Resource distribution, whats right and fair?

[SKYeXile]

Welcome to another wall of text, Id like to get a discussion going on how you think resources should be distributed it’s a little hazy how its currently going to work. But its described a little here in a pcgamer article.

Resources themselves are earned by engaging in battle against the two oppositional empires: capture an area on one of the game's continents and you'll gain resources. Matt explains further: “You'll also gain resources while your empire holds that territory. Matt explains further: "You'll also gain resources while your empire holds that territory. So if you are a member of an empire and own 50% of a continent, you will gain resources just for playing on that continent all the time, even if you're not capturing anything new. So if you are a member of an empire and own 50% of a continent, you will gain resources just for playing on that continent all the time, even if you're not capturing anything new. You can use those resources for doing things like upgrading your weapons, getting new weapons from an equipment terminal, or buying things from the store.” You can use those resources for doing things like upgrading your weapons, getting new weapons from an equipment terminal, or buying things from the store. "
Choice is built into the game at all levels, meaning players can quickly swap their focus on the battlefield without extracurricular menu tinkering. “Maybe I want to have a scope on my Cycler: I can go up to an equipment terminal and swap out my old weapon for the new one. That might incur some resource cost with it – we’re still balancing exactly where we want the resource drain to be in the game. Similarly, if I want my Magrider tank to have an AA flak gun on the top of it, I can bolt it on when I’m dead on the respawn screen.”

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/planetside-2-preview-3/

So we get resources are gain from holding land and they’re then used to spend on a multitude of things, weapon upgrades, speeding the advancement of offline levelling, getting new weapons or buying cosmetic items, they seem to be planetsides currency, and hopefully they’re not tradable. Let me know if im missing anything from here.

Now they say you gain resources from capturing a base. Do you think this is a good idea? I don’t think it is, unless you fought resistance. The problem I see in so many pvp games these days players play for rewards, and they will take the path of least resistance to those rewards. Planetsides 2 game systems does need to encourage actual pvp or the game could indeed become a base swapping pve homo’s dreams. Like WAR, aion and SWTOR. I cant think of a mechanic thats not exploitable here. I was thinking of siege/defence ratio mechanic where you need to meet an xp quote to qualify, much like planetsides 1 i guess. Lets say that in a base where over 300,000 XP has been produced you qualify for siege of resources. The amount of resources is to be determed. By somewhere in the vicinity of what the base produced for the last hour(let’s say 10000 aurxium). Lets say the defenders got 1M in defence of the base, but still lost the base, the attackers produced 500k XP, they took it, but they had to fight hard for it, effectively at a 1kill to 2 death ratio. For this the defenders would get 66% of the 10000 resources, the attackers would get 33%, this would then be dived by the amount of XP the individual players produced so each players gets the share they earnt. In the event that a base does not qualify for siege distribution, there are no resources produced for that tick. (or atleas t the defenders don’t get any, and the attackers don’t get any for the actual capture)
So that’s how i think base capture should be handled, i see afew sorts of methods for resources to be distributed generally.

I personally don’t think resources should be divided by the continent you’re fighting on, i think they should be done by your empires global resource tick rates, or everybody will want to be fighting on the content where you own everything but one base, then you also have the problem of, what happens on those contents where nobody is fighting? Or there is one dude fighting on a content...does he get all the resources, when thousands of people could have helped capture that continent?

These are the methods i see possible for resource distribution:

Resources / players online.
Possible method, but i don’t think the best, the problem with it? F2P, its easy to login another character and just generate resources for doing nothing, if resources are tradable this presents problems with asian farms, also its a problem because the enemy could log accounts onto your faction and deny you from resources.

Rescourse via contribution
I see this as the most fair an unexploytable way of gaining resources. You get what you earn, now this is offcourse subject to a support player generating decent XP. The method is simple. For arguments sake, lets say your empire generated 1m resources. You generated 30000 xp in the last hour, your empire generated 30m XP. So you would get 1000 resources (.1%) This means AFKers would get nothing and it cant be exploited by the other factions..unless they want to earn XP for your empire...helping your cause? Also it means with less players and more land you would get a larger share per person.

