new alerts are boring

[Gatekeeper]

Originally Posted by Dougnifico

I concur. The old alerts were great in that they move the population around and made a continent pop lock for an even fight. With the facility alerts, the most populous win every time. When its cap all facilities of this type, on this cont, VS just takes a quick 10k on connery.

Kill the new alerts. That is the solution.

The alerts themselves are fine, it's population balance that's the problem - the alerts just highlight the issue.

What we need are better fixes for population balance.

[Osskscosco]

Originally Posted by Qwan

The alerts are fun on Woodman, the VS outfits actually work together taking and securing what ever the goals are for that alert, and if they need reinforcments they usually get it. We also get alot of domination wins on Woodman as well. And I dont want to hear about how bio labs are sooooo defendible, we took one this sunday from the NC and all I got to say is it took the whole damn two hrs to get it. But here is a hit to taking bio labs, FORGET ABOUT YOUR K/D RATIO. If you worry about that all the time you will loose a fight for sure. Push out of the damn spawn room, use max crashes, grenade, concusion grenades work awesome to. Believe me once everyone forgets about K/D ratio, and trying to get the most kills, fights will get alot better.

Alert on woodman: the 45% VS population zergs and wins in 15-20 minutes.

[Rahabib]

Here's the problem with the alert system as I see it. It gives an objective, and nothing else in the game matters at that point. Sure there are resources to be gained, but since resources aren't important you cant cut off important defenses via other means other than rushing the same point.

Can these objectives work? I think so, but not unless there is a viable metagame that gives meaning to individual territories outside of the alert territories. This goes for continent capping alerts as well.

For instance, lets say you have a tech plant alert. You could just keep rushing head long into each other, or you could have it so that biolabs are the only facilities to generate infantry resources (and surrounding territories). Rather than one meaningless siege why not cut off the camping factions resources by attacking the biolabs.

What does this do? it forces the camping team to leave the biolab and defend the tech plants if they want to continue using Maxes. It spreads out the action and creates a form of "sub objectives."

Right now every base generates resources, and they should, but I still think there should be a regional hub for resources to be collected so that resources can be cut off. I am not advocating using ANTs etc. I think thats boring, but outposts need to be connected to the main bases (bios, techs, and amps) and each one generates one type of resource - and that base must be connected to the warp gate.

At the very least, main bases need to account for the bulk of the resources and outposts just a trickle. This at least would make it so that outposts are necessary to connect to the base, but bases are very important and that makes defense easier since you mainly need to focus on ~9 bases per continent rather than every single one. However, it increases defensibility to hold the outposts surrounding the base since the lattice makes it so they cant back cap on you.

Alerts should be side objectives, not THE objective. I like that it gives at least one objective to the game, but at this point it seems like everything in between the alerts is "warm up" time.

Its sad that SOE keeps bumping a resource overhaul, when IMO its the most important thing this game needs!

[Qwan]

Originally Posted by Osskscosco

Alert on woodman: the 45% VS population zergs and wins in 15-20 minutes.

LOL its not always a zerg, its there is some method to the madness which is PS2.

[Rahabib]

its called a "tactical login"

[Rivenshield]

Originally Posted by Dougnifico

I concur. The old alerts were great in that they move the population around and made a continent pop lock for an even fight. With the facility alerts, the most populous win every time. When its cap all facilities of this type, on this cont, VS just takes a quick 10k on connery.

Word. Facility alerts disperse the population. They suck. Cont alerts drag your nose over pieces of the map you've never seen, much less fought over before. And they give you big frantic clawing snarling JUST ONE MORE BASE TO GO battles. They rule.

For the record, I'm TR Connery as well, and I disagree 100% with OP. Our Republic does a reasonable amount of credit to the old Markov TR. Half our number at any given time are combat engies and medics. We are a self-regenerating self-supplying superorganism of death and doom. You see multiple lone strangers hunkered down behind tanks and MAXes taking fire -- and they'll go up with that tank if they have to. Hence, we rule at insane defense. Not so much the offense.