Resource

[phungus]

Resources are an important aspect of planetside 2. They limit available tactics to players by denying access to certain vehicles and items. This is a key component of gameplay and game balance. The problem with resources is that they are entirely tied to team population and to a lesser extent warpgate location. This makes the player powerless over their resources and leaves them in pretty much two different situtations I think is harmful to overall gameplay.

In PS2 the player is either on the team with the higher pop and/or good warpgate location and never lacks for resources and thus becomes overpowered and unabalanced in comparison to his enemies with unlimited access to vehicles and tools that are intended to be limited, or the player is on a team with low population and/or a poorly located wargate and thus never has enough resource income to acquire the needed equipment to fight with. For me and my experience this often means I simply log out and log back into my character with the higher population. I am not the only person who does this, we are encouraged to do so by the game mechanics and how resources are implemented. This positive feedback loop as the effect of even further skewing player balance and makes the resource imbalance situation worse.

I find this to be one of the most destructive aspects of this game. Resources are necessary, players need to be limited on what items and vehicles they can pull. However the current implementation does not accomplish this well; instead with how resources are currently implemented they solely harm the gameplay experience of players on a team with low population.

[Badjuju]

Originally Posted by phungus

Resources are an important aspect of planetside 2. They limit available tactics to players by denying access to certain vehicles and items. This is a key component of gameplay and game balance. The problem with resources is that they are entirely tied to team population and to a lesser extent warpgate location. This makes the player powerless over their resources and leaves them in pretty much two different situtations I think is harmful to overall gameplay.

In PS2 the player is either on the team with the higher pop and/or good warpgate location and never lacks for resources and thus becomes overpowered and unabalanced in comparison to his enemies with unlimited access to vehicles and tools that are intended to be limited, or the player is on a team with low population and/or a poorly located wargate and thus never has enough resource income to acquire the needed equipment to fight with. For me and my experience this often means I simply log out and log back into my character with the higher population. I am not the only person who does this, we are encouraged to do so by the game mechanics and how resources are implemented. This positive feedback loop as the effect of even further skewing player balance and makes the resource imbalance situation worse.

I find this to be one of the most destructive aspects of this game. Resources are necessary, players need to be limited on what items and vehicles they can pull. However the current implementation does not accomplish this well; instead with how resources are currently implemented they solely harm the gameplay experience of players on a team with low population.

I think they are currently working on redesigning the resource system as it is worthless ATM. The other night we put up a great defense destroying countless vehicles of an enemy Zerg and they just kept pulling them until we couldn't hold the base anymore. Right now people are not punished for loosing their vehicle which shouldn't be the case. There should be a cost to pulling something with heavy fire power and you should have reason to keep it safe.

There are other issues with base design and capture mechanics that contribute to the "numbers are all that matters" problem as well. Well have to see what changes and how. I am pretty sure though that a resource system redesign is in the works though.

[phungus]

So what sorts of ways should a resource system work in a game like this?

[Sirisian]

You should look at this roadmap post on the official forums for their resource revamp. It was moved from May to June for some reason. There's a lot of suggestions there, but honestly it sounds like either the developers have nothing planned and moved it back or are planning something big to go along with their new hex system. It's a bit of a mystery atm.

Originally Posted by phungus

So what sorts of ways should a resource system work in a game like this?

My suggestion was posted there, but it's kind of a large change. I think the developers prefer small changes. I doubt we'll be seeing anything too drastic.

[ringring]

Resources should simply be removed.

The problem with this game is that it's too complicated and therefore features that don't add anything should be removed to streamline it.

Complexity is a barrier for new players.

Resources were meant to be a reason to fight over the outposts and also to limit tank spam. They do neither.

What they do is either nothing at all or cause frustration.

Yesterday on Miller TR there was a really good tank battle with an NC tank zerg pushing us into our WG. I eventually was left with no resources (well, just over 100) and I had no means of getting resources with the exception of the +10 you get by being in a warpgate.

There also was a visible queue of TR clustered around the world terminals waiting to get onto other continents, presumably they had the same problem as me. How is that fun?


Every now and again the devs do a balance pass, they should also do a complexity pass and remove features that create complexity but don't add anything to the depth.

[phungus]

Originally Posted by ringring

Resources should simply be removed.

The problem with this game is that it's too complicated and therefore features that don't add anything should be removed to streamline it.

Complexity is a barrier for new players.

Resources were meant to be a reason to fight over the outposts and also to limit tank spam. They do neither.

What they do is either nothing at all or cause frustration.

Yesterday on Miller TR there was a really good tank battle with an NC tank zerg pushing us into our WG. I eventually was left with no resources (well, just over 100) and I had no means of getting resources with the exception of the +10 you get by being in a warpgate.

There also was a visible queue of TR clustered around the world terminals waiting to get onto other continents, presumably they had the same problem as me. How is that fun?


Every now and again the devs do a balance pass, they should also do a complexity pass and remove features that create complexity but don't add anything to the depth.

Honestly this has been my take and experience on it.

However a system must be in place to limit vehicle and grenade spam. Resources are supposed to fill this role, but as you say they completely fail at it in the current implementation.

[JesNC]

Originally Posted by ringring

Resources should simply be removed.

