Why was this brought back UNCHANGED? As soon as indar unlocks 100-150 players all went to Ti making the rest of indar almost completely empty and once again completely boring to play on. I mean why remove it in the first place if you were never going to make changes to it? So I guess its back to indar unlocks I(and many others) log off until something else unlocks.
Because many people in other sites have clamored for it's return, and it could very well be an easy on/off switch for the team. Add to that, the community simultaneously wants contrasting things.
I don't like TI Alloys, but the dead zone in the middle of the most popular continent was worse. Also, as Ssymm mentioned it will be extra popular today and probably for the next week. The people who liked it even a little have been missing it. The valid point here is why did they do nothing with it for 6 months? That's the point I take issue with. Tell me what you folks think of this one: Add another floor. Here in the picture, where the yellow energy shield windows are, put stairs there going up to another floor and put the control point up there. Why? Because it would increase the run distance from everybody's spawns to the control point, meaning trickle reinforcements would be less likely to reach it and organized play would be able to hold it better. This would mean the base would change hands more often as attackers could get dug in on point. Very often the defending faction crutch on the hard spawn. If that gets taken away because the base flipped then they have to go elsewhere. This would break up the all day TI Alloys play without taking it out of the game entirely. Also, why is the stone bridge still depicted on the mini map if it isn't actually there?
Its good that its back, it restores some faith that the devs aren't out to just destroy the large extended combat gameplay in favor of "tactical" zerg-your-enemy gameplay. Obviously such gameplay is popular, the active removal to placate the people like OP was a massive mistake. OP's gameplay still exists with TI Alloys on, what is missing is the incentives to encourahe players to join that capture-the-continent (CTC) gameplay. Currently CTC gameplay is designed to destroy the game: avoid combat, zerg your enemy, capture easy bases, ghost cap. There are no incentives to create a fun, balanced battle. On top of that the gameplay flow of capturing a base is broken. It constantly stops the gameplay as you wait for a cap and then wait for attackers to get their crap together and move to the next base and start that attack. Escalation showed that players do want to fight outside of bases like TI Alloys, but that the current CTC gameplay just isnt enjoyable enough to get them out of there. So instead of outright removing TI Alloys there is one good solution: MAKE IT FUN. If CTC gameplay is fun then players will join. That means fixing the gameplayflow and fixing the incentives to capture bases so you are less rewarded for picking easy fights or zerging to your objective but rather encouraged to make fights much closer to fair and balanced. A hard fought win should be more valuable than an easy victory.
In my opinion, it was likely removed to see the effect it had on the dynamics of the map. As soon as the continent opened, everyone went to Ti Alloys. Closing it off meant people were forced to fight at another base. I don't know how well it worked, but for the times I would play, while I did get to fight at a few different bases here and there, I was still stuck fighting at the same bases over and over. The Crown/Ceres Hydro/Crossroads, Howling Pass/NS Refinery, Indar Exc./Quartz Ridge/Indar Comm. No real sweeping changes there. Still, it was nice to fight somewhere slightly differently Slightly. I do still dislike Ti Alloys. It's just one big farm fest. Sure the game was designed for big battles, but no point in having a big map if that's the only place players go.
Because everything you just described still happened with the Crown. Removing Ti fixed nothing. AND Because having Ti disabled wrecked the lattice of the map. If left the SW warpgate with two lattice connections to each enemy. A large zerg could not be flanked and it completely wrecked gameplay during both off an on peak hours. But mostly. Because we F'n like it. It's a fun thing to do and we as players want it. Sorry you disagree. GLAD IT IS BACK
because this is "devs dont know what to do with TiAlloys" patch. And of course they don't read suggestions posted on their official forum. TiAlloys = at least one place for solid continious fight.
Yep. I and many other predicted exactly that. Removing Ti simply moved the 'problem' elsewhere. It didn't miraculously open up the map as was I believe the intention. Given removing it didn't achieve the aim, there is no reason to leave it inactive.