Balancing Factor: Resource Storage Limit

[NewSith]

The concern was voiced here and there, but is there an answer if a resource storage player/outfit limit is in the game?

I mean if there is no limit to how much one person/outfit can accumulute, than there's no real point in having resources...

Most importantly, - what do you guys think?

[HellsPanda]

Well resources will also be tied to buying sidegrades and upgrades. Aswell as vehicles, and possibly gear.
It would be abit silly if there was a storage limit.

[Kipper]

What the OP is saying though is that in the first weeks of the game, it will be a factor and vehicles will be rare as people fight on foot to generate income at low cost.

Six months in, nobody will care about how much it costs to pull a galaxy because everyone will have more resources than they know what to do with.

There does need to be a balance (I don't think a limit is it) to make it so that there is an incentive to use resources wisely.

On World of Tanks, it takes AGES to accumulate XP and 'silver' to unlock and buy the next tanks (I've played on and off for a year and still mostly in VI & VII tanks!) - but, there will come a point where everyone maxes out and has the most uber of vehicles available to them. Players who like to 'complete' stuff will leave, and those who stay won't have anything left to aim for (or buy on the cash-shop).

So how does PS2 achieve longevity? Keeping people interested through long term rewards, but not having a 'cap' that will cause their income to dry up, or give players a reason to move on?

You can't just keep introducing new weapons and vehicles and raising level caps either, because over time, it would gimp new players severely and be a nightmare to balance.

[Fenrod]

^Totally true.

I've been playing WoT for a while now and that's what gonna happen.

[Bazilx]

but is there an answer if a resource storage player/outfit limit is in the game?


Yes. They said there will be a limit for resources used to create vehicles and items so that you won't be able to stockpile it. I believe the phrasing was something along the lines of "You'll never have more than you know what to do with"

[Kran De Loy]

I'll say I voted for having a limit, but I'll get into why in a second.

Firstly I believe the tie between the game's longevity and the resource system is very loose. OP forgot to mention that there will be 4 resources, one will be the Common Resource that gets used for general purposes such as sidegrades. The other three will be used on vehicles, aircav and infantry based upgrades such as grenades and implants. This was confirmed in few different times but I seem to be inept at finding it on Google nor can I find the PSU news archive anymore.

So with that in mind I say there should be a cap on the ingame resources that are related to vehicles, aircav and infantry upgrades while there is no cap on the sidegrade resource.

The longevity of PS2 and the public's interest in it will be more about SOE coming out with a new weapon or sidegrade every 2 - 3 weeks. That more than anything else imo (edit: I mean outside of ridiculously super awesome gameplay) will keep a lot of people interested in the game. It will also be a major money earner for SOE as people in general are impatient and want their stuff when they want it and thus will shell out real money for that new thing that just got released. This is pretty much exactly how League of Legends use their Heroes by releasing a new one every few weeks.

[Kran De Loy]

I just remembered, LoL will also lock their new heroes for the first week that a new hero is released so that it can ONLY be purchased with real money for that first week. This also coincidentally coincides with LoL's slow process of balancing the new hero to the rest of the line up (sometimes takes a few days, sometime 2 weeks after release). Dick move to do I know and while I can easily see "SOE" trying to ape that too I do not believe that it will happen as it would at least in part invalidate Higby's repeated promise that no upgrade will be purchasable with real money and that sidegrades will be purchasable with in game money.

And by SOE I mean the Executives that control the IP. There are more than just Smedley to think about in that regard so I don't want to point at him for all that is evil and wrong with Sony executives, but I'm certainly staring very harshly to get the point across as it is part of his responsibility to the company to back up the top end employees.

[Fafnir]

I just remembered, LoL will also lock their new heroes for the first week that a new hero is released so that it can ONLY be purchased with real money for that first week. This also coincidentally coincides with LoL's slow process of balancing the new hero to the rest of the line up (sometimes takes a few days, sometime 2 weeks after release). Dick move to do I know and while I can easily see "SOE" trying to ape that too I do not believe that it will happen as it would at least in part invalidate Higby's repeated promise that no upgrade will be purchasable with real money and that sidegrades will be purchasable with in game money.

This is not true. New heroes can be puchrased with real money or in-game currency. Buying with real money is "cheaper" though - if you want to buy with in-game currency, you have to play actively for 1-2 weeks.

I won't argue about selling stronger champions and nerfing them later, because this basically is their business model. Tribes:Ascend is going exactly the same route. Hopefully Planetside 2 won't.

[Malorn]

First this has been confirmed in the AMAA. It was one of my resource questions.

there will be a cap to resource pools, ideally you won't ever feel like you have more than enough resources.


And its absolutely needed. No player should ever feel like they have enough resources. The moment they do they stop caring about resources and the whole point of fighting over them loses steam.

A limit forces a use-it-or-lose-it mentality. You'll use it on certs, or you'll use it on store items, or you'll use it to build a stockpile of grenades or medkits. The point is that you get something for spending them and you always want more. Nothing is wasted, and it ensures everyone cares about resources.

It also puts a limit on how effective sitting AFK or semi-AFK on a continent is for generating resources. No limit? We're going to see a lot of AFK bots farming resources.

Having a limit also makes costs matter more. If for example they balanced Orbital Strikes by making them require near-full resources then an OS not only becomes a huge resource sink and a costly decision but it also naturally limits how many people could do one at any given moment. If doing an OS means I need to save up, and doing one will cost me the ability to pull a tank for a while then I'm going to think carefully about using it. And of course I will certainly care about replenishing my resources after I use one no matter how long I've been playing the game.

And lastly it can be a differentiator or a monetization point. Having a 20% higher resource cap could be a benefit for subscribers, or it could be an implant buff or some other form of tradeoff in the game.

