Balancing Factor: Resource Storage Limit

[Fenrod]

A softcap seems a good idea to balance the differences between the factions, indeed.

And your flight example was a nice simile !

[headcrab13]

I think it just depends on the resource type.

I think some cheap and basic resources should have no limit, and some more rare (heavy, hazardous, etc) types should only be gathered very slowly, only last a short time, or have a small storage capacity.

[Malorn]

If the soft-cap is "realistically" 40, then make the hard cap a little under that and call it a day. It's effectively the same and a lot easier to balance.

Gotta keep the resource system simple so resource management isn't a chore.

What's the purpose? That should be the question you ask.

Nobody is being "punished" for saving if a hard cap exists. You can save. You just can't save forever. Resources aren't meant to be saved forever. They're meant to be spent. Ideally you spend roughly as much as you bring in but i the absence of that a low cap on the total number of resources ensures you never feel like you have enough.

It is vitally important to the game that resources remain something people care about and always feel like they need more. That is what will drive people to


The purpose of a stockpile is so you have a cushion to where you don't actually have to worry about income for a bit and can survive without it. The larger you make that stockpile the more people you will have operating without a limit.

And the AFK bot issue is something that will come up without a resource cap and they'll have to have quite a few designs built on top of that to combat the problem. As long as resources are paid out as dividends you're going to have people sitting around leaching them. If you have no limit on the amount they can leach it's going to be a widespread problem. You'll have people that play all day, then turn on their AFK bot to farm resources on some continent while they sleep or are at work/class. Then they'll come back and not care about resources again because they have this huge stockpile. Worse, they ate resources from people actively on the continent at the time doing things and reduced active population. A cap won't completely eliminate this problem but if the cap is reasonably low there won't be all that much benefit to doing it so motivation will be low. If there's no cap or a soft cap that allows you to stockpile significantly more resources then that's what they'll do.

There's more options to the developers for balancing, it's simpler to balance, and motivation for resources stays high with a cap. It's pure win.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Malorn

If the soft-cap is "realistically" 40, then make the hard cap a little under that and call it a day. It's effectively the same and a lot easier to balance.

I don't think you understand what a soft cap is.

Let's say both the example hard cap and example soft cap are exactly the same cap. Both will be 100 for this example.

With the hard cap, I earn 10 resources every hour. If I don't spend any for 10 hours, I will max out. After that point, no matter how much I play or how well my empire does, I will never gain any reward of any kind.

With the soft cap, I earn 10 resources every hour. Once I hit 50, I earn 5 resources every hour. Once I hit 75, I earn 2 resources every hour. Etc etc. Instead of maxing out after 10 hours, I would only be at 75, or three quarters of the maximum amount I could hold. There is still plenty of potential to still have some reward for doing well or for my empire doing well, just at a slower rate of return than if I only had a few resources.

This is why your example makes no sense. A balanced soft cap will always be higher than a balanced hard cap, because it's harder to reach the cap. It's the whole point of having a soft cap, so that you can still get something, but at a balanced rate proportional to how much you have stockpiled.

It's not hard to balance a soft cap. You just pick what amount you want the average player to have and you start diminishing their resources earned once they pass that number or slightly before it, and then you figure out what the maximum number of resources an individual player could have without it becoming unbalanced and place the end of the soft cap there, where diminished returns trickle to nothing.

Resources are meant to reward. What exactly is the harm in rewarding both big spenders and misers in their own way? It's very easy to balance and you would never run into a situation where you felt cheated out of resources because you couldn't get to an inventory station to grab some grenades or a vehicle because you were stuck in the middle of a long drawn out fight in the middle of nowhere.

[Malorn]

I know what a soft cap is, thanks.

It isn't needed in this instance.

In a place like WoW it makes sense so people target certain stat goals and then hit them, with the soft cap making it so if you go a tad over you didn't waste the stat points, or you could go over intentionally if you wanted to take the loss in efficiency to boost a particularly beneficial stat.

The key part of a soft cap is a goal that you want people to hit (soft cap) and a level you don't want them to go past (hard cap).

Here a simple resource cap is sufficient and keeps the model simple. At the cap? Spend more! Not at the cap? Get more resources! It stays simple.

The problems with soft cap is that it adds unnecessary complexity to the game. Stat point formulas in WoW were one of the more tedious parts of that game. I don't want to have a resource formula in PS to see whether I'm making optimal use of my resources. It's silly.

In the end you still have the same effective result - people target X amount of resources. Whether X is a hard cap or a soft cap in Planetside doesn't matter, it's still the number people will try for. The soft cap doesn't net you anything in here and adds unnecessary complexity.