Now you’re probably thinking...wait a minute this systems still not fair...you’re right. These system would mean late night players like me generate more resources than prime time players..which hey...im all for, but i can understand you wanting to nerdrage. There are then 2 methods i think to help with this:

Offline resources
Only 50%(or another random %) of resources earnt by your empire would goto players currently online, the others would goto players who have logged on in the last 24 hours, again i think the best method of division for this would be by XP contribution.

By global population.
This is simple, the amount of resources mines produce is based off the amount of players globally your server has online, so as more players come online, they produce more, the theory is you would be getting the same resources nomatter what time you go on...provided you held the same land and generated the same xp all the time.

I think i had some other points, but i forgot them, i think this is enough to get the ball going though. If you have any more thoughts of how resources should be distributed id like to hear them. Remember though, this is F2P, so they cant be exploitable by doing nothing and easily by gold farmers if reosurces are tradable, IMO anyway.

[sylphaen]

Pretty touchy yet very important topic. I'll come back after a good thought about it.

Good thread.

_________________

Back as promised.

If I understand well what Higby mentions (restating the obvious is to clarify my thought to readers):
">" denotes conclusions from my understanding of what Higby said in the article.
"+" denotes questions/ideas/assumptions of what is indirectly implied by Higby statements

1. "You’ll also gain resources while your empire holds that territory"
> resources are gained by your empire controlling territory

2. "you will gain resources just for playing on that continent all the time, even if you’re not capturing anything new."
> resources are accrued for everyone in the empire
+ we may assume they would accrue regularly over time (the tick rate you mentioned)
+ the emphasis on not capturing anything makes me think that this is some kind of way to reward defensive behavior

3."if you are a member of an empire and own 50% of a continent"
+ if not, do we get anything ?

4. "You can use those resources for doing things like upgrading your weapons, getting new weapons from an equipment terminal, or buying things from the store."
> resources are used to buy weapons
+ permanent or not ?

5. "You’re able to shortcut your skills by burning resources."
> resources are also used to level skills up faster

6. "I can go up to an equipment terminal and swap out my old weapon for the new one. That might incur some resource cost with it."
> we may get charged resources when we play around with our equipment
+ would we spend resources everytime a new class set-up is done on our character ? Would it be only for special weapons, per spawn ? Would it be like an unlock for a period of time ?

7. "we’re still balancing exactly where we want the resource drain to be in the game."
> nothing is final
+ they want those accrued resources to be used someway between getting equipment or advancing skills. They are not too set on which should be the largest drain and at which rate or step drains should occur.
+ not knowing how to drain, the accumulation rate of resources is most likely still experimental


General conclusion:
I think Higby only mentionned one aspect of the resource system. Based on what he said, only one side would get constant resources from territory (i.e. the empire with >50% of territory) and this hardly promotes any offense initiatives from other empires.

As you mentionned, everyone would just camp a continent and get the resources doing a 90% vs. 10% pop. My conclusion is that he gave us some tips about how the system might work but he was far from giving the whole picture. The key point to me is that resources will work like XP (getting equipment from resources is like an upgrade so it's also some kind of XP when it's used that way).

The picture is very incomplete but if resources are XP, a whole world is not being explained by Higby. We miss:
- incentives for capturing territory
- incentives for completing important objectives
- incentives for being a good productive killwhore for your empire
- incentives for being a good support oriented player
- incentives for working as a group to promote socialization
- etc...

Basically, any incentives that will help you help your empire.

As you mentionned, Exile, there were lots of lessons learned at the beginning of PS1 about ghosting (eg. getting static amount of CEP from ghost hacking bases when there was no lattice promoted terribly annoying behavior) and inadequate sharing of rewards from an empire's success (eg. cloakers killing each other to get the hack when CEP was only given to the CC hacker).

I cannot add much more from this but I do hope they will get the balance right and offer correct incentive mechanics that cannot be abused.

The way I see PS2 now is like a continuous round-based FPS game where rounds could be represented by missions or objectives or phases of a battle (in the statistics/competitive aspect of things). I do however hope that the incentives overlay will not be too intrusive otherwise we will end up with players acting like lemmings running in a wheel trying to churn out XP at an epic rate vs. others who prefer a more open playstyles getting penalized by not being able to progress at a similar pace (eg. an infiltration cloaker in a PS1 system where XP is mainly accrued by kills).