If you allow people endless supplies they'll stockpile over time and then you won't have the ability to limit OS on resources, and you'll see lame behavior to facilitate the stockpile specifically so people don't have to worry about resources. A cap ensures that lame behavior won't get you much and that you always have to care about resources. It'll also encourage people to use resources more and to pull upgraded vehicles vs stock vehicles. People who have played the game for a long time might not have certs to unlock with the resources but they will certainly have some highly customized vehicle and infantry loadouts that will use resources and they'll go after it.

Think of the model like Counter Strike. You can save up a bit for a gun or two, but you really want wins and to not waste the guns you buy/acquire because that brings in the most cash. But there's also a limit, and its wiped on map changes to ensure that you always care about money in counter strike (unless you run around with a pistol or knife, but w/e).

[Xyntech]

You know what would be nice is if resources had a soft cap, not a hard cap.

Like the more resources you have, the more of a diminish you will have on your return. So you never stop being able to hoard resources, it's just that after a certain amount it becomes pointless because you are getting next to nothing, while if you just spent some of them you would earn them back in no time.

What that would allow is for miserly players to always try to stay in that sweet spot of still earning resources at a decent pace to keep up with their low spending, while always having a large stock of resources on hand for an emergency.

I'm all for having different ways of doing as many things as possible, and if the resource system could partially accommodate both thrifty players who mostly hoarded their resources as well as big spenders who pretty much spent them all the moment they earned them, I think it would only add to the games depth and broad appeal.

Just so long as there WAS a well balanced cap, because yes, there absolutely needs to be one.

[Malorn]

What would a soft cap gain?

[Xyntech]

What would a soft cap gain?

A soft cap would gain return, just diminished return.

Those who spent more would get more, but those who saved more would have more on hand at a moments notice.

Player A. spends resources the moment he gets them. He always grabs as many grenades as he can carry every time. He pulls 60 grenades an hour spending 1200 of x resource.

Player B. saves his resources most of the time. He rarely grabs a grenade unless he is pretty certain he will need it. He pulls 2 grenades an hour spending 40 of x resource.

Player A. never has enough of resource x to pull a tank, much less one loaded out with an aa turret and all of the bells and whistles.

Player B. always keeps a healthy reserve of resources on hand and can always be ready to pull a fully loaded tank should the need arise.

So you could just blow all of your resources the moment you got them, but never have any on hand, or you could spend anything over a certain amount so that you always have a healthy reserve, or you could try to almost never use resources unless the situation demands it and try to build up as large of a reserve as possible.

If there is a hard cap, then you get to say 20,000 resources, and suddenly you stop earning any more. At that point you'd better just start wasting them, because you won't get any more no matter what.

If you have a soft cap, then you could slowly build that 20,000 into 25,000, but it would take a lot longer and still not be that overpowering a boost, especially considering that you would probably be having to avoid spending almost any resources after a certain point if you wanted to keep growing it.

A soft cap would just give more options for playstyle, without pressuring anyone into blowing resources when they would rather just build a reserve. Most players would just find a healthy middle ground, but why force anyone into a pidgeonhole?

[Malorn]

I don't agree with that assessment. Soft cap is still un-capped and carries with it all of the badness of an uncapped resource system.

[Pollo Jack]

I don't believe in punishing those that save their income. It is acceptable in a game like Star Craft where the goal is to mount a winning assault before the enemy can but this game will have no victory.

Someone that never pulls an aircraft will be less useful with it when they finally do. With the plans they have for vehicles I don't doubt missing out on a week or two of play will get you out of habit and more prone to losing your vehicle.

We don't need to worry about longevity, this is also an FPS not just an MMO. FPS players play the same game, map, and weapon setups over and over. We enjoy the challenge of fresh opponents along with the rivalry of old ones. If an MMO player leaves he will most likely come back on and off. I did this with DAoC and many of my friends did this with WoW.

The only think that might hinder longevity is adding poorly planned vehicles and weapons like last time.

[Xyntech]

I don't agree with that assessment. Soft cap is still un-capped and carries with it all of the badness of an uncapped resource system.

Not really.

With a soft cap, you can make it a curved falloff of return, so that when you have 10,000 resources you are earning them at the same rate as when you have 0, but when you have 20,000 you are earning them 1/2 as quickly and when you have 25,000 you are earning them 1/4 as quickly.

By the time you reach 30,000, you could be earning them 1/20 as quickly.

With no resource cap, you could just stockpile 2,000,000+ resources with no consequences of any kind.

With a hard cap, you could stockpile 20,000 resources and after that you get no value from anything related to resource acquisition at all.

With a soft cap, you could (realistically) stockpile let's say no more than 40,000 resources, because after that you are only earning them 1/10,000 as fast as normal. You can still build up a bigger reserve than if it were a hard cap, but you still will never have more resources than you know what to do with.

Soft cap doesn't mean no cap, it means that you don't just hit a wall.

It's like flight ceilings in games. In Planetside 1, there was a hard ceiling. You would be flying upwards gaining altitude, and then suddenly you would hit an invisible barrier and just stop ascending, like hitting a physical roof but with no damage. It sucks and is undynamic and uninteresting.

Flight simulators on the other hand (along with many other games with flying) have soft flight ceilings. As you climb higher and higher, the air becomes thinner and your aircraft is unable to gain as much lift as before, until eventually it becomes impossible to go any higher. There still is a flight ceiling, but it isn't just this wall that you smack into.

And just for the sake of comparison, no cap (no flight ceiling) would be allowing a propeller aircraft to fly into space and eventually leave the milky way galaxy and beyond, with never a decrease in speed.

Soft caps are just more dynamic and interesting and allow you to cater to a wider variety of people.

Unless you would care to explain to me how being able to earn 2,000,000 resources at the same rate as you always earn them is exactly the same problem as earning up to 40,000 at a significantly diminished rate of return.

[Fenrod]

A softcap seems a good idea to balance the differences between the factions, indeed.

And your flight example was a nice simile !

[headcrab13]

I think it just depends on the resource type.

