Events are too frequent

[Larington]

I think the events at the moment are so frequent they've lost all novelty value and I'm not the only one, one of our outfit members drew up some comments on it and why our outfit feels it's time the number of events was reduced.
(http://www.immortalserialkillers.co....opic&topic=651)

Part 1:
Feel more than free to add your own stuff in on this thread just in case his twitter arrow should find its target. Which is why it's in the public section, so it can be read by whomever Larry throws it at.

Let's start with a TLDR list of problems and a couple of possible solutions and then some waffle.

1/ There are too many alerts. As far as I can tell they function like this. One alert ends, between sixty to seventy five minutes later another starts, they last two hours (excluding dominatrix wins). Meaning we spend more time under an alert than not.

2/ They are not working as a whole as advertised, I gather from my outfit mates that they were intended to function such that if a server was low pop', due to time of day or the server in general they would act to help "focus" the servers population ensuring people came together for that Planetside feeling of "scale". However as above, they run twenty-four-seven. They occur in prime time and it doesn't seem to matter what the servers overall population is like.

3/ They are untargeted and unintelligent in their occurrence. They do not take into account starting position, world pop's, time of day. They appear to be little more than just a RNG from the list of possible alerts stuck on a fixed timer. The newer kind are usually just won by those with the highest world pop, encouraging more fourth empiring and population imbalance.

4/ They are often disruptive and unwelcome to players. Because we know we only have an hour window between alerts it's very difficult to get any sort of momentum into tasks that we want to achieve for ourselves, even if those are remarkably thin on the ground in Planetside 2 in the first place. But for instance, trying to lock a cont' and an alert drags half your population away from the task.

So now, a couple of possible solutions.

A/ By far my favourite, utilize your Gamemasters. You picked that word for them, you didn't call them CSR's. Let them, an actual human being, make a decision about whether or not a server at any given time might benefit from an alert. I realise that GM's are very busy individuals, responsible for many games at once and many tasks within them but if they can take the time to look at the maps, the pop, the local time on the server and make a call. That would be better.

B/ Just cut the number and frequency of the things down, most of this outfit (even the folks that love you guys at SoE) think there are far too many of them. They have lost all sense of being anything out of the ordinary now, in fact they are Planetside 2 now.

Now, some waffle. Yay!

My largest problem with them is that they are a very "modern" piece of gaming. They are fundamentally a bit of lazy and Pavlovian design which thinks that all gamers need to partake of a series of dull, repetitive tasks (assigned for them by someone else) followed by a treat at the end because whos'a'clever'little'gamer'yous'a'clever'little'ga mer. Cut this crap out, Planetside was an RTS game where the players made decisions for themselves, by themselves in a large hive-brain towards an overall vague goal. Which was, paint the world the colour of your empire. The first time that occurred back on Werner, now that was an event, one that sticks with players.

The concept of them is all wrong, it's all part and parcel of the general nonsense of the thought that "fights are the be all and end all" of Planetside 2. Which is the wrong way to think about it, the game should revolve around three massive teams co-operating and competing to control territory and the fights are a byproduct of that. Alerts, like the new 75% rule, are plasters (band-aids to you yanks) designed to try and cover up the gaping wound in gameplay terms that having only three cont's, with warpgate footholds and no sanctuaries is.

Whilst having one or two targeted alert a day might be acceptable, having them around the clock for more of the clock per day than not is tiresome, irritating, and not Planetside.

[Larington]

Part 2:
Bit of a case in point tonight if you ask me.

Got given PL mid way through a 9 Bio-Lab alert. We zerged and failed at Ymir, then we zerged and "won" at Onatha. I, personally, enjoyed nothing about either base.

After that we decided with twenty minutes to go to stuff the alert and we just went and played as a smallish outfit (about dozen or so of us online). We had a mini air-squad up, we had a textbook resecure against GAR and other NC at West Pass. We rolled Moss Basin with seconds to spare, then got our arses handed to us by a big old amount of NC, which we paid them back for at Chimney. Other shenanigans too.

We weren't stressing, we (and I mean that, is was group based decision play) were picking bits of the map that suited us, where we could make a difference, where we could play together as a team apart from other zergy VS (we instinctively kinda ditched a BIG fight with RPS/DIG to just go elsewhere and secure Tumas) and where we went was often just a case of going to help a squad-mate who had gone to look at a base somewhere.

It was just nice...the mood on Teamspeak seemed far more upbeat than at any point in fecking alert. In was actually more like the gameplay we used to have before the alert patch. By which I mean, fun.


BIG EDIT. Around 8.30 Postman said to us "Let's take Amerish". The guys did when I got back around 10.30. Sod alerts. Player made objective, completed by players.

[PredatorFour]

Events are too frequent. I just hope they hurry up with Hossin, BI's and Searhus so that we have global continental capping/warfare and we can scrap these lousy events.

[Zadexin]

Wow, I actually agree with everything the OP said. Our outfit, more often than not, ignores the alert unless it happens to coincide with our current goal ATM. During the last Biolab alert nearly half our pop was getting crashes or such bad latency that we decided that we would not be participating in them anymore as a general rule.

My big problem is that the alert system is brainless. Sometimes it drops on a continent that is 90% capped. And they happen far too frequent when nobody really needs them to begin with. During prime time it pretty much prohibits non premium customers from access alert continents. 45 minutes for log in? Why does there need to be an alert if there are so many players on there already?

[typhaon]

I still remember when the developers swore this game wasn't going to revolve around "kill 10 rats" quests...

Today: Ribbons... Alerts....

[Sledgecrushr]

Alerts are a fine band aid until we get true inter-continental conquest. Until then enjoy the extra certs you get from alerts, I know I do.

[Larington]

I can't tell if the alerts system is broke on Miller or what, but I don't think we've had an alert in a few hours. We've actually held onto Amerish as a result (People not jumping continent to get alert XP so we've held onto a locked location).

Good on devs if it's intentional.

[Calista]

I would hate to be trying to run organized ops these days. I would be pulling my hair out trying to coordinate things with all the alerts and the population shifts they cause going on. Another thing is that Alerts kinda implies some level of surprise or something out of the ordinary occurring and when you have them constantly they lose that quality.

[Piper]

Originally Posted by Larington

I can't tell if the alerts system is broke on Miller or what, but I don't think we've had an alert in a few hours. We've actually held onto Amerish as a result (People not jumping continent to get alert XP so we've held onto a locked location).

Good on devs if it's intentional.

Yeah, it looked broke, but then we got one around quarter to a eleven GMT.

Miller last night had a very small overall server queue, but since being recommended and its server pop' exploding back up from a dismal kinda 2k of people in prime time the alert system barely seemed to change in frequency at all.

Oh er...and if anyone wonders why, given I have a PSU account, Larington posted this its because we were chatting away on Teamspeak on the subject and I said I'd pen some waffle on it. I was once a fairly vociferous and at times constructive poster back in the beta forums but I've given up on the idea that attempting to communicate with SoE makes a jot of difference. They seem to have a very fixed agenda for whatever this console game is and will be, but it still doesn't deserve the Planetside name.

[DirtyBird]

Devs <3 Reddit atm, lots of input.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Planetside/c...alerts/cauziax

Originally Posted by Higby on Reddit

Yes, we will be increasing time between alerts and the tightening the criteria for them to start (based on "fairness" at start time) with the next full GU.

[Blynd]

totaly agree they are too frequent and too lang 2 hours per alert is crazy maybe 60 - 90 minutes dependent on the alert type.