I just played in an alert that was over before it even began. The territory control was just so uneven that my faction (VS) had 0 chance to compete. Even ignoring the overextended TR front, NC started with over 50% control. Why would the game even bother to start an alert here? There was pretty much no way that NC was going to lose simply because they had such a huge lead at the start. TR or VS would pretty much need to cap unopposed to have a chance. As you can see, all that happened was TR got hammered between the NC and VS and no other progress was made beyond that. This was not a case of pop imbalance, since they evened out pretty quickly. This just strikes me as poor design, considering the other unlocked continent (amerish) was much more even in terms of territory. Beginning: End:
A few days ago on miller about half an hour into the alert VS had reached the TR warpgate , cutoff the remaining bases (about 20% ) and conquered most of them . 10 minuter later when TR recovered the bases close to the warpgate they had only 6% or 7% of the map ( VS had nearly 60% and NC about 35% ) . TR ended up wining the alert with over 40% of the map.. ( if i recall correctly they ended up with around 37% population) Initial territory control is not that big of a deal ; Population is a much more decisive aspect ...
Then again, what is the point of any alert. Having to ghost cap and play in 12vs96+ zerg battles (that you dont get very little rewards from) just to get like 40certs and -50% reduction cost to something you can spam anyway. Meanwhile on the other side of the fence, people who ignore the alert and instead just go for good fights gets x10 more certs/kills and most importantly fun (subjective). I dont understand why people get so upset about "loosing" alerts when there is pretty much no real reward. Speaking of rewards for events. In PS1, there was an event that had the 3 empires compete against eachother for a few weeks. Sort of like the alerts in PS2. At the end, points were added up, and the empires were ranked 1st, 2nd and 3rd place. The reward was the empire in the 1st place, got to use the guns/vehicles of the 2nd and 3rd place empire. And the 2nd place got to use guns/vehicles of the 3rd empire. 3rd place didnt get anything. The reward lasted for something like a few weeks or a month. It was extremely fun and rewarding and people actually cared about winning, strategy and helping out their faction. Anyway, the point is. I wish PS2 had awesome gamechanging stuff like that. Instead of the generic/boring "here's your 30 certs that you dont need" reward that nobody but VS cares about.
Players get locked into holding territory rather than looking at what they need on the map. So they will try to hold some over extended territory that is useless to the endgame and can't be held when they could have taken territory they do need. So TR look like they are too focused on holding overextended territory and not giving it up to push north so that the 32%+29% fight the 38%. Without doing that, they are split constantly with the VS leaving upwards of 7% NC overpop to hold them down. Granted, the NC overpop and a playerbase incentivised to farm makes it tough to motivate people into a tough fight. They tend to want to "farm" and that means fighting where the odds are in your favor for your particular playstyle. And yes, there is a reward for winning alerts. Half off maxes is a pretty big deal as you don't want to be the faction dealing with max spam. Half off air resource cost means a faction will be spamming ESFs.
Probably because zero chance to win = just go where theres a good fight. The fight began with TR probably being obliterated by both sides probably why they started with highest pop ended with the lowest and went with the idea of **** it doesn't matter cant win might as well have fun. Half off air is usually much less punishing after an alert than tanks or maxes as most players dont do air do to the huge entry learning curve/cost to have even close to a competitive esf. With tanks and maxes you can at least kill infantry fairly easily with a fresh out the gate unmodified one with and ESF your probably going to get blown out the air by an enemy ESF really quickly and feel like even tho its cheaper you still just wasted it and your time.
Wait what? There was a random event that was basically a version of capture the flag in Planetside 1? Sounds... awesome.
I'd like to have alerts where ever territory will be set neutral, forcing al the factions back to the warpgate, having to work through the lattice again.
That's an excessive amount of no-combat. Just define one or two base near the "middle" of lattice lanes as neutral, if you're really going to suggest this route.
Which becomes that much higher of a learning curve when VS can afford to ram scythes into you at over twice the normal rate or run giant lock-on swarms.
here another example: http://ps2alerts.com/alert/13055#map NC start with 51% territory and TR with 41% and VS once VS tired of get back Northpoint Station, they decide to ghost-cap NC and with LOWEST pop VS reached 2nd place and NC should never play alerts