Overall, I agree that XP sharing is in order but also that the system should reflect the effort/skill involved by participating players. I like your ideas about multipliers being based on population, level of activity inside an area, objectives accomplished, quality of enemy resistance, etc... The defending or losing or double teamed side should also not be too penalized for not being on top of things: if they can't have fun, they will account/empire hop or stop playing altogether.

This is the true great challenge for devs: balancing a large scale game appealing to many playstyles and giving a vibrant niche role for each one of us to have fun with. And above, keeping the fun alive for everyone.

[SKYeXile]

Originally Posted by sylphaen

Pretty touchy yet very important topic. I'll come back after a good thought about it.

Good thread.

_________________

Back as promised.


2. "you will gain resources just for playing on that continent all the time, even if you’re not capturing anything new."
> resources are accrued for everyone in the empire
+ we may assume they would accrue regularly over time (the tick rate you mentioned)
+ the emphasis on not capturing anything makes me think that this is some kind of way to reward defensive behavior

3."if you are a member of an empire and own 50% of a continent"
+ if not, do we get anything ?

4. "You can use those resources for doing things like upgrading your weapons, getting new weapons from an equipment terminal, or buying things from the store."

this part, i believe he's saying that you get points based on you're contribution / activity or the dreaded...just been on a content and you would only gain the benefit from resources of that content, but i dont think thats fair,you should gain resources based on what your empire controls globally and have your resources assigned by contribution(the method i think is the most fair) those people out they capturing bases, well they gain resources based off the opposition they faced.

Some people may argue..."but my outfit is out there capping bases, we should be getting all the resources from the bases we cap", not fair, when you logout other people have to hold those bases and should be rewarded just as much as you for taking them, just as you're been rewarded for other peoples defensive efforts on other contents, that's fighting the main force, all while you're taking bases with limited opposition.

[sylphaen]

Updated my post above again, it should answer to your post. You posted as I was still adding text to the wall.
________

Yes, I totally agree. Behaviors that promote fighting and fun should be rewarded. This includes defending bases. This includes resecuring a hacked facility.

The PS1 system we enjoy today is far more balanced than the annoying system we had during PS beta. On that side, I think devs made a great work given the tools they have.

I do not know what they are able to do with PS2 but more is everything I am expecting. We need a lot more stats tracking. Competitive players love it: it gives a nice challenge, something to brag about and also something to see where you stand vs. other players.

Gameplay is very important but the depth/longevity of PlanetSide and what will make that game stand out is in the details.

Being able to have some kind of personal scoreboard in a zone that starts when you enter it and ends when you leave it would be a great thing, for example. But I'm off-topic here.

Let's say it would be a non-XP related incentive to fight.
^^

EDIT:

its rather dynamic

Exactly the key word I was looking for: dynamic ! It's as important as "cuh-sto-mah-zah-shion" except in this case, it's for game design instead of art design.

[Grimster]

A lot of good points there.

I think the most important subjects you have touched is preventing asian farmers and also form the game so it promotes you to participate in battles. There shouldnt be any easy ways to either xp or resources other than fighting your empires cause.

Sent from my GT-P7500 using Tapatalk

[SKYeXile]

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

Now they say you gain resources from capturing a base. Do you think this is a good idea? I don’t think it is, unless you fought resistance. The problem I see in so many pvp games these days players play for rewards, and they will take the path of least resistance to those rewards. Planetsides 2 game systems does need to encourage actual pvp or the game could indeed become a base swapping pve homo’s dreams. Like WAR, aion and SWTOR. I cant think of a mechanic thats not exploitable here. I was thinking of siege/defence ratio mechanic where you need to meet an xp quote to qualify, much like planetsides 1 i guess. Lets say that in a base where over 300,000 XP has been produced you qualify for siege of resources. The amount of resources is to be determed. By somewhere in the vicinity of what the base produced for the last hour(let’s say 10000 aurxium). Lets say the defenders got 1M in defence of the base, but still lost the base, the attackers produced 500k XP, they took it, but they had to fight hard for it, effectively at a 1kill to 2 death ratio. For this the defenders would get 66% of the 10000 resources, the attackers would get 33%, this would then be dived by the amount of XP the individual players produced so each players gets the share they earnt. In the event that a base does not qualify for siege distribution, there are no resources produced for that tick. (or atleas t the defenders don’t get any, and the attackers don’t get any for the actual capture)

