Alert Systems and FNO

HereticusXZ · 2013-04-20, 01:01 AM

I don't know about anyone else so I'm going to propose the question here and see what kind of a discussion I can get going... Is the Alert System a liability to our having fun with Friday Night Ops, or is it a boon?

I myself enjoy the alert system during casual day-2-day Squad/Platoon activity because it's something fun to do when you don't have any overall campaign going to take over a continent and the XP reward is pretty compelling. The thing I hate about the Alert System is it's inconvenient, it's random, and IMO events and other content of this game should be created by the Players, not the system.

Something that really bothers me about the Alert System, especially during FNO is that our Outfit is set up and designed to cater to everyone's interests: Infantry, Tanks, Air, and Special Forces divisions. However to win the Alert you only need Special Forces type strategies, being to rapid respond all over the map and not bother with forming battle-lines or bothering with prolonged sieges, MAYBE you'll deploy some airpower but ultimately you win these Alerts by just capturing the small outposts with a quick infantry zerg and then move on, regardless of enemy counter attack you don't defend, seldom is it called upon to defend or consolidate, the Alert rewards fast-attack offenses only.

It seems like to me, because of the Alert, a lot of our players are crippled or thrown out of there groove, expecting team-work involving there preferred play style (Infantry, Tanks, Aircraft) and then thrown into only one specialization because that's what is needed to win the Alert.

Thoughts?

bpostal · 2013-04-20, 11:40 AM

So your issue is that during FNO you can't work with your preferred playstyle or is it during every alert?
Either way you need much, much more than some guys galaxy ghosting half the cont. Who's gonna stop the NC and VS from doing the same to you? You're going to need Infantry, Air and Armor.
Loading everyone into gals isn't going to work unless you massively outnumber the enemy factions.

snafus · 2013-04-20, 12:10 PM

Originally Posted by bpostal

So your issue is that during FNO you can't work with your preferred playstyle or is it during every alert?
Either way you need much, much more than some guys galaxy ghosting half the cont. Who's gonna stop the NC and VS from doing the same to you? You're going to need Infantry, Air and Armor.
Loading everyone into gals isn't going to work unless you massively outnumber the enemy factions.

Well he has a point you can ignore Armor zergs. Since armor isn't very effective unless well supported you will dump a good amount of man power to protect it and force clumping together. And since the alerts are all about land grabs you simply bypass said zerg and lol your way to their warpgate. Now they're times when a good zerg on zerg fights occur but those fights mean little on the over all victory of the alert. You really only want to engage a said zerg to defend a very crucial base other wise it is just smarter to bypass.

HereticusXZ · 2013-04-20, 09:02 PM

Well I'm responsible for organizing and commanding my Outfits Armor Division. It's difficult to do just that with the current problems with vehicle combat in this game, such as Vehicle Render distance vs Infantry render distance, every single infantry class with the exception of Infiltrator having the ability to single handedly destroy Vehicles, some classes can even take out multiple vehicles, and the problem that any hobo can pull and solo operate a MBT makes vehicle spam a problem.

So you can see why our members loose interest in a aspect of the game they enjoy and our player activity drops, But vehicle combat issues is a entirely different argument all together and not hugely relevant, though still a problem to my frustration of the Alert System and FNO specifically.

The Alerts are nice for that extra XP so I can get my certs and purchase weapons at a faster, more convenient rate, during your average weekday they give your squad/platoon something to do.

During FNO when your Outfit wants to hook up with whatever coalition/alliance your faction has for some big major operation, or your Outfit wants to challenge and have a event with another outfit of the opposite faction at a designated area for example, the Alert System becomes a serious problem because your Coalition becomes fractured between whatever Ops everyone agreed upon vs the people who wants to attend the Alert for the big XP gain.

Alerts more or less reward only specific battle strategies or platoon compositions, True enough PS2 throws you into enough situations that you get a ton of diversity, but during Alerts specifically your forced to play only one way.

Ultimately what grinds me gears is PS2 should be a game where Players, Squads, Platoons, and Outfits create the content, organize the fights, events, and more but the Alert System is throwing a wrench into all of that.

Am I wrong in this? Or am I having one to many bad experiences/going about this all wrong?

snafus · 2013-04-20, 10:48 PM

I generally dislike Alerts now for a different reason. Since it seems most outfits get their shit together when reacting to an alert it makes life hard on fly boys. There is usually so much burster fire or simply to much enemy air for me to be effective. So I only participate in alerts anymore if the outfit is doing it. Other wise I go farm peeps on another continent since they lack the ability to pull AA for some reason.

