The Resource / Territory Control System

[Malorn]

This new resource/territory system is what intrigues me the most about PS2. I didn't like how some of the "transcripts" were not word-for-word transcripts and so I went through every video and did my own transcribing. I didn't transcribe everything in the video, rather I focused on the new territory control and resource system. I got everything related to that topic.

Here they are in their complete un-paraphrased glory.

Originally Posted by PS2 Announcement Presentation Video

Players that control territory and empires that control territory will gain access to resources. You will automatically be given resources based on your territory control, the territory your empire controls, and based on your success in capturing and defending territory. Resources are going to be used throughout Planetside 2 for a variety of different things, such as upgrading your weapons, attaching new weapons to your vehicles, or even shortcutting different skills on the certification tree.

The importance of resources can't be overstated. These resources are going to add so much to the way people play, and the way that your empire, the way that your outfit, and the way that you manage resources is really going to affect your success or failure on the battlefield.

Later we'll be going even further with resources. In the future resources will be used for more sandbox features. Perhaps your outfit will be able to build its own facility, create its own defensive structures, build its own vehicle pads. We really do want to explore the sandbox nature of the games and we think that Planetside is an awesome IP to do it in.

Originally Posted by PS2 Developer Round Table w/ Press Video

The territory control system we designed is specifically created so each piece of the map has intrinsic value through resources and has value that players are going to want to contest and fight over. So rather than capturing a facility to increase your empire's influence over the continent you will be capturing everything. Every piece of territory. That has forced us to change the way we design levels & continents. What it ends up with is that we have continents that have a lot more vertical gameplay. And what I mean by vertical gameplay is that we have scaffolding on canyon walls, things like that. It's much more dense. The amount of players that can fit in a PS2 map and have meaningful interaction with other players and meaningful gameplay is much larger than the same square footage in PS2.

The territory control metagame really the thing that drives resources. Resources are a new impetus for content and combat and more like motivation for players to fight. On a continent you will have multiple regions that can be captured and each of those have intrinsic resource value to them. So as you walk around and capture these different areas you will be gaining resources for your empire, for your outfit, and for yourself. So certain areas might be more rich in rare resources, some might be more rich in common resources.

The way they are spread out is really going to encourage players to certain areas where they dont have access. Maybe I don't have access to Auraxium for instance, which is one of our rare resources. I dont have access to that on this continent. So I look at the map and I say 'you know what, in order to keep fighting I need to get Auraxium, or my squad needs to get Auraxium, or my outfit does.' And empires are making these decisions on a larger level too. So now you're going to go out and you're going to look at the map and say, 'well cool, where's Auraxium? Who's controlling Auraxium right now?' And you are going to make decisions about going and capturing that piece of territory that you need to be able to get whatever upgrades and attachments you want. The resource metagame really is going to be the reason people continue to fight. It isn't going to be capture all the bases. I want to deny this resource to my enemies. Maybe you know the Vanu really require a lot of Auraxium. Maybe you are a New Con player and don't require a lot of Auraxium. So you keep that Auraxium to deny it to the Vanu who are attacking you.

Originally Posted by PS2 Developer Round Table Q&A Video

We mean "sandbox" more similar to what we had in Galaxies and what CCP has in EVE. That means a player economy. There's a reason resources are going in from the start. We have big plans for them down the road.

One of our maps right now would support hundreds of potential territories. We're going through them now and we're creating those territories. And they're visualized to players as a hex grid. Some regions are going to be three hexes, some might be 7, some might be 2, some might be 1. And these are even going to shift and evolve over time as resources migrate, spawn and despawn, to keep things fresh. We want it to be as granular as possible.

I'm sure most of you have probably played Civ 5. You know the way they do territory movement, it's something akin to that is the closest example of it where you can actually get control of territory maybe not necessarily by being there physically, but certainly being there physically is one way to do it. But maybe influence over areas is another way. There's multiple ways for us to do that.

Certain types of facilities will exert more influence on how much territory they capture. In the wilderness there will be capture points that will capture smaller places. Towers will be out there that will help you capture more territory.

-- NOTE: Right here after that statement is where Smed points out the towers have "landing struts." Probably not a coincidence that it came immediately after the discussion about "tower influence". --

You will be able to discretely capture territory. Every piece of territory, every region - all the territory is broken into different regions and they are independently capturable.So for instance there may be a large region that is controlled by a facility. When you capture the facility you own the entire region. There might be other areas that are captured just by a bunker that happens to be out in the wilderness somewhere. And by going to and capturing that bunker you capture that piece of territory.

