Gameplay: Continent Benefits & Differentiation (or Why should I fight on Hossin?)

**Malorn** · 2011-07-17, 05:46 PM

One thing that has sort of rubbed me the wrong way about not having sanctuaries, broadcast gates, and the old lattice system is the value of continents. We used to go to continents because of how easily they were for us to attack, whether we got a tech plant, how the lattice was situated (i.e. are we likley to get double-teamed?), and what continental benefit was up for grabs. I think this added a lot to the PS metagame.

The challenge I see with PS2 is that a few things seem evident to me...

1) We aren't intended to have a situation where continents are "locked". Its certainly possible but I think the PS2 devs want us to fight in more continents instead of funneling to a few areas. This means that lock benefits, the tangible "yeah we won!" part of winning a continent, and the strategic aspect of going after the next target are all lost. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but we definitely lose some gameplay here.

2) Resources are the primary motivation for fighting and replace a lot of the concepts things that we used to have, namely base and continent benefits.

3) The Adjacency system of territory control replaces the lattice system, but still leaves room to diverge from it.

In this thread I will drink multiple pitchers of the Resource & Territory Control Kool-Aid in an attempt to find some answers.

Let me clearly state what I'm after here. I want continent benefits, and I want to have different reasons for fighting on Hossin vs Ceryshen vs any other continent. I want a tangible reward for dominance on a continent and more ways we can hit our enemies where they hurt. More strategy, more tactical options.

Thankfully the resource & territory conquest system of Planetside 2 is sufficiently awesome that we can actually get what we want in a cool and enjoyable way. The ideas are quite simple....

1) Continents have different abundances in resources.

This does several things for us. First, it differentiates the continents. It will create different combat experiences on those continents simply due to the resource abundance differences.

What I'm going for here is how certain geographies in our world are known for being richer in certain resources. The middle-east and some other countries are rich in oil, but not other resources. Bananas come from the jungle areas. Diamonds mostly come from Africa. America is the world's bread-basket, that sort of thing. Regions of our planet and continents have different properties and those properties have shaped warfare and strategic decisions in our world for thousands of years. That same concept can be applied to Planetside to create different combat experiences and also provide unique value to fighting on specific continents.

Maybe Cyssor is rich in Auraxium, and for that reason we end up seeing a lot more tanks on that continent than other continents. So those wishing to build their personal and outfit stockpiles of Auraxium will go fight there.

Outfits specializing in tanks would also find an affinity with Cyssor and might make warfare on that continent more enjoyable for them vs a continent with normal or reduced amounts of tank-ish resources. The mountains of Ceryshen - and for you devs reading this, Ceryshen was the best continent - could be rich in the resources used by a lot of advanced aircraft. Coincidentally its high mountains also make such vehicles highly desirable, so these abundances could coincide with geographical traits of the continent itself.

If we take the battle islands as an example, some continents might be completely absent of some resources, creating play experiences like the battle islands, where you might not have high-tech vehicles, or certain weapons. Well, to be precise - you could have those things, but since the continent wouldn't be providing you that resource you'd be consuming it out of your own pocket and your outfit's pocket. You only have what you brought with you. This could be a great way to introduce specific resource sinks.

Note: I am by no means advocating that certain continents are "tank" continents and only tank warfare is good there. I'm just saying the resources provided mean that generally speaking you will have more tanks or more infantry with heavy weaponry, or more Galaxies, or more aircraft, or a mix than is typically seen on other continents. The actual geography of the continent should be varied and support all styles of gameplay but maybe lean one way or another.

The key takeaway for this point is that resource abundance and type can and should vary among continents to create unique experiences and cater to various styles of gameplay. It also adds strategic elements for the empires who want to build up their supply of various resources.

2) Dominating a continent yields global Empire-wide resource rewards.

I was thinking how we might have the idea of a lock-benefit, or otherwise reward and encourage domination of a continent. One of the more successful game mechanics popped to mind - Dark Age of Camelot's Darkness Falls. Now I'm not advocating any form of PvE, only the mechanic by which DF was unlocked. In DAoC we had a similar behavior as PS where domination of most of the world or an entire fontier is unlikely. Instead they rewarded the faction that had the most territory with access to a rich PvE zone.

Again, not advocating any form of PvE - the "Darkness Falls" for Planetside 2 could be a continental benefit. For example, owning 51% of of a continent gives you that continent's benefit, which could be different for each continent. This gives additional value to the continents apart from just harvesting the resources you want or the gameplay you like - you can give your empire something Tangible and valuable by fighting and winning there.

