Resources & Short-cutting the Cert Tree

[Malorn]

From the PS 2 announcement
Resources are going to be used throughout Planetside 2 for a variety of different things, such as upgrading your weapons, attaching new weapons to your vehicles, or even short-cutting different skills on the certification tree.

This was also from the Public Panel Video
As you go and capture these pieces your empire is then gaining resources at an increased rate, gaining specific resources. And those resources can be used for things like upgrading your weapons, upgrading your vehicles, training skills on the certification tree. There is a huge level of interactivity between resources, character advancement, and the core gameplay.

This little bit about cert tree short-cutting caught my eye. The key difference is that most of the things listed for resources are short-term benefits, while the skill tree one appears to be a permanent benefit. Anything that is a long-term benefit would be preferred since it is something that will always help you as opposed to something that will only help you in the short term. Its like having cash now or having cash in the bank earning interest. The interest-earning cash will pay off a lot more in the long run. My immediate concern with the short-cutting comment was that people would just not upgrade weapons or vehicles so they can speed up their cert tree training. If the players can 'make do' with the sub-par weapons then they'll do so for more character advancement. Sort of like playing a few rounds with an MP5 and scavenging weapons while building up your cash flow. Only then the player wouldn't spend that cash flow on better weapons, they'd spend it on permanent skill-ups. If that is spread out across the playerbase you could see a lot of folks not using upgrades all that much in favor of permanent benefits, or preferring other people to buy the upgrades rather than them so they can spend their resources on skill-ups.

However, to caveat this Matt did not say that the short-cutting was permanent, and it could be that resources used on cert tree training are temporary, sort of like a "try before you buy" thing, or a way for a player to fill a much-needed role in a pinch. You could also use it to try out certs you might be uncertain of before you set them in your skill queue. For example I might be interested in trying out a specific piece of gear unlocked deeper in the infiltrator tree, or trying out a specific tank upgrade. I could spend resources to unlock that for a time and try it out and see if that's where I want to put my cert advancement.

But that's just speculation. It could go either way, though I worry that permanent skill tree benefits would trend players toward not buying other things with their resources. I like the idea of temporary cert tree advancement to try out stuff or fill a role/get an important piece of gear on short notice.


Discuss!


And just for some context the way I expect the resource system to work is sort of like Counter-Strike buying only instead of money its a few different currency types (lets say steel and cloth). Body Armor might take 100 units of steel and 50 units of cloth. A gun upgrade might just take 100 steel, or much more of other resources. And like Counter-strike the upgrades are temporary - if you die you lose them and have to re-buy. And also like counter-strike there would be a maximum on the amount of resources your character could have. The max is important to encourage people to use them and not just hoard them. You just need a reasonable buffer to be able to buy most of what you want most of the time, and your performance on the battlefield augments that. Die a lot and you'll spend more re-buying, etc.

[Soothsayer]

I'm in complete disagreement, as you may guess from my (now locked) thread on resource collection and self interest.

First, I think that the resources you earn should be yours to do with as you please. If you are thinking short term then you will get all the bells and whistles on your guns/vehicles. If you are thinking long term, you will invest in skill development.

The caveat being that either the relative costs for both are different, as in very low cost for a one shot (one life) upgrade to your rifle or high cost to upgrade a skill (permanent).

I'm operating on the notion that the different resource types will factor into this as well, which can act as a means of valuating different resources based on scarcity and utility. We know that some resources are more useful to different empires, so I wouldn't think it would be too presumptuous to say that the same could be said about resources being used for attachments or skill shortcuts. The resources for upgrading skills may be completely different to the ones used for upgrading weapons, so there may not even be a conflict here.

If it takes a year to max out a vehicle skilltree, I don't see why a person would oppose an active route to speed up the process. I want to experience the full game, and I want to do that within its product cycle lifetime. I also don't really have much concern for the person who buys PS2 and just plays the free month that is pretty much standard with P2P MMO's these days.

I'm in it for the long haul, no need to cater to the lookie loo's.

[Atuday]

A year of gaming would seem to be a long time to me. I would rather have such a long timer shortened. However I think there will be certain upgrades that I would rather have just to make the game more pleasant.

[opticalshadow]

idk, maybe we get like temparary cert points that allow us a short cut to new skills and certs for a short time. or maybe its a point buy, where collecting enough resources give us cert points as our payment for playing (vs being offline)


in either case im fine with it (provided in either case its a slow progress)

[EASyEightyEight]

This shouldn't require too much thought. Think about how resources are supposed to randomize around the maps, how very rare some will be, how much of those resources one would need to unlock certs, then incorporate that into people's desires to grow their characters into more versatile and stronger characters? Isn't that a driving motivation to fight hard over the few spots in the world with these resources in them?

I mean, if you want a purpose behind fighting the other guy besides simply taking over the world, that concept outlined above might be it.

[exLupo]

Malorn's idea on the mechanic sounds realistic. *nod*

My guess:
Extreme 1) Work your skills up, spend your resources on mods that you've unlocked.
Extreme 2) Work your skills up, pay resources for 1 spawn of weapons you haven't yet unlocked.
Actual play lies somewhere between.

I don't really see a problem with these living together. People will probably spend some to try out new weapons to see if they even want to cert that high or in that tree at all. Some will be very spendy to keep using the high-tree weapon they like while others will get a taste for that same weapon but spend resources on mods for what they have unlocked now instead while they train up.

Example: Paying for modded MA vs unmodded HA.

If players aren't spending resources then there's a problem. However, only in that players aren't interested in what they have access to. Getting players excited is up to dev. I imagine players will span the range from constantly broke due to always blinging themselves out in mods to Scrooge McStandardAssault, using stock kit while squirreling away his resources for a rainy day.

Something that strikes me as extra nice is that you can be a hard-core tank specialist but if you need to go indoors, you could still pay for some gear upgrades without having to branch your skill tree. There are certainly times in EVE where I'd love to pay a bonus to rent a one-off ship I can't normally fly. It'd have done a lot more linear specialization over the years.