Earning Resources

[2coolforu]

In the lunchtime interview Higby mentioned that SOE are split between making resource rate global or continental. In other words should territories on your continent give you resources or should every continent worldwide provide them.

The continent idea has a problem, it means that people are strongly rewarded for fighting on continents that they control the majority of. With a game without a continent lock this could be problematic, an empire who controls the majority of a continent has a huge incentive to stop the enemy taking it but the opponents trying to attack have an incentive to leave and go to continents on which they have more territory. Another problem is that without continent locking there is no real 'objective' in taking territory other than getting more resources for yourself, continent locking was really the 'incentive' in Planetside other than getting into a good fight.

I have a semi-baked idea that I've just come up with after listening to the interview and it probably needs refining, but I think no matter what resources have to be global just to make the incentive *Taking* territory not just trying to camp the continent you own the most of. The payoff for this is that you reduce the value of territories on every continent, so the new objective becomes taking territory but not overexpanding onto too many fronts, now with lower resources per territory you can add in 'Strategic Locations'. Effectively these would be the 'Empire Specific' resources we've heard mentioned like 'Auraxium' for the Vanu. There would be a few of these 'Strategic Locations' on the world, not even one per continent , and they would be extremely valuable in resource-terms providing many, many times the amount of a 'Standard' territory. The developers could also put these in interesting locations or design interesting locations around them (River deltas, an industrial/mining complex, mountains, city) which would provide an extremely good backdrop and terrain for a fight.

The strategic territories would provide a goal and constant flashpoint for the Empires to fight for, denying them from the enemy would take a lot of effort but would severely damage their resource capabilities. Capturing and holding them would provide a huge boost to your own production capabilities, overall they would just be a point on the map to work towards and give a goal to the whole situation - Just an idea.

[BorisBlade]

Yeah, the continent only set up wouldnt work for the reasons you mentioned without some crazy other system in place. Global gets tricky too for other reasons but is managable. Honestly its hard to comment too much without knowin more details of this new system. Ironically they do it to help more with giving you a goal and makin capping things more meaningful, but currently it doesnt seem to be doin it any better at all. There are plenty of ways this system could just make it more frustrating for losing sides than its worth.

Very easy to get in a system that lets the strong get stronger and the weak get weaker, MAG fell into that trap and was a terrible game experience if you werent that winning side.

[2coolforu]

Unlike MAG Planetside is self-correcting, if an empire gains too much territory it has to fight on two fronts. In MAG if a faction became to powerful and lets say it had 10,000 online players it would be against the combined powers of the other 2 empires (I haven't played MAG so I'm just guessing here) which is say 20,000 players. However the battles are instanced 64 v 64 or what not and cannot ever occur without Empire 1 (the winning empire) being present. Therefore those 20,000 have to fight the 10,000 in batches of 10,000. They lose the advantage of outnumbering the enemy 2:1 as those people in Empire 1 still fight 64 vs 64.

In Planetside the 'players per game' is effectively infinite, if an empire has taken nearly all the territory it's 10,000 soldiers WILL be fighting 20,000 soldiers head to head. Sure they might poplock one or two conts but on those conts they will still be fighting 2:1 as the poplock is determined by all 3 empires and not just one. In the overall fight they will be vastly outnumbered, the variety of continents they would have to defend would be impossible and they would have to concentrate their forces on a few conts and the equilibrium would be restored as the other 2 empires took over the spares.

The 3 empire system and lack of instancing means Planetside 2 can actually stay pretty much immune to empires 'locking' the world like they do in MAG or End War.

[NapalmEnima]

In the lunchtime interview Higby mentioned that SOE are split between making resource rate global or continental. In other words should territories on your continent give you resources or should every continent worldwide provide them.

This occurred to me as well. As did the solution:

The automated mission generation system. It could (and may already) offer larger rewards for folks to go help out on underpopulated continents.

Another solution that just occurred to me: Pop locks. Sure, the "we're winning" continents might lock quicker for the empire that's winning there, but sooner or later (quite possibly sooner), you won't be able to fit any more warm bodies onto that continent, and people have to go SOMEWHERE to play.

We also don't know the income ratio between capture/defense bonuses and continuous earnings. If the capture/defense bonuses work out to 80% of your income, and the continuous earnings are only 20%, it won't matter nearly as much. Suddenly those continents your empire is losing on are just "target rich environments".

Earnings can be skewed various ways for different population ratios and different control ratios.

There's a lot of dials they can twiddle in order to get keep things reasonably well spread out (or bunched up for that matter... maybe they want all three empires to pop-lock continent A, then all lock continent B, and so on... to keep that Epic Scale feel going).

[Traak]

I would like to see deployable forests. Johnny Appleseed certs! Or perhaps the devs could cause the foliage to cycle with seasons. Or change from time to time to change the character of a continent. "Oh, no! the season for the Bloody Hossin Tangletrees is upon us! Tanks will have to stick to main roads!"

Or whatever.