The bonus's granted are a bit too much, ghost capping will rule all.

50% might be just a bit too much. Time will tell, as I haven't really seen it abused yet. It seems like it could be though. 40~30% might not grant such a huge advantage that can be abused.

The 25% XP gain on a faction from Hossin capture is way too much of perk. Make Hossin a powerful reward like: Increase Resource Gained per resupply or Reduce Resource Acquisition time, just something else non XP related IMO. It does not seem wise to include XP as a continent perk seeing as most players have no control over if they get it or not. Players are going to feel cheated out of certs with this and that will most likely lead to bitter feelings. Make it the reward for the week of release, then please change it from an XP bonus.

Whichever faction can go around and ghost cap the most during off server hours will reap these benefits for a significant period afterwards, usually longer than the average players play time during the day. Players are not gonna be happy when they log in after a night and see their enemy is not only able to use more of their arsenal, but get more XP than you for something you had no control over.

While there may be disagreement on details as a whole I think everyone agrees.

If you allow continent capping during off peak hours while population imbalance is happening then you wreck the gameplay during peak hours.

Can one faction take a continent with 33/33/33 packed continents? Sure. It will be hard, and it will be fun.
Can they do it while opposing factions have twice as many air, infantry, or vehicle resources? Not a chance.


Players are *very* sensitive to fairness. If a player gets their butt kicked because someone else out-played them then you'll see a tip of the hat in the name of sportsmanship. If a player gets their butt kicked because the deck was stacked against them and out of their control... you'll see that player logging off. Note this is *perceived* fairness (typically actual fairness but not always)

I'm not sure of the exact solution but whatever it may be, Sony better get it in place quick.

I think there should be a real incentive to play on all continents and I would love to see the action more spread out, so hopefully they keep the benefits quite high.
Agree that xp is a bad Hossin bonus as it is non-gameplay related and encourages cert farming (which I'm sure most of us are quite fed up with by now).
For pop balance the easiest solution would be to simply make it impossible to cap continents off peak hours (I'm sure SOE have statistics on those things). Would suck for those playing off-peak but the overall benefit would outweight it I believe.

the benefits are fine.. we haven't had enough time yet to test out everything. Between downtime and it being a weekday. The real test begins tonight at 730pm EST for the weekend.. We will have fun and it will be gloriously awesome battles me thinks.

25% XP boost for Hossin almost completely nullifies any incentive for being underpopped unless your faction is the one who ghost caps it at a time when very few folks are on. And that's the thing, continent locking and the bonuses work well under the assumption of relatively proportional fighting at all times of the day; which is clearly not true for most servers. Now, more than ever, you'll get more overpop for one faction and/or get two factions to band together and just team up on the one.

My feeling is that continent locking is only partial implementation, piecemeal of a larger plan. Right now it effects the game negatively by giving the faction with the highest populations a HUGE advantage, but when the resource revamp happens (if ever) then the more players in the area, the more a resource drain effects them. Continent locking in and by itself is a problem, but when (if ever) all the pieces get put into play, battle islands, resource revamp, et then it will make sense. For now, underpop gets to suffer - but on a positive note, Hossin has attracted a number of players back to the game. Population on Connery was fairly well balanced for the first time in a very very long time. As the newness wears off, I suspect we'll be right back where we were, NC having 37-40% pops, VS hovering around 29% and TR right behind around 27%.

lol these benefits should be for winning on Esamir ... why all the incentives for a NEW continent everyone was going to pack the queues full for anyway? (atleast for 3 weeks, until it goes right back to Indarside as usual)

Non-Starter because it's literally telling Asians (and some aussies) that they're not equal to the afternoon/evening racial Majority.
Every Online game company out there is terrified as hell of even attempting this b/c of the PR backlash that could come

I'd like to know where you're getting your information from. N.C. has NEVER been a dominating force on Connery (they're too unfocused). Even when they have a 5% or more worldpop advantage, the only thing they do with it is camp the Cert farming bases on Indar (Crossroads, both Biolabs, Hvar/Quartz, Mao, etc). The majority worldpop both in the 'noons' and after-hours were always either T.R. (for the longest time) or VS (this entire past winter). NC's only real noticeable pop advantages have only been visible during North Warpgate ownership periods b/c of 4th faction Masterrace

The only thing the Devs should do, imho, is reduce the amount of time a continent stays locked and/or allow the opposing faction to spawn on said continent. Like in PS1, if a faction wanted to keep a continent locked they had to spawn on it and defend it.

Aussies and Asians have their own servers where they don't get 400+ ping. Just localize the times, so that Briggs can't be ghost-capped by Americans logging in when it's 2AM in Australia.

Granted if we had a single global server we would pretty much never have "off-hours" because it's always 5PM somewhere, but that's simply not possible until we invent FTL internet.

Otherwise I guess all the factions are going to have to try and recruit dedicated graveyard shifts to cap continents between 2AM and 8AM.

oh please, it hasn't even been on the server for 48 hours. If it's broken, the devs will know and fix it posting here speculating does nothing

Like how Higby had to already reduce the cont lock from 2 to 1 for Emerald and Connery for the exact reasons people have been stating above.

^
so wait. now only one faction can have 1 bonus. cause only one continent can lock? what happened to the choice of what continent you take for the specific bonus you want?

and what a great advantage over the other factions.. having the only bonus on the server

benefits go to the over poped faction.. this encourages faction hoping. nuff said

btw.. when i heard about continent locking i probly thought of the same thing everyone did. continents could be locked but should be able to be gotten to if you beat the faction that owns it. intercontinental lattice battle islands things like that. not just it locks and it cant be touched untill you lock something else. i dont think ppl were expecting that 2 continents would be locked all the time never being able to have 3 continents open again

^^ Well so I might be mistaken but a locked continent and the bonus are not necessarily the same thing... The bonus should apply even when the continent is unlocked until the other factions strip you of all your territory.

So in theory every faction could have 1 bonus. Realistically, the faction that can ghost cap in the off hours dictates the bonuses factions have/don't have.

One thing to keep in mind (and one thing I didn't really consider in my reply immediately after the OP)...

It may be daunting or even impossible to capture a continent during primetime at 33/33/33 pop when one faction has such a huge bonus, BUT... opposing factions need not fully capture a continent to take it away from them... they need merely win a continent alert by having 34% control. it counts the same as 94% during non-alert times.

yeah and I'm sure he would have done so regardless of forum warriors

Overreaction

Let it play out more.

First time ever a continent benefit was actually noticed.

Yeah, he did it because prime time populations demanded it.

The Briggs server is basically dead. Its ruled by a complete NC overpop and much of the playerbase has migrated to Connery. Asians don't have and never had their own server, so not sure what you mean. Japanese, Korean, and Chinese players play on Connery as well.

Continent locking isnt anywhere near complete. Its just a piece of what's to come. Its just too early to tell if the bonuses are too much or not. At least give it some time sheesh. Also it has to be enough of a benefit for people to care about it. The -10% resource cost from before its insignificant and no one cared about it before.

Should leave it a -50%

BUT

Give the factions that didn't cap it -% in the other unlocked resources ..

Ie:

NC cap Amerish for -50% infantry purchases > Giving VS/TR -15% Air / Ground purchases and +15% XP
TR then cap Indar as well so they gain -50% Air purchases but lose the others and the VS retain just -15% air and +15% XP .. Nc gain nothing since they have the Amerish lock ..

It would hopefully help stop the resources having a snowballing effect and also make people think a little .. Which benefit do you want ? And which are you willing to give your enemy ?..

% is just an example