But I do feel your reason is valid. Pulling armor is hard enough and the rapid movement required to win an alert makes it even harder to keep the armor column relevant. In my opinion a galaxy full of troops are far more effective then twelve tanks could be.

EVILPIG · 2013-04-24, 01:38 PM

I dislike artificial mechanisms that herd or dictate players' actions. The beauty of Planetside is that the action and the culture of the game is created by the players. I may be a bit bias, as my outfit put in the time and developed organization that set us apart from others, only to see it added later on. For example, we created the Platoon System of 3 squads linked. When it was added to PS1, it was funny to us because that is how we organized it for so long, but I do see that it was needed and it really helped players. The Alert System however is different. It has had a positive effect that it does stimulate large fights on Esamir and Amerish, and that is good, but I recently authored a thread titled, "Are Alerts enslaving the player base"? Alerts now determine where the primary action is, not the players. It is cool to have an event. Something to focus on - a goal, but the game is now dictating where the players go, not the players. I try not to be too hard on it though, as it is a temporary fix to the Indar "problem". I don't know if the Mission System will be much better even with players creating the missions, as missions will likely only be followed by the outfits that post them and the ability to post missions will probably be unlocked by 100 Certs, as is our new Global. But, I would prefer that to having a dice roll every 3 hours tell the players where to be.

Add many new conts as fast as possible, bring back Sanctuaries, designate Home Continents and install a Continental Lattice so that we can play some Global strategy instead of the 3 instanced fights we have now.

And Heretic, I understand your plight, as our Armor and Air Wing have had to endure the never ending buff to infantry's ability to kill vehicles. I have offered many suggestions to get vehicles fighting vehicles more so that infantry can fight infantry more, but the paradigm continues to evolve towards this game being about infantry. Sadly, those who actually try to play vehicles regularly must suffer.

*EDIT* To the original topic, Alerts can interfere. Our Saturday Rallies at Noon PST have been a tradition for 10 years, but now if an Alert is happening, we wait until it is over before we rally so that we're not just pulling 150 guys off of the Alert or asking players who may have been involved in it for 1 1/2 hours to just drop it.

Mustakrakish · 2013-04-24, 02:55 PM

As I see it, there are two major issues with the Alert system in its present form.

The first problem is that only one type of alert--continental conquest--exists at the moment. This encourages everyone to flood to a single continent, forcing massive queues and throwing a huge wrench into any player-organized events scheduled at that time. Other types of alerts focused on global objectives--controlling Tech Plants across all continents, for instance--could serve the same purpose without creating as much of a disruption as the current alerts. The devs mentioned that other types of alerts will be added eventually, and I hope it happens sooner rather than later.

The second problem is that the way alerts are currently structured, holding whatever your faction currently controls and making a huge land-grab in the last ~30 minutes of the alert seems to be the most effective strategy. Kinda defeats the purpose of making it a 2-hour event, doesn't it? Rather than basing the reward on the territory your faction holds at the end of the alert, the mechanics should be revised to account for the number of captures/defenses your faction completes, and/or how long you held the territory for.

EDIT: I made a post in the Idea Vault about what I have in mind. You can find it here.

snafus · 2013-04-24, 03:35 PM

Originally Posted by Mustakrakish

As I see it, there are two major issues with the Alert system in its present form.

The first problem is that only one type of alert--continental conquest--exists at the moment. This encourages everyone to flood to a single continent, forcing massive queues and throwing a huge wrench into any player-organized events scheduled at that time. Other types of alerts focused on global objectives--controlling Tech Plants across all continents, for instance--could serve the same purpose without creating as much of a disruption as the current alerts. The devs mentioned that other types of alerts will be added eventually, and I hope it happens sooner rather than later.

The second problem is that the way alerts are currently structured, holding whatever your faction currently controls and making a huge land-grab in the last ~30 minutes of the alert seems to be the most effective strategy. Kinda defeats the purpose of making it a 2-hour event, doesn't it? Rather than basing the reward on the territory your faction holds at the end of the alert, the mechanics should be revised to account for the number of captures/defenses your faction completes, and/or how long you held the territory for.

EDIT: I made a post in the Idea Vault about what I have in mind. You can find it here.

I really like the idea of having cross continent objectives. That is something that would make a huge difference in how alerts currently work. Forcing outfits to focus on multiple continents would be a dam good start to making alerts cool and fun again. This would really bring a more vibrant tactical options to the table for Outfit and alliance leaders to chew on.