First of all let me say that this is in no way a completely fleshed out idea, it is a concept mainly used to implement new content that is added later in patches.
With that said, in planetside 2 each faction is fighting over territorial control of continents in order to gain resources for their faction, but in reality all this really does is grant players of that faction a small portion of the total earned faction resources.
My idea is to make the faction itself a being and give it also a total pool of all resources earned by that faction kind of like a giant guild bank. Then the faction uses these resources to unlock future content.
For instance lets say that at launch each faction has access to everything available at launch, but when the first patch is released that adds new content to the game, it is not immediately made available to all players. Instead the faction needs to "purchase" those new items via their total resource pool.
Lets make up an imaginary patch for this post that adds 10 new items to the game maybe 3 new guns, 3 new vehicles, and 4 new implants.
Now before each faction gets access to these new items the faction will first need to "purchase" them like so.
maybe 1 new gun will require the faction to earn a total of 10k polymers in order to unlock that particular item, maybe another could cost alloys, or auraxiam, and this unlock system would be used for each of them items added through the patch in order for you to unlock them for your faction.
---Now why would you want to do this?
Well, as far as i know of right now, capturing bases and securing resources is pretty much just so that you can net profits for yourself. Sure in some nebulous way you are aiding your fellow soldiers by granting them maybe an additional 2 auraxium per hour, or whatever the pay period is, but to me this doesn't feel like i'm helping my empire.
With the system that I am suggesting players will actually be able to serve an active role in making their empire superior, it is akin to raiding in MMO's you want YOUR TEAM to have all the good stuff first, there comes a deep sense of team loyalty when you are fighting to be the first on the server to attain a new item or beat a new objective, and I think this would be a neat way to do that every patch.
Now, I am not suggesting that they take away the resource dividends to the rest of your faction, I am just saying that this will be there too, and who knows maybe there could be resource sinks that could come out of this.
Maybe a player can choose to spend their resources on their teams bank, so maybe you can drop ALL of your auraxium on patch day so that you can get your faction just that much closer to that new vehicle, or gun, or whatever.
I donno, to me this seems like a pretty neat way to bolster team loyalty and camaraderie.
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