I think some cheap and basic resources should have no limit, and some more rare (heavy, hazardous, etc) types should only be gathered very slowly, only last a short time, or have a small storage capacity.

[Malorn]

If the soft-cap is "realistically" 40, then make the hard cap a little under that and call it a day. It's effectively the same and a lot easier to balance.

Gotta keep the resource system simple so resource management isn't a chore.

What's the purpose? That should be the question you ask.

Nobody is being "punished" for saving if a hard cap exists. You can save. You just can't save forever. Resources aren't meant to be saved forever. They're meant to be spent. Ideally you spend roughly as much as you bring in but i the absence of that a low cap on the total number of resources ensures you never feel like you have enough.

It is vitally important to the game that resources remain something people care about and always feel like they need more. That is what will drive people to


The purpose of a stockpile is so you have a cushion to where you don't actually have to worry about income for a bit and can survive without it. The larger you make that stockpile the more people you will have operating without a limit.

And the AFK bot issue is something that will come up without a resource cap and they'll have to have quite a few designs built on top of that to combat the problem. As long as resources are paid out as dividends you're going to have people sitting around leaching them. If you have no limit on the amount they can leach it's going to be a widespread problem. You'll have people that play all day, then turn on their AFK bot to farm resources on some continent while they sleep or are at work/class. Then they'll come back and not care about resources again because they have this huge stockpile. Worse, they ate resources from people actively on the continent at the time doing things and reduced active population. A cap won't completely eliminate this problem but if the cap is reasonably low there won't be all that much benefit to doing it so motivation will be low. If there's no cap or a soft cap that allows you to stockpile significantly more resources then that's what they'll do.

There's more options to the developers for balancing, it's simpler to balance, and motivation for resources stays high with a cap. It's pure win.

[Xyntech]

If the soft-cap is "realistically" 40, then make the hard cap a little under that and call it a day. It's effectively the same and a lot easier to balance.

I don't think you understand what a soft cap is.

Let's say both the example hard cap and example soft cap are exactly the same cap. Both will be 100 for this example.

With the hard cap, I earn 10 resources every hour. If I don't spend any for 10 hours, I will max out. After that point, no matter how much I play or how well my empire does, I will never gain any reward of any kind.

With the soft cap, I earn 10 resources every hour. Once I hit 50, I earn 5 resources every hour. Once I hit 75, I earn 2 resources every hour. Etc etc. Instead of maxing out after 10 hours, I would only be at 75, or three quarters of the maximum amount I could hold. There is still plenty of potential to still have some reward for doing well or for my empire doing well, just at a slower rate of return than if I only had a few resources.

This is why your example makes no sense. A balanced soft cap will always be higher than a balanced hard cap, because it's harder to reach the cap. It's the whole point of having a soft cap, so that you can still get something, but at a balanced rate proportional to how much you have stockpiled.

It's not hard to balance a soft cap. You just pick what amount you want the average player to have and you start diminishing their resources earned once they pass that number or slightly before it, and then you figure out what the maximum number of resources an individual player could have without it becoming unbalanced and place the end of the soft cap there, where diminished returns trickle to nothing.

Resources are meant to reward. What exactly is the harm in rewarding both big spenders and misers in their own way? It's very easy to balance and you would never run into a situation where you felt cheated out of resources because you couldn't get to an inventory station to grab some grenades or a vehicle because you were stuck in the middle of a long drawn out fight in the middle of nowhere.

[Malorn]

I know what a soft cap is, thanks.

It isn't needed in this instance.

In a place like WoW it makes sense so people target certain stat goals and then hit them, with the soft cap making it so if you go a tad over you didn't waste the stat points, or you could go over intentionally if you wanted to take the loss in efficiency to boost a particularly beneficial stat.

The key part of a soft cap is a goal that you want people to hit (soft cap) and a level you don't want them to go past (hard cap).

Here a simple resource cap is sufficient and keeps the model simple. At the cap? Spend more! Not at the cap? Get more resources! It stays simple.

The problems with soft cap is that it adds unnecessary complexity to the game. Stat point formulas in WoW were one of the more tedious parts of that game. I don't want to have a resource formula in PS to see whether I'm making optimal use of my resources. It's silly.

In the end you still have the same effective result - people target X amount of resources. Whether X is a hard cap or a soft cap in Planetside doesn't matter, it's still the number people will try for. The soft cap doesn't net you anything in here and adds unnecessary complexity.

What is the problem that soft cap solves?

[Xyntech]

What is the problem that soft cap solves?

I've said several times. It solves the problem of players not getting rewarded by a system that is meant to reward.

What is better, being stuck capped at 100 resources and being unable to get any more, or getting a reduced, but still decent reward up to 150?

Imagine you are fighting inside a base as some sort of infantryman. Your play style requires no resources of any kind and you would prefer to save up your resources for vehicles. You have been fighting in this crazy drawn out battle inside this one base for 2 hours now and you have hit the hard resource cap of 100. Now you know that you are going to have an epic tank battle coming up shortly after you finally take this base, because the area between this capture point and the next is perfect for tank battles, but now you are getting absolutely no reward for your effort.

"just get some grenades"

Why? That's not the way they play infantry.

"they just get no resource reward then"

Most of the reason that resources are in the game is as a reward for players. Obviously there isn't much point if the player NEVER spends resources, but those players would eventually hit the end of the softcap anyways and it would be a non-issue. What about players who only like spending resources for specific parts of the game, where they may blow through their entire stash quickly, but may go for entire long stretches without spending any at all.

I don't see what has to be so complicated for players either. You get normal resources until 100. Then you get less and less until theoretically you get nothing at 150, or 200, or whatever the cap is. It's not like something you need spreadsheets to plan for. You just know that you should probably spend something once you have 100 because you aren't earning quite as much as normal if you have more than that. For those looking to build up a stash, you just know that you will never get to x number, so don't even bother once you get close.