What sort of benefits? On the light-side of benefits, each continent could provide a bonus to resource harvesting on all the other continents for a certain type of resource. So using the Ceryshen example from above, the empire that owns 51% of Ceryshen could get a 20% bonus all over the world on gaining some of the resources required for advanced aircraft. Winning on Cery means you can help your entire empire out.

It also gives you yet another way of doing resource denial. The Cyssor example w/ Auraxium. If the VS require a lot of Auraxium, the NC could fight on Cyssor to break the VS 51% control and therefore deny them the bonus to Auraxium on all fronts.

These bonuses could of course be tweaked so each continent has something good to offer, but in different ways. The Cyssor Auraxium bonus might only be 10% for example, but some other continent might offer a bigger bonus of a different resource. Or a continent might offer small bonuses in multiple resources. Cery might offer 5% bonus to Auraxium + 10% in something else. That sort of thing.

A 3-way on a continent would also not be preferred since it is the easiest way to break 51% and deny the benefit.

It doesn't have to be 51% either - it could simply be the empire that owns the most territory on a continent. That would be more true to the Darkness Falls analogy also (it was whichever faction had the most keeps, not 51%). So there's different directions we could go here. The most-territory holdwer would mean an empire would always have a lock benefit on every continent, while the 51% would be more uncommon. As a result you could make teh lock benefits stronger w/ 51% since it would be really easy for the other two empires to team up and deny it from you if your empire was getting too resource-rich and powerful.

Additionally, there are other options for resource bonuses. Instead of a global bonus to resource inflow it could be a flat over-time bonus of a little of that resource to everyone & the empire. Maybe for example if you have Ceryshen some virtual miners go out there and mine jet fuel and distribute it to the rest of the empire whenever you own most of it. So there's other things that can be done here and I'm not locked into any one benefit.

I also think whatever benefits a continent gives to resources should coincide with the abundance differences I described above. For example, if Cyssor provides tank-making supplies, dominating Cyssor gives tank-making supply bonuses to your entire empire. This is important to also reward outfit specialization by giving them not only niches where their trade can frequently be employed, but also ways that their specialization can benefit their entire empire.

The key point I'm getting at is that domination of a continent has a benefit that transcends the continent and can benefit the entire empire and impact global strategic thinking among all empires.

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I think this can preserve a lot of strategic things and cont-lock satisfaction without having to have a continent-lock and kick folks out of a continent or restrict which continents the enemy can fight on. You can always go to whatever continent you want and I think that is a great beneift of the PS2 system.

Also, there are no bananas on Ceryshen.

Soothsayer · 2011-07-17, 06:59 PM

Some thoughts on what you have said

1) Continental resource variety...

Battle islands could continue their role as a relatively powerful territory to own by being resource rich territory where large amounts of resources can be extracted. I think they would work well as a wild card where the resource in abundance changes from day to day.

To make the battle islands even more advantageous, within the context of personal/outfit resource accumulation happening only on the continent they are currently on, a reduced amount could continue to go into personal/outfit coffers regardless of where someone who assisted in the capture of the territory is in the world. This enhances the strategic value of the battle islands which will add to them being highly contested based on who needs what and resource denial.

Similar to how threatening dominance on the battle islands can be used as a strategic maneuver to pull people out of a massive fight elsewhere in the world, the battle islands could function as a highly strategic territory.

2) While I like the idea of an empire wide bonus in the general way described, I would like to see a focal point for that bonus, something that encapsulates that bonus, something that can be destroyed by the other factions. A big bulls eye on the empire that has it. During the dev panels they pointed out that the towers had orbital landing gear. If an empire reached a point where they had earned a bonus, it would be pretty cool if a tower set down from orbit somewhere in friendly territory that would provide the global bonus to the empire that earned it. This tower would have an objective (or series of objectives) that would destroy it if undefended. Tower can't be capped, only destroyed. No class restriction to destroying it. Going a little further, the existence of the tower could be announced, but the enemy has to actually find it and perform some action for it's location to be broadcasted to the rest of the enemy faction.

**Malorn** · 2011-07-17, 07:41 PM

Btw, the battle island comment was just one example of where this could go, it isn't a core part of the idea.

As for the bonus...the way other empires get rid of it is by capturing more territory. They just keep doing what they're doing. They don't need to do anything other than take territory away from the empire that's currently dominating the continent.

Soothsayer · 2011-07-17, 07:48 PM

Yes, I get that, I like the idea behind the Battle Islands and want to see them in some form again in PS2. I think that the draw behind them should be more than just varied combat rules, but a definite strategic benefit as well as concentrated and unique scenarios.

