What I liked about this Event:
Above all else, the single que was an enormous improvement over the little single planet separate ques. The single que proved to be much less exploitable than numerous smaller ques. Many more PUG vs PUG battles happened. It was infinitely more fun that way. It still isn't a matchmaker, but it was a decided improvement.
What I didn't like about this event:
Information about rewards and how the event itself worked were scarce throughout all of it. I find myself just now at the last day of the event finally having some of the answers I was looking for over a week ago. A better job of posting all of the event details from the start would have been greatly appreciated. Trickling the details out day by day as the event unfolded felt very much like you were making this stuff up as you go along. Not cool.
The big reward ultimately is the least relevant, and the most arbitrary. Who will win? Clan or IS? I am typing this only a scant few hours before the end arrives, and I still haven't got a clue. In a single hour I've seen the win/loss ratio swing from 24% to 71%. having this determined by instant score rather than overall score for the whole event is rather painful. So ultimately this event is determined by the players in the European timezone. As I understand things, this means we just handed the decision over to the timezone with the highest ratio of IS to Clan players. This gives an enormous advantage to IS for actually winning the overall event. Seems rather unfair to me.
And then of course, last but not least, the thing that everyone is screaming about. The population gap. Seeing 60+ teams of IS players qued up against a mere 5 clan teams was rather horrifying. 60 teams! that's 720 players, sitting there, being bored, stuck in a que for some painful length of time before getting a chance to fight. Add to this the painful reality of not being able to earn as many personal rewards because of the dramatically longer que times, and I really can't blame IS players for getting pretty hot.
Now in fairness this issue did reduce significantly as the event continued. I actually saw the que hit zero defenders for a moment one late evening. PGI offering to switch players and whole teams from IS to clan in an attempt to balance the teams a bit better no doubt did help. Players quitting CW (and possibly the game itself) in disgust was no doubt a factor as well.
Offering to switch players from IS to Clan in a hasty attempt to balance things up better was a nice gesture, and not doing anything no doubt would have resulted in torches and pitchforks. But PGI really should have actually checked their own statistics for faction membership and owned mechs before launching an event like this. The fact that they did not, is very disheartening.
Edited by DoctorZuber, 30 April 2015 - 10:51 AM.