It's simple for the devs, it would have little impact on most players and it does solve some problems, even if you want to ignore them.

[Malorn]

I've said several times. It solves the problem of players not getting rewarded by a system that is meant to reward.


How does it solve that problem? All it does is expand the potential resource limit while retaining an "effective" resource cap. By definition things past the soft cap are not worthwhile. So why bother having them?

And the system isn't meant to reward players.

It's intended to motivate players to attacking all sorts of different types of territory and to help make all types of territory valuable. It gives reason to take a particular piece of territory. High resource cap can mean many players don't care about a particular piece of territory because they feel they have enough of it. Reward is part of the motivation, but it is the means, not the end.

It's intended to make resource denial an effective tactic. Not having a cap severely impairs this design intent, and having a high cap limits the effectiveness of resource denial. The deeper the pocket of the player the less likely they are to be impacted by shortages of a particular resource. Too large of a resource supply cap and the tactic is completely ineffective. Think of a tech plant in PS1 - no tech means vehicles severely limited and disadvantaged. Resources replace that functionality in PS1. If you lose a resource to pull a tank for an hour and it doesn't interrupt your ability to pull tanks the tactic is ineffective and the design has failed.

It's intended to provide another axis for balance - economics. Not having a cap also impacts this design intent. I gave the orbital strike example earlier. Having a higher cap lowers the effectiveness.

Strictly speaking sure they could add a soft cap. But it doesn't solve anything. There's no reason to do it.

[Noivad]

I voted No
I don't consider game money as resourses
you cannot buy resourses in PS2.
Resourses affect side / up grades only . They will not affect your damage out for any weapon.
They will give you additional ablities, like a flash light that blinds, a muzzle that increases range, a clip that holds more ammo. Nothing that could be bought with money.

If PS2 allows all Empire Resourses one can accumlate to decay over time to a base low basic level so a 1st time player, or a person who was out of game was gone for a period of time had some side grades that coulld be added it would solve the problem. Use it or lose it to a base level.

Outfit Resourses would could be degraded based on the number of active players.
This would then stop Outfits that have 500 people units with only 5 people ever on line an active. Start decay times after 2 or 3 weeks.

The more one plays the more indivual resourses that would be open to him.

If your AFK for 5 mins auto kick out of game - no resourse coming in. Solves resourse mining. If you can't get a cup of coffee, beer, whatever, do a bio break in that time ur playing with it. :evil:

[Malorn]

If your AFK for 5 mins auto kick out of game - no resourse coming in. Solves resourse mining. If you can't get a cup of coffee, beer, whatever, do a bio break in that time ur playing with it. :evil:

If any MMO in recent history shows, it isn't as simple as an AFK timer. They've all had issues with AFK farmers in PvP instances. They make bots which will just run in and suicide, or they make a script that makes them twitch randomly every so often to reset the AFK timer. It's plagued MMORPGs for many years now. We have to assume the same will happen here.

The best way to stop it is not allow it to be worth doing. Low resource cap means there is little benefit in doing it. Unless they get smarter and modify their scripts to spend resources on things like certs too, heh.

PS2 will have to address it in some fashion. They might have an experience requirement on the dividend to ensure you have some minimal amount of effort before you start receiving resources. That'll raise the bar on the bots and hopefully make it a non-issue.

[Xyntech]

How does it solve that problem? All it does is expand the potential resource limit while retaining an "effective" resource cap. By definition things past the soft cap are not worthwhile. So why bother having them?

By what definition? They aren't AS good, but they are still better than nothing.

A quarter isn't as valuable as a dollar, but I doubt you would find a lot of people who would say no to a .25 cent raise.

You bother to have them so that you can still have a reward for those who spend a little less often.

And the system isn't meant to reward players.

It's intended to motivate players to attacking all sorts of different types of territory and to help make all types of territory valuable. It gives reason to take a particular piece of territory. High resource cap can mean many players don't care about a particular piece of territory because they feel they have enough of it. Reward is part of the motivation, but it is the means, not the end.

Reward is the means, which makes it the whole point. The "end" goal is that they want all of the territory to be valuable, and also that they want some way to control the number of things like tanks and aircraft ans MAXes that are pulled. The way they go about achieving that goal is to reward players with resources for holding those territories and offering cool things for the players to buy with those resources.

The original goal may not have been to have a reward system, but a reward system is how they are achieving those original goals.

By your own admission, the system rewards players to motivate them. Kinda hard to use it to motivate them if they aren't being rewarded, no? Obviously not all players want or need a reward system to motivate them, but that doesn't mean a reward system shouldn't still be ever present trying to do it's job.

It's intended to make resource denial an effective tactic. Not having a cap severely impairs this design intent, and having a high cap limits the effectiveness of resource denial. The deeper the pocket of the player the less likely they are to be impacted by shortages of a particular resource. Too large of a resource supply cap and the tactic is completely ineffective. Think of a tech plant in PS1 - no tech means vehicles severely limited and disadvantaged. Resources replace that functionality in PS1. If you lose a resource to pull a tank for an hour and it doesn't interrupt your ability to pull tanks the tactic is ineffective and the design has failed.

It's intended to provide another axis for balance - economics. Not having a cap also impacts this design intent. I gave the orbital strike example earlier. Having a higher cap lowers the effectiveness.

You seem to be under the impression that the resource cap will be so low that one side won't be able to get x piece of equipment pretty much the moment the enemy takes control of that resource from you, similar to how you could no longer pull an MBT the moment your tech plant was capped in PS1.

Considering that the devs have suggested having an offline resource collection as a perk for subscribers, I highly doubt the cap will be too low, soft or hard.

Now we don't know how things like orbital strikes will be balanced, like whether they will require multiple types of resource, but let's just keep it simple with a single resource type.

Soft cap starts at 100 and ends at 150. Orbital strike costs 100. Nobody can ever fire off 2 in a row, but a person at 145 can fire off a second one a lot quicker than someone at 100.

