Underdog Bonuses Removed?

GoodFella146 · January 2018

Were these removed from the game? At the moment, the best way to earn AP is to log into the alliance zerging the hardest.

For those who do not know what I'm talking about, from the wiki:

Population Underdog — Scoring bonus ×4, AP bonus 20%
Score Underdog — Scoring bonus ×3, AP bonus 20%

So basically if your faction is behind in population or score, you're encouraged to play due to these bonuses. There are icons associated with these bonuses which I remember seeing in the past but haven't seen in a very, very long time.

Look at the current state of the main campaign on PS4:
[img][/img]

[img][/img]

Well if you're not blue, doesn't that look fun?

Here is the current state of the secondary campain:
[img][/img]

It's a real mess. These bonuses I thought were there help to keep campaigns competitive, but clearly that ain't happening.

Does anyone have any information on what is up with Underdog Bonuses? Thanks.

Aisle9 · January 2018

Noticed that as well, yesterday PC-EU Sotha Sil was consistently dominated by EP, with AD and DC on the lower end.

Underdog bonus was nowhere to be found, despite a poplocked EP and a 1 bar DC, with no keeps and no scrolls.

I would've at least appreciate some more AP.

coop500 · January 2018

A underdog bonus would be awesome~ I hope they look into what happened to it.

GoodFella146 · January 2018

No info on this?

redspecter23 · January 2018

I've seen the score underdog bonus recently on PC. Red was about 5k points with blue and yellow each with less than half of that to receive the bonus. When the gap was less than double the bonus went away. I'm not sure exactly when it's supposed to kick in, but these are just the numbers I noticed when I most recently saw it. I haven't seen a low population bonus in over a year on any campaign.

GoodFella146 · January 2018

Still no info? This really imbalances campaigns....

Sneaky-Snurr · January 2018

I acknowledge the underdog bonus but sometimes it's a little bit too much at its current state. Allow me to elaborate.

You see, in PC-NA 30-day Sotha Sil, EP have always been the alliance to finish bottom for the past 6 months except for last 2 months since we won the campaign. Interesting fact about EP finishing on the bottom is due to the overtuned underdog bonus. EP have always placed 2nd from the start to the middle of the campaign duration thanks to our consistently low player numbers that is high enough above the bonus threshold so as to not trigger the bonus.

So what happens midway through the campaign is that DC gets the bonus since they have even lower numbers from 1/4 to 1/2 of the campaign's duration compared to EP. And then a certain guild of buddies hailing from the Covenant comes in and rake in all the bonus points and within a day, they were able to surpass EP and placed second with a fairly huge margin in place. I'm talking 5-6k difference in score. Depressing.
And by then, DC are back for the final quarter of the campaign and us EP are hopeless to gain any favourable grounds to place 2nd, let alone 1st.
This frustrates players like me and others who played strategically to earn points for our alliance throughout the duration of the campaign. In effect, we resorted to selfish AP farming and solo headhunts across Cyro for the remaining 10 days or so.

My comment on the bonus is that it needs revising. It is currently giving waaay too much bonus points. Maybe tweak the duration of the bonus and the % of bonus scores and then we'll see if it is a leveled playing field.

NyassaV · January 2018

yus plz

PlagueSD · January 2018

Am I the only one that thought of this when I read the title...Yes, I'm showing my age...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEVsRLhet2k

GoodFella146 · January 2018

Ok well a few days later (and still no underdog bonuses to be found), let's take a look at the maps in the two CP campaigns.

Here is Vivec:
[img][/img]

Wow! Doesn't that look like fun to play in!

Here is Shor:

Hey if you thought Vivec was bad, come play in Shor!

The state of the game is absolutely unacceptable at the moment. Playing on a losing faction has absolutely ZERO incentive. Instead, you get rewarded by switching to the winning faction and zerging empty keeps.

I'll keep updating this thread until something happens.

Aisle9 · January 2018

Ok, so, clarification...

The underdog bonus seems to be for the alliance with lowest score, not the lowest pop.

Which means you can be in a poplocked alliance, against 5 people on each of the other 2 and still get the underdog bonus. It seems like it wouldn't be possible, and yet, logged in DC, 5 people in chat, the map was not being played. Relogged EP, low camp score, poplocked, underdog bonus, while they had the whole map and were gatecamping AD.

If anyone can, correct me if I'm wrong, but this is what I saw.

I'm not sure how it works, but there seems to be something wrong here...

LarsS · January 2018

As I understand the under pop bonus, kicks in if there is a substantial pop imbalance ovet 24 hours. The timer should be much shorter.

GoodFella146 · January 2018

Idk, but I never see this bonus active and both campaigns are in a total disaster state

TequilaFire · January 2018

PS4 NA Vivec and Shor look like that because EP bailed to Shor because all the Transfaction players jumped to DC on Vivec.
Need to stop the alliance switching!

Luckylancer · January 2018

Bonus to alliance's points seems exploitable a bit but bonus to ap gain should be there. This will allow people who want ap can farm it againts enem zergs.

It is boring when you own all the map and enemy players dont bother defending/recapturing. It is more boring when they have all the map and you cant do anything.