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]

Originally Posted by NewSith

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.

[Malorn]

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

Originally Posted by Higby's Reddit AMAA

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]

Originally Posted by Malorn

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.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by 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.

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.

[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.

[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.