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.