Tanks cost 40. Someone who keeps spending all of their resources the moment they get them will have a harder time if they need to pull a lot of tanks in a row to push back an enemy assault, but someone who has been saving their resources up to 120 can pull 3 tanks in a row the instant they respawn, potentially being a large factor in helping turn the tide of a battle.

We can also look at it from the point of view of resource denial, as you have mentioned. As far as we know, losing control of a resource won't instantly get rid of any you have banked, or start trickling it away, it just means you don't get any more until you take the resource back. What this means is that, again, the player who has saved some up will be in a significantly stronger position than the player who has spent it all the moment they earned it.

With a hard cap, everyone has up to 100, meaning that if you had it maxed out, you can pull 2 tanks and that's it. With a soft cap, you could potentially pull 3 tanks, at the cost of having not earned resources as quickly while you were saving up.

A cap of some kind, hard or soft, is needed to keep from having players with millions of a resource where they can pull whatever they want no matter what territory they hold. Comparing a soft cap to no cap is just insane. You claim to know what a soft cap is, and I'm sure you do, but it's hard to take you seriously when you make such comparisons.

No doubt a soft cap would be different than a hard cap, both for better and for worse, but I believe the good would outweigh the bad. The bad being that it would take a small amount of extra consideration when balancing how much things like orbital strikes cost and potentially confusing a player or two who isn't very smart but tries to think about it too hard. The good being that those who spend resources quickly and freely would be rewarded in their own way while those who saved up resources would also be rewarded in their own way, as opposed to only rewarding those who flippantly spent what they had because "fuck it, I'm near the cap anyways, may as well go for a joyride in a tank" while ignoring those who see that they could potentially lose access to a resource soon and decide to save a little extra for a rainy day.

It's not even that big a deal to me, but I think it would be an improvement over a hard cap. Both would be balanced, but a soft cap would allow for more variety and just generally be smoother. Less rigid, still balanced.

Just don't be so flippantly dismissive of an idea you don't agree with. No doubt there is room for debate between having a soft or hard cap, but it's not like either idea is without merit, or that either kind of cap are even in the same ballpark as having no cap.

I'd ask that you lay forth what advantages a hard cap would have over the type of soft cap I have suggested. I believe I have done as good a job at laying out the advantages of a soft cap as I can, but I see little advantage to hard caps myself. Maybe you can make a better case for them that I haven't thought of.

"It isn't needed" or "what problem does this solve?" don't count as valid arguments for a hard cap either.

[Malorn]

Fulfilling one intent at the expense of the others isn't success.

Having a cap on resources doesn't make the reward worthless. Players adapt and change spending habits so that the cap isn't an issue.

[Xyntech]

Fulfilling one intent at the expense of the others isn't success.

There is nothing inherent about a soft cap that would hurt the ability to have an economy based on territory control. No expense would have to be paid for a soft cap if balanced appropriately.

Having a cap on resources doesn't make the reward worthless. Players adapt and change spending habits so that the cap isn't an issue.

Having a cap on reward doesn't make the reward worthless until you hit the hard cap. Then the resource is providing you with no return. The same thing would happen with a soft cap, but the cut off would be a gentler curve instead of a hard wall.

You still haven't made a case for the virtues of why a hard cap is superior to a soft cap. A hard cap could have all of the same problems as a soft cap if it were balanced poorly, so I think it goes without saying that either a hard or a soft cap would have to be well balanced.

We're just about at the point of derailing the thread. I think we can both safely say we are on the side of having some kind of cap on resources. Will the game be hurt terribly if that is a hard cap? No, not at all. I think it would be better with a soft cap, but it would really still be fine either way. I get the impression you feel like it would either be a complete waste of time, or that it would be less balanced than a hard cap. Maybe both. The way I see it, a soft cap would be very easy to implement, and would be barely any more difficult to balance, while adding the (marginal) benefits I have expressed previously.

So I ask again. What makes a balanced hard cap so awesome in comparison to a balanced soft cap? What does a hard cap add to the game that couldn't be achieved with a much nicer, gentler, soft cap?

I feel you may drive me to start extolling the virtues of having no cap at all just to be contrary to you at the current rate :D

[SgtMAD]

Let try having no cap first, if it becomes a problem then it can be adjusted, quit trying to nerf crap that we don't really know all the particulars of yet.

the cap can always be added if its needed so lets give it chance

[Xyntech]

Let try having no cap first, if it becomes a problem then it can be adjusted, quit trying to nerf crap that we don't really know all the particulars of yet.

the cap can always be added if its needed so lets give it chance

It may come capped already. Hard to say.

They may even do something like F2P get capped at 12,000, subscribers get capped at 15,000.

There are other ways they could balance it as well. Maybe there is no cap, but your resources drain any time your side doesn't have access to the resource. Maybe it never drains, but it costs 10x as much out of your reserves when your empire doesn't currently control any of the resource.

Higby has already stated that we will never have more than we know what to do with though, so that right there indicates some kind of limiting factor. It may not be a cap, but there is no way that statement would make sense if we could just endlessly stockpile resources to use freely whenever we wanted, regardless of what territory we controlled at the time.

As Malorn has pointed out as well, the whole reason a reward system like the resource economy was introduced is because the devs wanted to make sure that all territory would have tactical value of one kind or another. Even ignoring what Higby has said, it would make no sense to have players able to endlessly stockpile resources. The vets wouldn't care where they would be fighting, because they would probably have built up a healthy reserve a long time ago.

The only way you could have a completely uncapped system is if it took so long to collect resources that 90% of players were almost entirely depleted most of the time and you had to save up for a couple hours just to purchase a single vehicle.

That would just end up making players turtle with their vehicles, never wanting to put them in harms way.