The reason I would have an object that could be destroyed is to provide a means to slow down a juggernaut empire. They'll already be top for resources on that continent, having an objective that can be defended (conversely, an objective for others to attack) allows an underdog empire to come in and make an impact if they're getting steamrolled.

Would allow greater depth and give meaningful things for people to do who aren't into battle on the front lines.

**Malorn** · 2011-07-17, 08:34 PM

I share the desire to stop the juggernaut empire, I had a separate discussion about how they can make it progressively more difficult to hold territory (and progressively easier to take it from the juggernaut) in this thread:

Rich-Get-Richer & Double-Team Problem Discussion

In this specific instance however I don't think an object is needed. In fact it can be detrimental because a juggernaut empire is a global scope, not a continental scope. At the continent level normal mechanics are needed while something at the macro level can watch for and apply handicaps as needed as global territory gets gobbled up more and more by one empire.

In the above thread I recommend using the global territory held by an empire, not the continental to determine how easy it is to take territory from them.

This way an empire could dominate a single continent even though it might be the only one they have! You dont' want to make it easier for them to lose their only benefit. Instead the juggernaut problem is best detected at the global level and handicaps applied to all continents.

I too like the idea of having some continents that can provide a unique benefit if captured but operate under some resource constraints. Its all about tradeoffs. Maybe there's a very rugged continent whose only resources are for infantry & maybe galaxies, and its benefit is large bonuses to the resource that galaxies primarily consume. Capturing that small continent could give the empire that captured it a tangible galaxy benefit while also providing some great infantry combat.

There's tons of possibilities with this resource system!

**Malorn** · 2011-07-17, 08:49 PM

This was just moved to the Idea Vault

Tool · 2011-07-18, 12:35 PM

Good post Malorn.

Abundance of specific resources on conts is a good idea. Your suggestions listed in your first note on the correlation of vehicles, conts, and resources is something I agree with as well.

On your second note, I think there would need to be a good balance between continential control and benefits. Regardless of resources, the basic concept is to capture as much territory as possible. With your referance to your other post (Rich get richer), I think these issues tie together.

As you mentioned, there could or should be some way to keep empires from steam-rolling entire continents and gaining a large benefit allowing giving them a better chance to do the same to other continents.

In my opinion, with this new territory control and influence system, two things can be done:

First is something I've touched on before in other threads, which is resources need to be a worthy goal all the time. If they are simply abundant or easy to accumulate, they'll simply feel like an afterthought to most players, a nuisance to get their favorite loadouts.

If players need to consistantly make a calculated choice on spending resources, you've essentially created much more drive to aquire those resources.

Second, when one empire controls large portions of a continent two things should happen there. They should gain resources at a much faster rate, perhaps not a global increase but something to reflect their effort in capturing the territories. But with all supply lines, the more you spread out the harder it is to maintain over large areas. So other empires should be able to capture frontline territories faster.

This wouldn't have to be the case all the time, could only come into effect when that one empire controls a % of territories and they recieve a notification that their empire is spreading out and effort must be made to keep those territories or continue to drive the other empires back for even more proportional benefits/penalties.

**Malorn** · 2011-07-18, 03:13 PM

Thanks Tool,

The mission system can definitely key in here. In fact when an empire gains a continental benefit by conquest the "Empire" mission system could automatically assign a mission to the other two empires to break that continental lock.

One thing I've been thinking about is the fact that since resources are continent-based, it wont' matter how many other continents an empire has - you wont' be getting any resources for those continents since you only get resources based on the continent you are currently on. That helps the rich-get-richer problem somewhat because it isn't global richness.

The cont lock benefits actually do change that and provide some incentive to push for dominance, so I can see why that would be potentially dangerous. However, if the benefits are small then I still think it could work out well. It shouldn't be game-changing benefits, but rather a reward for success and something that might motivate you to target specific continents. For example we might have a situation where our resouce consumption is not quite keeping up with demand, but we're close to having a lock benefit on another continent that owuld assist us. We can send a squad over there (or a commander can create a mission) to go get that cont lock so we can better sustain our offensive here. I like that thought a lot for adding tactical and strategic depth.

And you are definitely right about consumption being key. We have to consume resources in order for them to continue to have value.