What is the problem that soft cap solves?

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Malorn

What is the problem that soft cap solves?

I've said several times. It solves the problem of players not getting rewarded by a system that is meant to reward.

What is better, being stuck capped at 100 resources and being unable to get any more, or getting a reduced, but still decent reward up to 150?

Imagine you are fighting inside a base as some sort of infantryman. Your play style requires no resources of any kind and you would prefer to save up your resources for vehicles. You have been fighting in this crazy drawn out battle inside this one base for 2 hours now and you have hit the hard resource cap of 100. Now you know that you are going to have an epic tank battle coming up shortly after you finally take this base, because the area between this capture point and the next is perfect for tank battles, but now you are getting absolutely no reward for your effort.

"just get some grenades"

Why? That's not the way they play infantry.

"they just get no resource reward then"

Most of the reason that resources are in the game is as a reward for players. Obviously there isn't much point if the player NEVER spends resources, but those players would eventually hit the end of the softcap anyways and it would be a non-issue. What about players who only like spending resources for specific parts of the game, where they may blow through their entire stash quickly, but may go for entire long stretches without spending any at all.

I don't see what has to be so complicated for players either. You get normal resources until 100. Then you get less and less until theoretically you get nothing at 150, or 200, or whatever the cap is. It's not like something you need spreadsheets to plan for. You just know that you should probably spend something once you have 100 because you aren't earning quite as much as normal if you have more than that. For those looking to build up a stash, you just know that you will never get to x number, so don't even bother once you get close.

It's simple for the devs, it would have little impact on most players and it does solve some problems, even if you want to ignore them.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Xyntech

I've said several times. It solves the problem of players not getting rewarded by a system that is meant to reward.

How does it solve that problem? All it does is expand the potential resource limit while retaining an "effective" resource cap. By definition things past the soft cap are not worthwhile. So why bother having them?

And the system isn't meant to reward players.

It's intended to motivate players to attacking all sorts of different types of territory and to help make all types of territory valuable. It gives reason to take a particular piece of territory. High resource cap can mean many players don't care about a particular piece of territory because they feel they have enough of it. Reward is part of the motivation, but it is the means, not the end.

It's intended to make resource denial an effective tactic. Not having a cap severely impairs this design intent, and having a high cap limits the effectiveness of resource denial. The deeper the pocket of the player the less likely they are to be impacted by shortages of a particular resource. Too large of a resource supply cap and the tactic is completely ineffective. Think of a tech plant in PS1 - no tech means vehicles severely limited and disadvantaged. Resources replace that functionality in PS1. If you lose a resource to pull a tank for an hour and it doesn't interrupt your ability to pull tanks the tactic is ineffective and the design has failed.

It's intended to provide another axis for balance - economics. Not having a cap also impacts this design intent. I gave the orbital strike example earlier. Having a higher cap lowers the effectiveness.

Strictly speaking sure they could add a soft cap. But it doesn't solve anything. There's no reason to do it.

[Noivad]

I voted No
I don't consider game money as resourses
you cannot buy resourses in PS2.
Resourses affect side / up grades only . They will not affect your damage out for any weapon.
They will give you additional ablities, like a flash light that blinds, a muzzle that increases range, a clip that holds more ammo. Nothing that could be bought with money.

If PS2 allows all Empire Resourses one can accumlate to decay over time to a base low basic level so a 1st time player, or a person who was out of game was gone for a period of time had some side grades that coulld be added it would solve the problem. Use it or lose it to a base level.

Outfit Resourses would could be degraded based on the number of active players.
This would then stop Outfits that have 500 people units with only 5 people ever on line an active. Start decay times after 2 or 3 weeks.

The more one plays the more indivual resourses that would be open to him.

If your AFK for 5 mins auto kick out of game - no resourse coming in. Solves resourse mining. If you can't get a cup of coffee, beer, whatever, do a bio break in that time ur playing with it.

[Malorn]

Originally Posted by Noivad

If your AFK for 5 mins auto kick out of game - no resourse coming in. Solves resourse mining. If you can't get a cup of coffee, beer, whatever, do a bio break in that time ur playing with it.

If any MMO in recent history shows, it isn't as simple as an AFK timer. They've all had issues with AFK farmers in PvP instances. They make bots which will just run in and suicide, or they make a script that makes them twitch randomly every so often to reset the AFK timer. It's plagued MMORPGs for many years now. We have to assume the same will happen here.