Ideally, they will strike a good balance where you have at least some vested interest in avoiding having your vehicle blow up, while still be willing to take risks and push the battle lines forward. I don't think this balance will be possible if there isn't some method or another of preventing players from amassing millions of a resource.

[Malorn]

Cap is in the plan per Higby's AMAA, which is great. One of the things they need to test is whether the cap is set to the right place. Too high and resource deprivation becomes unreliable and ineffective. Too low and we're living paycheck-to-paycheck and that ain't fun. Somewhere in between is the sweet spot.

[MikeChance]

Fulfilling one intent at the expense of the others isn't success.

Having a cap on resources doesn't make the reward worthless. Players adapt and change spending habits so that the cap isn't an issue.

Malorn, you are quite right.

I'm infantry. In PS1 I build squads and platoons and run around shooting people. I don't use grenades. I find them messy.

If I'm in the middle of a battle defending a base, and suddenly I am faced with "leave and spend your pay or don't get any"... I'm gonna leave. My squad/platoon is gonna break up or leave, and if I'm maxing out then quite likely so are others, so they are likely to leave - at increasing rates as more people leave because we're now losing ground.

So ya, hard resource cap does cause us to adapt, and spend.



You all seems to be assuming we're gonna be able to transfer resources between players. Has this been confirmed? What's the point of it? If you can then no cap will stop people from being able to afford to spam OS or pull tank after tank because players like me will always have plenty to give to their squad or clan.

[Soothsayer]

I voted no because (unfortunately) I have ceased to be a hardcore gamer and now am a lot more casual than before. So with that in mind, I want the time I do have ingame to be as awesome as possible and I don't want to have to pull any punches with the equipment I pull or the number (and quality) of vehicles I roll out.

I'm going to have as full of a subscription as possible, hopefully the idea that has been kicked around these forums about offline resource accumulation will be in effect.

I want to relive those original massive planetside battles, get in, get out and not have to be constantly watching my resource tallies.

Alternatively, I would want to have a good enough cap that I could log in occasionally (like every 3-4 days) and spend the resources on my character without having to worry about losing something that I am entitled to have by nature of not being able to get to the game on a daily basis.

In short, casual gamers who support the F2P model shouldn't be left in the cold.

[Red Beard]

The resource limit isn't for balance, it's to make people pay for stuff in the shop.

I'm sure when they changed it so there were no longer items you HAD to buy with cash, they lowered the resource limit a little bit to compensate.

[Pollo Jack]

The resource limit isn't for balance, it's to make people pay for stuff in the shop.

I'm sure when they changed it so there were no longer items you HAD to buy with cash, they lowered the resource limit a little bit to compensate.

Gonna have to agree with this guy.

Even if you can pull vehicle after vehicle it doesn't matter if you just die with it. Eventually you will be pushed back to base and pulling an aircraft from a camped pad or a tank from a mined vehicle bay turns your res into their XP. We may even have people suicide rush vehicle pads just to feed vehicle kills because they don't want to lose out on potential vehicles. Face it, you get much more kills in a base fight than out in the open. Vehicles are never the guaranteed kill that infantry are.

[Sirisian]

I don't feel the developers should implement a system that forces players to horde resources. Ideally resources should just be a way to upgrade and customize among many choices. It should be used as a method for balance, limiting choices over time. That is you can purchase 5 things now to min max or spread it over time. Having a resource cap removes any player's tendency to needlessly horde resources. That and like I said in another thread (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showthread.php?t=39652) I want players to work together to purchase vehicles with complicated loadouts and a resource cap makes sure that someone isn't just AFK grinding resources to pull the most advantageous loadout every turn by themselves. Any resource model should promote players that are currently playing.

That said I'm strongly against a resource acquisition model that directly rewards kills/support since it allows power to get power. Which is why I proposed a loyalty system that caps the resource acquisition rate for personal resources (http://www.planetside-universe.com/showpost.php?p=659623&postcount=29). The resource cap on top of this I feel promotes the best atmosphere so that resources don't overwhelm a player's priorities. That is it's independent of a player's success so they can play casually without feeling like they are stressed keep up.


I want to relive those original massive planetside battles, get in, get out and not have to be constantly watching my resource tallies.
You make a lot of assumptions. What if it only takes like 10 spawns to hit the maximum if you don't spend anything? That is playing casually would allow you to get most everything every other spawn?

[Soothsayer]

You make a lot of assumptions. What if it only takes like 10 spawns to hit the maximum if you don't spend anything? That is playing casually would allow you to get most everything every other spawn?

They have stated many times that they want to cut down on the monotony of PS1. If I'm a dedicated tank driver and I have to wait twenty minutes for my resources to replenish in order to pull a tank they aren't getting me back into the action faster than the original.

When I say "playing casually" I mean a few shorter play sessions per week as opposed to every night for 3+ hours.

Not sure about how I'm making a lot of assumptions, there's really just one, I was responding to an opinion poll.

[Malorn]

Malorn, you are quite right.

I'm infantry. In PS1 I build squads and platoons and run around shooting people. I don't use grenades. I find them messy.

If I'm in the middle of a battle defending a base, and suddenly I am faced with "leave and spend your pay or don't get any"... I'm gonna leave. My squad/platoon is gonna break up or leave, and if I'm maxing out then quite likely so are others, so they are likely to leave - at increasing rates as more people leave because we're now losing ground.

That's not adaptation - that's discovery that you aren't spending enough and need to use loadouts with more upgrades. How you adapt to it is by picking more upgrades for your infantry, implants, medkits, tanks, or whatever. Youll make new loadouts and you'll change your spending habits so you won't be in that situation or are less likely to be.

And I'm also quite certain that you won't have to go anywhere to use the shop - it's a UI option, not a place.

People seem to think resources are only used for the in game shop - they aren't. They're used to pull vehicles, get night vision scope, upgrade your rifle, add stuff to your tank, etc. I believe one type of resource is used in the shop to buy a few things, it is unknown if that is also used for other stuff.