Also not having sanctuaries and instead having permanent un-cappable bases on every continent will help the rich-get-richer problem becuase it will always give the other two empires a foothold on a continent, even if the continent is completely captured. To explain a little better...in PS1 a dominant empire could remain dominant by restricting the lattice. As they captured continents they closed lattice links to other captured continents. As a result the number of vulnerable bases stayed constant...and in some cases it actually decreased. With this model, if an empire were to capture 3-4 complete continents...as they moved to the next continent the number of responders they need to maintain dominance of the conquered continents increases because of those permanent uncap bases. They're basically like having lattice links that can never be secured. This will lead to two possibilities.

1) The empire steadily leaves more and more players on the captured continents to keep them captured...this weakens their offensive and at some point they won' thave an offensive because all of their empire is busy holidng off attacks.

2) The empire ignores incursions on captured territory...this leads to them losing some territories and the other empires to get larger footholds on those continents.

Both result in making it progressively difficult to dominate more and more territory. Unlike PS1 where lattice link vulnerability stayed constant or decreased, in PS2 the vulnerability increases with each continent dominated.

I think realistically in PS2 we will rarely see an empire completely lock continents. Instead we will see small scale fighting on almost every continent and then a few large scale battles. That also depends on how many players are on each server. We need populations large enough to sustain those battles.

Tool · 2011-07-18, 03:30 PM

Yes, I suppose much of this depends on how territory is controlled and the mechanics of battle and population. I think defending territory needs to be equal with gaining territory for resource or resource denial.

And yes, if there isn't really benefits that compare to cont locks in PS2 there may be that lack of strategic accomplishment commanders and empires would get from making that effort to take large chuncks of territory. That difference in a sense of "f*** yeah, we're dominating" to "oh look another 3-way that doesn't matter"

Fighting for the sake of fighting is great for other FPS games but that lack of accomplishment can be more abundant in an MMO, especially an MMOFPS. I hope that PS2 really has ways to keep players feeling like territory is important, resources are important, and what's good for the empire is important. Those things would really help with presistance and longevity in my eyes.

**Malorn** · 2011-07-18, 07:12 PM

Originally Posted by Tool

Yes, I suppose much of this depends on how territory is controlled and the mechanics of battle and population. I think defending territory needs to be equal with gaining territory for resource or resource denial.

And yes, if there isn't really benefits that compare to cont locks in PS2 there may be that lack of strategic accomplishment commanders and empires would get from making that effort to take large chuncks of territory. That difference in a sense of "f*** yeah, we're dominating" to "oh look another 3-way that doesn't matter"

Fighting for the sake of fighting is great for other FPS games but that lack of accomplishment can be more abundant in an MMO, especially an MMOFPS. I hope that PS2 really has ways to keep players feeling like territory is important, resources are important, and what's good for the empire is important. Those things would really help with presistance and longevity in my eyes.

We could have non-resource based lock benefits as well.

Could do something like cert training time augmentations as long as your empire holds the continent (even those offline). Like 25% faster ground vehicle cert training as long as cyssor is held. Or 25% faster support cert training if searhus is held). Stuff like that.

This could be in conjunction with a small resource bonus, like 5-10% resource yeild for certain resources.

The advantage with that approach is that it gives a benefit for dominating a continent but that benefit doesn't make the empire stronger, at least not directly.

I like a mix of benefits though, rather than just one. In that way you can make the benefits smaller but more appealing.

Also, the bigger the continent the bigger the bonus (more territory = more reward, right?).

And they could be diversified so empires have to amke a choice. Could make the big 3 continents like Cyssor, Ishundar, and Esamir all give like a 25% training bonus to Vehicles / Infantry & MAX / Support certs respectively, with Searhus giving 10% to everything. The smaller continents could give resource bonuses of different types. That would make everything useful to some extent.

Can we think of other non-resource-based continent benefits?

Raymac · 2011-07-18, 04:33 PM

At first, I was a bit wary of this idea because I assumed it would be an arguement to blindly cling onto the old Planetside continent lock system. The more I read what your actual idea was, the more I liked it. I think it's a great idea using what we know so far about the territory and resource mechanics in PS2. This may be something they are already doing as part of the new system, but if not, I think it would be a well recieved addition.

MooK · 2011-07-25, 09:27 AM

I don't like the concept of a continental benefit. In the beginning, I do not remember ever considering one continent to be worth more, in any other realm but strategy and tactics. Our primary goal was to secure the world, and so, we would take whatever continent offered us the best continous foothold to do so.

When I returned through the multiple free opportunities to play, I found that continental "benefits" were actually very distracting and counter-productive. We would fight endlessly on continents that we had very little chance of taking, for the sake of a benefit we didn't even really need. All the while, rejected continents with little or no benefit sat, unguarded and ripe for the picking.