The best way to stop it is not allow it to be worth doing. Low resource cap means there is little benefit in doing it. Unless they get smarter and modify their scripts to spend resources on things like certs too, heh.

PS2 will have to address it in some fashion. They might have an experience requirement on the dividend to ensure you have some minimal amount of effort before you start receiving resources. That'll raise the bar on the bots and hopefully make it a non-issue.

[Soothsayer]

I voted no because (unfortunately) I have ceased to be a hardcore gamer and now am a lot more casual than before. So with that in mind, I want the time I do have ingame to be as awesome as possible and I don't want to have to pull any punches with the equipment I pull or the number (and quality) of vehicles I roll out.

I'm going to have as full of a subscription as possible, hopefully the idea that has been kicked around these forums about offline resource accumulation will be in effect.

I want to relive those original massive planetside battles, get in, get out and not have to be constantly watching my resource tallies.

Alternatively, I would want to have a good enough cap that I could log in occasionally (like every 3-4 days) and spend the resources on my character without having to worry about losing something that I am entitled to have by nature of not being able to get to the game on a daily basis.

In short, casual gamers who support the F2P model shouldn't be left in the cold.

[Sirisian]

I don't feel the developers should implement a system that forces players to horde resources. Ideally resources should just be a way to upgrade and customize among many choices. It should be used as a method for balance, limiting choices over time. That is you can purchase 5 things now to min max or spread it over time. Having a resource cap removes any player's tendency to needlessly horde resources. That and like I said in another thread I want players to work together to purchase vehicles with complicated loadouts and a resource cap makes sure that someone isn't just AFK grinding resources to pull the most advantageous loadout every turn by themselves. Any resource model should promote players that are currently playing.

That said I'm strongly against a resource acquisition model that directly rewards kills/support since it allows power to get power. Which is why I proposed a loyalty system that caps the resource acquisition rate for personal resources. The resource cap on top of this I feel promotes the best atmosphere so that resources don't overwhelm a player's priorities. That is it's independent of a player's success so they can play casually without feeling like they are stressed keep up.

Originally Posted by Soothsayer

I want to relive those original massive planetside battles, get in, get out and not have to be constantly watching my resource tallies.

You make a lot of assumptions. What if it only takes like 10 spawns to hit the maximum if you don't spend anything? That is playing casually would allow you to get most everything every other spawn?

[Soothsayer]

Originally Posted by Sirisian

You make a lot of assumptions. What if it only takes like 10 spawns to hit the maximum if you don't spend anything? That is playing casually would allow you to get most everything every other spawn?

They have stated many times that they want to cut down on the monotony of PS1. If I'm a dedicated tank driver and I have to wait twenty minutes for my resources to replenish in order to pull a tank they aren't getting me back into the action faster than the original.

When I say "playing casually" I mean a few shorter play sessions per week as opposed to every night for 3+ hours.

Not sure about how I'm making a lot of assumptions, there's really just one, I was responding to an opinion poll.

[Red Beard]

The resource limit isn't for balance, it's to make people pay for stuff in the shop.

I'm sure when they changed it so there were no longer items you HAD to buy with cash, they lowered the resource limit a little bit to compensate.

[Pollo Jack]

Originally Posted by Red Beard

The resource limit isn't for balance, it's to make people pay for stuff in the shop.

I'm sure when they changed it so there were no longer items you HAD to buy with cash, they lowered the resource limit a little bit to compensate.

Gonna have to agree with this guy.

Even if you can pull vehicle after vehicle it doesn't matter if you just die with it. Eventually you will be pushed back to base and pulling an aircraft from a camped pad or a tank from a mined vehicle bay turns your res into their XP. We may even have people suicide rush vehicle pads just to feed vehicle kills because they don't want to lose out on potential vehicles. Face it, you get much more kills in a base fight than out in the open. Vehicles are never the guaranteed kill that infantry are.

[Pollo Jack]

Hold up. Have they said these sidegrades will have to be purchased every time you pull a loadout? I was under the impression you pay to unlock it once.

If you aren't rewarded for killing then you are certainly punished for dieing which also punishes playing too much at a time. Killing a half day on your favorite game will require you to spend money money just to play if there is a low cap. Forget vehicles if the infantry combat will bankrupt you.

And what if you have almost enough for your loadout? Do I have to spend five minutes every time I am at the terminal deciding what to put back? Sure, it can just not give me anything saying I have insufficient funds but I will still have some funds and I want to use my favorite weapon.

That is all under the assumption that you have to pay every time you use the weapon.

I had assumed it was just with vehicles. With vehicles I say no to a resource cap, with a price tag on everything I say hell no.