If you find you're hording too much and reaching the resource cap its time you re-evaluated your loadouts and pimp them out a bit more.

I expect for most things we do we'll have at least two loadouts - a low resource loadout for when the budget is tight and balls-to-the-wall loadouts for when you've got good resource income and have some things to burn. There will be specialty loadouts in there too of course, but managing resources is important so it will be reflected in our loadouts.

[Pollo Jack]

Hold up. Have they said these sidegrades will have to be purchased every time you pull a loadout? I was under the impression you pay to unlock it once.

If you aren't rewarded for killing then you are certainly punished for dieing which also punishes playing too much at a time. Killing a half day on your favorite game will require you to spend money money just to play if there is a low cap. Forget vehicles if the infantry combat will bankrupt you.

And what if you have almost enough for your loadout? Do I have to spend five minutes every time I am at the terminal deciding what to put back? Sure, it can just not give me anything saying I have insufficient funds but I will still have some funds and I want to use my favorite weapon.

That is all under the assumption that you have to pay every time you use the weapon.

I had assumed it was just with vehicles. With vehicles I say no to a resource cap, with a price tag on everything I say hell no.

[Vamp Hunter]

I think there should be no cap and instead the spawning of vehicles should be regulated by having them start at a low resource price and then the more that are spawned in a short time the higher the price goes.
This would cause the number spawned at a time to self regulate.

[Sirisian]

Hold up. Have they said these sidegrades will have to be purchased every time you pull a loadout? I was under the impression you pay to unlock it once.

[...]

And what if you have almost enough for your loadout? Do I have to spend five minutes every time I am at the terminal deciding what to put back? Sure, it can just not give me anything saying I have insufficient funds but I will still have some funds and I want to use my favorite weapon.
Specifically grenades and implants and max units were mentioned as costing resources. (I can't remember what he said about C4). Also I don't remember anything regarding stock weapons, but sidegrades cost resources. So if you want say a grenade launcher attachment you use resources.

Also regarding trying to pull a loadout or favorite that you lack resources for I'd imagine just says "insufficient funds". You'll probably see the resource cost next to loadouts and vehicle favorites when you choose to spawn them? Speculating though.

[Pollo Jack]

Specifically grenades and implants and max units were mentioned as costing resources. (I can't remember what he said about C4). Also I don't remember anything regarding stock weapons, but sidegrades cost resources. So if you want say a grenade launcher attachment you use resources.

Also regarding trying to pull a loadout or favorite that you lack resources for I'd imagine just says "insufficient funds". You'll probably see the resource cost next to loadouts and vehicle favorites when you choose to spawn them? Speculating though.

I understand that method. I assumed it would be similar to the LoL style. You use resources to unlock the weapon or sidegrade once and then you can use it whenever.

[Malorn]

Unlock-once occurs through the cert system, and by some things that can be purchased either with certain resources or station cash in the store.

They have to give things recurring costs or resources become useless. If they're just used for unlocking you'll have no desire to get more resources as soon as you've unlocked everything you care about. By making them cost resources to acquire they can both balance the upgrades/vehicles and keep resources relevant throughout the lifetime of the game.

[Fenrys]

No caps please.

Resource caps punish success and encourage not playing.

We should be able to save up as many resources as we can earn. I want to see major offensives where loads of resources are being spent all at once on huge numbers of tanks and aircraft. I want to see long-term view economic warfare, with guerrilla tactics used to wear away the opposition's equipment in an attempt to prevent them from earning back the resources spent on that huge pile of hardware, thereby giving their side an average armor-over-time advantage.

[Sirisian]

Resource caps punish success and encourage not playing.
I believe it was hinted that paying real money might allow you to earn resources off-line. So what you said actually has two sides. Resource caps don't punish success at all. If you are successful you can pull sidegrades and vehicles. They just remove the incentive to horde.

I'm imagining the game as more casual. You get in play with vehicles for an hour and kill some dudes then logoff. That is you aren't sitting around hording unlimited resources for a later time, nor should the game encourage that. Resource caps directly limit that feeling. As soon as you see for instance that a maximum is set at say 1000 and it costs 500 for a stock tank you know if you want a tank just get it. You can delay that purchase until you need it, but not forever unless you want to waste resources. It promotes players to spend and have fun.

[Adeon Hawkwood]

In many ways I would like to see no-cap (or at least an extremely high nigh-unreachable cap) since that would allow for meaningful resource trading based on supply and demand and hoarding resources against times of scarcity.

However in practice I think a cap for resources makes sense. You'll still get AFK resource farmers but it will at least somewhat help to limit them and mean that the players involved are checking in more frequently. Additionally very few MMOs manage to make a truly balanced in-game economy and a moderate resource cap helps to alleviate the need to do so. While it would be nice if the resource rate was perfectly balanced it is extremely unlikely to be so and honestly I'd rather have the devs focusing on the more important parts of gameplay.

[Malorn]

From reading this thread I think it's obvious that not enough resource information has been presented for the general PS2 fans to have a firm understanding of how it works. Having a discussion about a cap or no cap is an exercise in frustration when the people having the discussion don't know how the system works and thus can't understand the true impact of having or not having a cap.

I know Sirisian and myself have been watching every word about resources intently and have a firm understanding of it, but I'm not sure how many others do.

I hope we get a Territory Control week sometime soon that explains the basic mechanics of how territory control works at a micro and macro level and then following that a Resources week where all the resources are described, how they're used, how players interact with resources, and how they are acquired. Territory Control and Resources appear to be the largest source of confusion about the game.

[NewSith]

From reading this thread I think it's obvious that not enough resource information has been presented for the general PS2 fans to have a firm understanding of how it works. Having a discussion about a cap or no cap is an exercise in frustration when the people having the discussion don't know how the system works and thus can't understand the true impact of having or not having a cap.

I know Sirisian and myself have been watching every word about resources intently and have a firm understanding of it, but I'm not sure how many others do.