Its broken into a very granular hexagonal grid (overlay) and its neat how the territory can move back and forth. Its very different from what I've seen in other games.

The capturing system - and this is going really deep into some of the gameplay stuff - but the way it works is based on your adjacent territory that your empire owns you get bonuses to being able to capture the territory that is connected to that. We have a system of adjacency, so the front line is constantly shifting and constantly evolving based on territory that's being captured. And you will be able to capture any piece of territory on the map but you get significant bonuses to capturing ones that are adjacent to the territory that you already control. So back-hacking is still something someone could go do. If I want to I can go to the middle of your territory and capture this piece of territory. It might take me 30 minutes to capture this one region and then when your empire goes back there and re-captures it might only take them 30 seconds. So it might not be necessarily the smartest thing for you to go do, but if you want to gain a foothold over there and you're really interested in defending that territory then it might be worth doing. For the most part the front line is going to be the place where people fight - people will be fighting on multiple fronts since we have multiple factions - but that front line is really going to determine what the most vulnerable territory to capture is.

(While moment-to-moment pacing is faster) The speed at which territory gets captured is actually a bit different. It's harder for you to just blitz across territory in Planetside 2 because of the way bonuses are levied on territory. You'll notice when you log in one of the things we're adding is sort of a recap of what's happened since the last time you played the game and you'll see how the territory has shifted since the last time you played.

Originally Posted by PS2 Public Panel Video

Resources in Planetside 2 are given out to players by holding territory, by capturing territory, and by defending territory. So, if you imagine an enormous map with a hex grid overlayed on it and each of the hexes you looked at have a value of what kind of resources are there and how many of the resources are there. As you go and capture these pieces your empire is then gaining resources at an increased rate, gaining specific resources. And those resources can be used for things like upgrading your weapons, upgrading your vehicles, training skills on the certification tree. There is a huge level of interactivity between resources, character advancement, and the core gameplay. So this is really central to the motivations behind why people are fighting in the game, what sort of strategic tactics they're going to be using. If I'm going to go capture an area, it might be because I know the Vanu are attacking me on another front, and they need this resource in order to field the kind of tanks they're fielding against us there, and if I can capture that resource from them now I'm denying them the ability to attack us that way.

Resources are continental-based right now. I gain resources from the continent I am on.If I don't have a foothold on the continent the TR are fighting on as much - maybe the TR and Vanu are really in a stalemate on one continent and my empire doesn't really have a foothold there - I can go to a continent where we do, fight there, gather resources, my team can sort of save our resources and then we can transition to that continent and be ready to really mount an offense over there. Also the way we distribute resources will solve that problem (referring to small population vs large population). If you have less people there resources are going to be getting distributed in higher percentages to the fewer people that are there. Once we start seeing the real play patterns, the way that the game starts balancing out then we'll be making more decisions about how we keep things balanced.

There is a combination of static & dynamic spawns for resources, so that is a very simple and elegant way to solve that problem (referring to the problem of a low pop getting attacked by a high pop and not having a lot of territory for resources).


(Responding to the question of 2 empires being locked in a struggle and the 3rd going and attacking some other continent) With the resource system people are going to have an increased motivation to go and defend those places. If I go and start capturing this area as a New Conglomerate player and they start saying 'hey these guys are getting back into the fight, they're gaining resources'...

-- NOTE: conversation breaks off into a little exchange that's hard to hear, and I'm paraphrasing but they recognized the problem with this type of game and motivating people to spread out and encourage defense of distant territory. At this point the Executive Producer chimes in and mentions that the mission system can help motivate people to spread out, then T-Ray does a great Silent Bob maneuver and states that this is going to be vetted in beta and if it doesn't work they'll change it. (see my sig) --

There were no direct quotes in other sources, and Matt has not mentioned the resource system on reddit - the words "hex" "territory" "resource" "continent" "region" and "upgrade" doesn't appear in any of his statements there. If I missed any let me know I'll happily edit them in. I wanted word-for-word information, so I omitted summaries and avoided citing anything paraphrased (telephone game, etc).

With this complete and accurate list of quotes I hope we can have some good discussion about how these systems work and maybe get some more ideas flowing.

One large unanswered problem is the one that I mentioned in this thread, which has to do with global strategy and motivating people to have interesting conflicts instead of ghost-hacking continents, double-teaming, rich-getting-richer, and moving into one giant zerg in only one continent.

I will reply to this with my own analysis but I wanted to keep this first post limited to the information we know.

Hawt damn I love what they're doing with this. Really, really awesome stuff.