Personally I don't like that kind of reward system at all, and as such, I've never thought of a replacement for it. I'm not convinced that people need that (though it does make sense to restrict certain aspects of the game to certain continents.)

**Malorn** · 2011-07-25, 01:17 PM

Originally Posted by MooK

I don't like the concept of a continental benefit. In the beginning, I do not remember ever considering one continent to be worth more, in any other realm but strategy and tactics. Our primary goal was to secure the world, and so, we would take whatever continent offered us the best continous foothold to do so.

Thanks for the feedback, MooK! On Emerald that was our goal also (we achieved it - twice

go NC! )

As fun as that was for us, I know it wasn't fun for the VS or TR, so I doubt that will even be possible in PS2. It was also only possible when the TR/vs pop was quite low late at night. Certainly didn't happen in prime-time.

While the cont benefits weren't in at the beginning they were something I liked from a strategic perspective. Something that differentiates Planetside for me is that global scale. And players have options on what continent they want to fight on, moreso for PS2 with the lack of lattice and the uncaps. You have option to fight wherever you want. I believe this adds a lot more depth to the game if you have more factors that can go into your decision.

Rather than having "oh we need resource Y, lets see which front has access to it..." they might say "we need resource Y, but if we go to Ceryshen we'll get a bonus for that resource if we can dominate that continent". They have a choice on what they want to do and there's something unique about each continent. As per some of the other ideas presented here, it could also be that continents provide training bonuses and other types of rewards. The goal is strategic depth.

When I returned through the multiple free opportunities to play, I found that continental "benefits" were actually very distracting and counter-productive. We would fight endlessly on continents that we had very little chance of taking, for the sake of a benefit we didn't even really need. All the while, rejected continents with little or no benefit sat, unguarded and ripe for the picking.

First, I'm not proposing the same sort of benefits as PS1 where you had to own the entire continent to get the benefit. The idea has also evolved to be a scaling benefit given to the empire with the majority territory on the continent, but the benefit increases the more territory they own on that continent.

Also, in PS1 the benefits were quite lopsided. The repair/rearm was extremely good. The amp station benefit from Ish was also quite good. The others were sort of "meh". That's some rather poor balancing there, and the reason you saw people gravitating towards one continent over others is because the benefits weren't well distributed. There's other factors too. That continent was the one where "the fight" was, while the empty continent had less intrinsic entertainment value. I found in my days of commanding that "the good fight" was a strong motivator as well. Players are reluctant to give up the guaranteed good fight to take a chance on maybe getting a better one, and an empty continent doesn't look too promising. But if that empty continent had something they might want, such as faster vehicle training time or something like that, they might be more inclined for it.

I think we'll see very different conquest patters in PS2. I expect it'll be distributed on more continents since resources are tangible value whether there's opposition or not, and you effectively have a lattice link to every continent so nothing stops that from happening.

Personally I don't like that kind of reward system at all, and as such, I've never thought of a replacement for it. I'm not convinced that people need that (though it does make sense to restrict certain aspects of the game to certain continents.)

Well, "need" isn't a word I'd use to describe this. "nice to have" is more fitting. The game can work and likely be quite successful without this idea. However, I do believe it will add another layer of depth to the game and give the devs some new options on making continents distinct to the average player and also from a global command perspective. Just like different bases have different values, different continents having different values just adds do strategic depth.

Also, I think your experience with the PS1 system may be giving you a bad impression. Not talking about that system, rather taking the idea and improving it so it doesn't have the same negative effects. The benefits do need to be balanced with each other so they are tradeoffs and there is no clear "best" benefit that everyone gravitates around. That's an important thing to add to the idea. I would expect with all the telemetry technology that exists today that they can see distributions across the continents and tweak continent benefits accordingly.

I will also add that I believe without this idea the global strategy will be rather bland.

Hyncharas · 2011-07-31, 07:06 PM

So far we've talked about the "ore" and (possibly) "gemstone" equivalents, but what about a third type: energy?

On most of the maps they are a surrounded by ocean with a number of lakes inland, but Hossin, Searhaus and Cyssor have much deeper ones where there might be the opportunity fo underwater mining platforms as energy-based fuel fo aircraft, or to power the particle weapons of the VS.

In PlanetSide the engine couldn't accommodate underwater bases, but now might be the opportunity for them if empires are also fighting over a resource that can only be found on certain continents, in deep trenches.

**Malorn** · 2012-03-15, 06:22 PM

I'm bumping this since the topic of "End Game" and the impact of footholds has come up a lot lately and I think these ideas in the thread are still relevant.