Hrm rethought this, i think planetsides system of XP gain for base taking is really just waiting to be taken over into this. its rather dynamic depending on your own and empires total contibution to taking a base, and you;re rewarded based on the resistance. I think think the only change needed is that defenders get maybe the bases resources each tick(whenever that maybe) for defending a base...i dont mean just rescuring a CC...you should get XP for that too, but you should defiantly gain something extra for defending a base...not letting anybody to your CC should be rewarded more than re securing right?

[SKYeXile]

I was halfway through another post then about having an actual proper economy in PS2, but i released it would not work because of station cash and a F2P game, if they're going for the LoL model. But it could still kinda work for the purpose of an incentive to attack.

Let me explain. do do this system though, planetside 2 continents would sort of need need to be linked via lattice to each other...or at the very least out of the 10 contents have 6 home(2 for each empire) and 4 contested.

The purpose been the each content would have different resources. For example, Aurxium would be the rare VS resource, it would only be found rarely in neutral zones but inbulk in the TR and NC home conts. The TR would would be titanium, its found only in VS and NC home conts but rarely in neutral zones...etc. The rare resources would then be used to upgrade your faction specific weapons.

an economy or currency may not be needed for this, but it would allow you to stockpile rarer resources, sell them when you don't have that land.

another thing you could do is have different factory or crafting faciltys at different bases, so to craft a specific holo sight you would need to own a specific base...for ease of use you would not have to travel there, but your empire would have to own it.

again a currency isn't required for either of these options, it just allows you to stockpile mods craft at a facility your faction may rarely own perhaps. but again this maybe useless with the game been F2P and there been station cash.

I do presume there is multiple resource types from the jyst of whats been posted i am under the assumption that say putting points towards a skill or buying an upgrade would require x of 1 resource then x of another, the same with levelling/getting new abilitys for your outfit too ?

[sylphaen]

That would actually a pretty good incentive to attack.

If they make that scarce/difficult resource necessary for unlocks while the other more common resource would be used to call down OS or to be dumped on getting tanks/higher grade equipment for spawn, it would definitely push to attack.

Since victory is about taking lot of territory, advances into territory with rare resources should be compounded with overall Auraxis-wide land mass (i.e. acquiring more land while defending a lot of land mass should net larger benefits) and readjusted along with population imbalances (ie. exponential penalties for overpopulated empires increasing by % of imbalance vs. other empires)

That rare empire specific resource would need to be in both of the opposing empires home continents to avoid fighting always the same empire. On the other hand, 2 empires ganging up on one could become a terribly comfortable situation to farm resources if the situation ever comes up: the weakest empire will get ganged on 24/7.


I'm really curious how they plan to balance all that stuff and how we will be directed to dump all those common resources if we cannot reach the nice rare ones. Uneven stuff could snowball really fast into a nightmarish scenario.

I'm not too sure about the whole resource thing as it looks really complicated to balance.

I do think part of the key will involve multipliers taking into account empire-controlled land mass and empire populations.

Now concerning the double-teaming, maybe a mechanism where an empire would get more resources overall from diversifying the empires they attack (eg. 2 rare resources needed from the 2 opposing empires; or some kind of "empire ravaged by war" status that decreases resource production from home continents of the empire being double teamed based on the amount of territory it has left - if an empire is wiped out, you no rare resources from its land anymore).

The empire who maintains the most land-mass with even forces being present and without any 2v1 happening is the most skilled and should get the most bonus, imo. And by bonus, I do not mean something that will help them to keep steam-rolling so it would rather take the form of something that will favor their character skill progression or pad their stats/bragging rights up.

