping up after a crushing victory. I dunno why really, but since my only char is Vanu and I have no other possibilities, I'm pretty okay with it. I find it a bit odd, since before I took a bit of a long break from the game, we Vanu were always the ones getting crushed. But that was back on Helios before the merge into Connery. It's just a nice change for me anyways.

Or it could be that at the beginning of the alert you already have 35% population. Of those 35%, 15% are running ZOE maxes. This is nothing against you or your post, which I found funny. I have been having the worst time, everytime I fight the VS I get ZOE zerged and it's getting pathetic. The fact that SOE has let this go on for 6 months or more is inexcusable! I know that VS players really enjoy roflstomping everybody, but even the noble VS players admit this is out of hand!

The VS used to be underpopulated, but EXTREMELY skilled and coordinated. It wasn't "balanced" population wise, but it was "balanced" faction wise because of the talent of the lesser populated VS. Because of all the goodies they blessed VS with we now have a SEVERE population imbalance (on Connery at least). I've never played a more poorly balanced game. I am of the mindset that the Devs don't even play their game, it's obvious they don't check the forums.

They're going to fix all these issues right before releasing on the PS4, and that's offensive! The PC players aren't worth a grain of salt and there's no rush to fix anything, ever! They could have taken a week prior to the OMFG and fixed the outlining problems with balance. Of all of my friends that got an e-mail for the OMFG update, 90% of them quit directly after playing for an hour. I spoke to them briefly, and the response was always the same. "ZOE is out of hand" or "this is just a spawn campfest" or "is this all we do is shoot at spawn rooms?"... I am a loyal Planetside Veteran, I played PS1 from day 1, it had it's problems, but nothing even close to what this has become!

It's a fact that on Connery, the NC and TR just fight each other and the VS roflstomps to the our warpgates, runs out of stuff to do, then fights both of us for the territory we're battling for, and win! There's no escaping it. I had a 5 KDR for well over an hour earlier fighting the NC. The second that I went to battle the VS my KDR went down, within 10 minutes I died so many times my KDR went from 5, to .8.... I really hope SOE learned from this disaster and make a better Planetside 3 out of it. Because Everquest Next looks much more innovative and polished than this is, and it's not even out yet. I tried Elder Scrolls online last weekend, I really wish it didn't end. Like many other players, the ONLY reason I play this game at all is because I'm awaiting a different game release..... The issues lining this game are an epidemic. There will always be spawn camping, cheese tactics, and ZOE maxes, even if they nerf them they will just release a new "flavor of the month" to replace it. Sorry for ranting, that was a horrible experience. Titanfall, ESO, The Division, Star Citizen, and many others could not get here fast enough!

I would never jump to the VS during an alert. Maybe to the TR or NC though, depending on what faction you're playing...but never VS.

Did you happen to observe what weaselly TR outfits suddenly disappeared and jumped to the VS during the alert?

I don't get why people switch sides to the 'winning' side during an alert. I'm assuming you get far less certs for 5 minutes of play than 30+ minutes on your losing faction. Or am I missing something?

Nothing better than farming all those fools just right after the alert ends, dat delicious extreme menace kill XP.

Well, of course they had to change. NC was succeeding. The farm animals are meant to be put down, not live. Quit living, shut the **** up, and get farmed already.

I hear you.
Let me guess, you play on Woodman?
I am also a new player in my first month.
I also noticed this tendency and it annoys the hell out of my.
The ****** problem with this behavior is, you can either join them, loose or log.
Alerts should be disabled they are not functional.

Why would you care so much for alerts anyway? Thay give not that much bonuses to be some noticable problem, whatever wrong there is with them.

So this is only an NC problem, Ok.

This happens on every server to some degree or another.

Faction A is in first place
Faction B is in a close second place
Faction C is basically out of the running

Now instead of Factions B and C ganging up on Faction A like they should in a 3 team PvP scenario to drive down Faction A's winnings and raise B and C to more equal grounds this is what we get.

Faction C gives up entirely, and swaps to Faction A or B
Faction A or B, now absolutely swelling with surplus numbers from Faction C, now easily swamps the opposing Factions with tides of their new numbers.
Faction A or B now gets a crushing victory over the other two Factions, leading to much frustration and many players that stayed loyal to Faction C quitting, so that the next Alert this problem will grow even more.

On several servers the Faction getting the crushing victories turns out to be VS simply because of ZOE spam, it is so cheap on certs and noob friendly to use that the faction swappers can spam them into oblivion and still be effective with them.

Manchester United. It would't exist except for the forces at play here.

This trend has already been set though, and the consensus is "L2P, deal with it". The Devs have stated they can't really control population, any incentive they throw will only shift the masses' direction to it looping the situation and so on. They also say they don't want to piss off their loyal customers yet they ignore that a lot of said customers(Me for instance) will stop being loyal if they don't act on this! And are ALREADY pissed off by this!

They should have started with 1 soldier per Server, they didn't do it, so FML or more accurately FOL. Server Transfer will also only shuffle things until this phenomenon settles in yet again- If I transfer to a more even Server along with 100 other people, I'm immediately creating the same problem(I'd still transfer, I'm SICK of KOTV and VS on Woods, it's more frustrating than playing I Wanna Be The Guy : Gaiden. Look it up).

I can only MAYBE HOPE they will at the very least balance PS2 so that I(And others feeling the same way) can do more than just go through exercise after exercise in futility, eventually logging off like your NC friends did... So that MAYBE HOPE that I can do more than taking down 2-3 VS(Out of 100 in my immediate vicinity), then colliding with a ZOE ending up not having any actual impact- Even if I were to take down 25 VS, ZOEs would come in and take care of things. And if not them, how long can you play Whack-A-Mole being 8:1 against KOTV?

TLDR : We got *&%^ed up the #$$, we have to "Adapt". #Balance or 2 options : QQ and BB or join ZOE Horde.

You it happens on all servers sadly and those who get the pop increase are normally just as pissed off about it as the others .. It can turn what would have been an interesting 24 v 24 fight into a Zerg 48+ vs 24 .. Not fun for either side