I hope we get a Territory Control week sometime soon that explains the basic mechanics of how territory control works at a micro and macro level and then following that a Resources week where all the resources are described, how they're used, how players interact with resources, and how they are acquired. Territory Control and Resources appear to be the largest source of confusion about the game.

The question of the cap is rather simple - AFK farmers or not.

Because AFK farmers are not bad at all, especially considering we will most likely not have means to transfer resources between players, if they do not affect anything but their own resource gain.

HOWEVER... it is assumed that without the sancs to be afk in, those AFK farmers, putting something heavy on "move forward" button will not let people who actually wanna play in.

[Malorn]

The question of the cap is rather simple - AFK farmers or not.

Because AFK farmers are not bad at all, especially considering we will most likely not have means to transfer resources between players, if they do not affect anything but their own resource gain.

HOWEVER... it is assumed that without the sancs to be afk in, those AFK farmers, putting something heavy on "move forward" button will not let people who actually wanna play in.

Thank you for illustrating my point that lack of understanding leads to erroneous conclusions.

It's far more than just AFK farmers. You can read my previous posts in this thread and Sirisian's for more details.

[NewSith]

Thank you for illustrating my point that lack of understanding leads to erroneous conclusions.

It's far more than just AFK farmers. You can read my previous posts in this thread and Sirisian's for more details.

We know that you accumulate resources over time (over time as in time passes and you get it, not exactly 2auraxium per second, for that is still rather unclear), independently of your activities. This means you can go afk and still gain resources. That's not lacking knowledge nor understanding. Everything else is, sure.

Also, I assure you that I read every post in a thread I create, so please, refrain from aggressive "goreaditordontpost" comments.

[Soothsayer]

I've been keeping track of resource stuff and I think that there's some misinformation from everybody.

A glaring omission that I'm seeing in this thread is the lack of talk of resources being used to further character development, which was an early feature of the information we received about resources. My understanding was character development could be progressed for a one time, high cost expenditure for unlimited, free use of any specific sidegrade. If you don't go that route, then you spend a very small amount each time you spawn with that sidegrade.

So my comments were in the context of that system being something that would be considered by a person who was determining what to spend their resources on next. That system is also (as I understand) the reason why Higby would say that you will never be in the position as to have so many resources you don't know what to do with them.

As for illegal RMT, give the community tools to self-police themselves or at least make it easy to report any sort of ingame advertising, punish the buyer and the seller. SOE is taking cues from EVE Online with the skill system, they could stand to learn from EVE Online when it come to combatting RMT.

Every single piece of Auraxium that a player buys from a gold farmer is equivalent to a portion of a station buck, they're going to care a whole lot more about illegitimate trading than other (non-F2P) MMO studios.

[Tasorin]

I would actually be in favor of a combination Soft Cap and Hard Cap. Think of it this way. You generate resources at normal rates until you hit the Soft Cap. The total numerical amount of resources acquired when you hit the Soft Cap would support the game mechanic concept of "Never having enough resources to not know what to do with..." Now you are at the Soft Cap level and are still receiving a mod/high diminishing return on your resource pull until you hit the Hard Cap.

At that point you would have enough resources to support some crazy 6 hour mega session of whipping out shit left and right while burning your resources back down to well below the Soft Cap. Think of it like a Resource Alpha Strike and something to try and save up for in order to go on a massive load out burn.

Notice this was all conceptual. We don't know how the resource placement/types will play out, the ratio of resource burn for what ever you are purchasing, the rate at which resources are gained and what resource value is "more then you will ever spend on a very long day of playing..."

Once Higgles recently made the announcement about the "types of categories you can expect in the shop are X,Y and Z and this is what will acquire them..." The discussions and game mechanics about resources is more important then ever.

[Xyntech]

I think some confusion may stem from the fact that some things require purchasing in more than one way.

For example, if I want to use a grenade launcher attachment for my rifle, I may have to spend cert point to unlock that option. Cert points are gained by leveling up through gameplay, and from what I have gathered will probably be more like Tribes Ascends experience system than PS1's cert system.

Now that I have spent those cert points (or payed real money in the cash shop), I never have to unlock that grenade launcher attachment again. It is always unlocked.

However if I actually want to USE it, I may have to pay some resources. Resources don't unlock things, they allow you access to things.

It's been mentioned several times already, but the tech plant/MBT example from the first game is really the closest analogy we have. It's like a much more varied version of that, with more variables in the form of different resources and a lot more equipment that requires them.

Bottom line though, this system will still be significantly different from PS1 and the tech plants. Losing a resource will not instantly deny you access to specific equipment, although depending on how it is balanced you may lose access shortly after.

We know resources will be used to incentivise capturing or defending specific territory. We know that we will never have more than we know what to do with of any given resource. All of this indicates not only that there will be some sort of cap or other limiting factor, but that such a limit is essential to balancing the game model they are developing.

Obviously until we get our hands on beta, the devs will always know better than us. I have enough trust that they will get the system pretty close to where it needs to be, since this is much more of an economic side of the game than a skill based gameplay side which can be harder to get right without real world testing.

The only reason I hope for something like a soft cap is that it can still be easily just as balanced as a hard cap, while being potentially much more dynamic and interesting. In my experience, having a more dynamic system makes things more fun and interesting in most situations. I want Planetside 2 to be easy to get into and mess around with for new players, but as deep as possible for those who want to put the time in.

[Soothsayer]

Uh oh, another understanding of how it works. I agree, we need a territory control themed week :)

Not to confuse any points I may have made earlier, but given that it was said early on that you could spend a year training up all of the aspects on a single vehicle and also still going on the notion that some type of resource can be put towards increasing skills, I'm hopeful that the reason that you won't have so many resources that you don't know what to do with them is because of the sheer multitude of options available for spending them as opposed to personal resource scarcity.

Wouldn't that be more fun?