[SKYeXile]

just read this on another PC gamer interview:

Denial is as important as acquisition, Matt tells me. “If the Vanu is attacking you and they have railguns on their mag riders, and they are fucking you up, then you know you need to capture auraxium and deplete their reserves.”

http://www.pcgamer.com/previews/planetside-2-preview/

makes me think that every time you pull a vehicle it uses resources...resources = the new tech plant in a way?

[sylphaen]

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

resources = the new tech plant in a way?

It looks like that, pretty much.

Resources = currency for XP or equipment


Note that they need a dump/drain for all those resources that we will get from land-control. Hence why it might go into getting equipment.

Now the question is what happens if you run out of resources ? Will your empire really be able to come back from it ?

I think that's what they mean when they are not certain how to implement it exactly.

They need to make the system well balanced so that you get nice stuff when you win but that the losing empire can still come-back without having a lot resources.

The defense-oriented 50% continent control resource bonus might be coming from that since it gives a chance to an empire pushed into defense to stay in the game and come back and maintain the fun fighting for everyone.

Having no tech in PS1 was a b**** but you could always come back thanks to the 3rd empire and you could still enjoy losing since defense fights netted some XP even if you controlled just an interlink.

XP apparently works differently in PS2 so I'm eager to learn more details about game design from the devs.

[SKYeXile]

Originally Posted by sylphaen

XP apparently works differently in PS2 so I'm eager to learn more details about game design from the devs.

I have had the XP, offline and resource system explained to me for half an hour on voice to me, it still makes little sense. So yea im pretty sure you still need XP, something liek you can only train so many points things or something at BR5 to get better stuff you would need to level up. like i said...still confused....this was like 8 months ago though.

[sylphaen]

Originally Posted by SKYeXile

I have had the XP, offline and resource system explained to me for half an hour on voice to me, it still makes little sense. So yea im pretty sure you still need XP, something liek you can only train so many points things or something at BR5 to get better stuff you would need to level up. like i said...still confused....this was like 8 months ago though.

Oh right, I had forgotten about that. If I remember well, there was like parallel things: BR and skills.

Unlocking BR with XP allowed to start training skill for that BR level (or something similar).

So in the end, getting the BR is nice but getting the resources to get the skills faster will be crucial.

Maybe that's how they plan to force killwhores into helping the empire:
- only killwhoring, their would outgrow their skill growth.
- being when your empire succeeds but not getting a lot of XP (i.e. being useless) would make your skill growth be limited by your BR growth.

It's starting to make sense but it sounds awfully complicated to balance. Huge task, imo.

They still have to balance how fast XP/Resources should grow and which actions should be rewarded the most. How fast things should be dumped. etc...

And we haven't even reached the empire weapons/vehicles balance, etc...

At least, while game design balance is complicated, it's the same for all empires.

[SteinB]

A point that I think has been missed here, correct me if I just overlooked it being mentioned, is that specific resources are not locked to a specific place. They stated that they will migrate around like was done in Star Wars Galaxies in which every so often the resources will be randomized and we had to go find "the good stuff" all over again.

[SKYeXile]

Umm yea, didn't take into the account the possibility of a double team. to get those rare resources. Your right though, there would have to be still added incentive for the lesser populated empire. I thought that my method of diving resources by contribution and as a result the amount of players you have would be enough, but you need to capture people at creation, take me for an example, VS was underpoped when i started playing, i choose this faction because of that and the 2% XP bonus, 8 years later, never changed faction, bar the odd mess around alt.

so there would have to be a mechanic ontop of that as an incentive to play the under poped faction..though the problem with been F2P, you can login to an account to another faction and alter the population, maybe somebody has to earn over 10-20k XP to count as active or something or just go off the subbed accounts...i dunno.

once you work that out, defiantly multiplier incentive for the underpoped faction, for XP(if it exists), resources and offline leveling rate.

i agree with your incentives and penalties for having more or less land mass based of population size.

Perhaps the rare resource could be manufactured resource, Eg, NC would need iron ore from The TR but then Manganese from the VS to make steel. none of their weapons are made from iron ore or manganese only steel, so they would have to attack both. effectively the same thing you said though :P

[sylphaen]

And the TLDR to summarize for the devs:
making us shoot each other 24/7 on a laaarge scale with an even footing in a fun way for everyone and where skill is rewarded = win-win !