The problem with this game is that it's too complicated and therefore features that don't add anything should be removed to streamline it.

Complexity is a barrier for new players.

Resources were meant to be a reason to fight over the outposts and also to limit tank spam. They do neither.

What they do is either nothing at all or cause frustration.

Yesterday on Miller TR there was a really good tank battle with an NC tank zerg pushing us into our WG. I eventually was left with no resources (well, just over 100) and I had no means of getting resources with the exception of the +10 you get by being in a warpgate.

There also was a visible queue of TR clustered around the world terminals waiting to get onto other continents, presumably they had the same problem as me. How is that fun?


Every now and again the devs do a balance pass, they should also do a complexity pass and remove features that create complexity but don't add anything to the depth.

So you lost your vehicles and ran out of resources - aka you lost, period.

If continent locking and cross-continent warfare was already a thing, NC would have taken Indar and the fight would have moved on to whatever continent there would be behind the WG.

I don't see

a) How resources make this game overly complex.

b) How resources add nothing to the depth of the game.

I do agree that they don't add much - yet. But having them removed would just foster the zerg mentality even more. On the contrary, I think they need to increase vehicle costs or decrease the resource generation rates. With cooldown reduction certs and the NC holding 1/3 of a cont I can spam vehicles non-stop, and that should not be possible IMO. People should have to take care of their vehicles instead of feeding them to the meatgrinder.

[ringring]

Originally Posted by JesNC

So you lost your vehicles and ran out of resources - aka you lost, period.

If continent locking and cross-continent warfare was already a thing, NC would have taken Indar and the fight would have moved on to whatever continent there would be behind the WG.

I don't see

a) How resources make this game overly complex.

b) How resources add nothing to the depth of the game.

I do agree that they don't add much - yet. But having them removed would just foster the zerg mentality even more. On the contrary, I think they need to increase vehicle costs or decrease the resource generation rates. With cooldown reduction certs and the NC holding 1/3 of a cont I can spam vehicles non-stop, and that should not be possible IMO. People should have to take care of their vehicles instead of feeding them to the meatgrinder.

No we didn't lose.

And I did the only thing I could, as other continents were pop-locked I footzerged.

And in the grand TR tradition, the footzerg suceeded. Well, a little bit.

But aftger a while I got bored with that and by that time there was some space on Amerish so I when there and hung around in the WG for a while farming.

[phungus]

Originally Posted by JesNC

So you lost your vehicles and ran out of resources - aka you lost, period.

If continent locking and cross-continent warfare was already a thing, NC would have taken Indar and the fight would have moved on to whatever continent there would be behind the WG.

I don't see

a) How resources make this game overly complex.

b) How resources add nothing to the depth of the game.

I do agree that they don't add much - yet. But having them removed would just foster the zerg mentality even more. On the contrary, I think they need to increase vehicle costs or decrease the resource generation rates. With cooldown reduction certs and the NC holding 1/3 of a cont I can spam vehicles non-stop, and that should not be possible IMO. People should have to take care of their vehicles instead of feeding them to the meatgrinder.

The only winning or losing in this game is done over specific bases. Besides I have a VS, NC, and TR guy, two of them on Connery, the third on Helios - so soon to be all three on Connery. When one runs out of resources I just switch characters. I don't lose anything, and me as a player is virtually never limited by resources, I simply have to log into the character with the higher population.

You want there to be a game that actually has territory that matters, that game is not Planetside 2. I play the game that has been designed where I am encouraged to simply go the path of least ressistance and join the numbers - which right now is NC. That's the only outcome of the current implementation of resources; my actions have virtually no effect on my resource earning, my resources are earned solely due to team population.

[JesNC]

So because the game doesn't supply mechanics and an incentive to strategic gameplay atm we should simply abolish anything that could eventually be leveraged to accomplish this and instead turn PS2 into a true TDM meatgrinder/cert farm?

Way to go PSU!

[phungus]

Originally Posted by JesNC

So because the game doesn't supply mechanics and an incentive to strategic gameplay atm we should simply abolish anything that could eventually be leveraged to accomplish this and instead turn PS2 into a true TDM meatgrinder/cert farm?

Way to go PSU!

No. There should be a working system in place to limit vehicles and items. Resources is supposed to do this, but it does not, it merely provides a positive feedback loop for players to join the already winning team. Also any resource system that exists should either be flat, or the player should have some control over it. In the current situation the player is simply powerless and it's just about population, and that is what is so destructive about it.

And yes, I'd prefer just flat timers to the current system. However that does not mean resources need to be abolished, just that the current implementation of resources is really bad for gameplay and player experience in general.

[fierce deity]

Originally Posted by JesNC

I do agree that they don't add much - yet. But having them removed would just foster the zerg mentality even more. On the contrary, I think they need to increase vehicle costs or decrease the resource generation rates. With cooldown reduction certs and the NC holding 1/3 of a cont I can spam vehicles non-stop, and that should not be possible IMO. People should have to take care of their vehicles instead of feeding them to the meatgrinder.

Agreed. They could in a way do both. In addition to decreasing the rate of resource gain, they could keep stock vehicles at their current price but any add-ons cost additional resources. I would also love it if they let you add extra armors under this system. So you want a prowler with front, side and top armor, mineguard, lockdown, and racer chassis, each of those add-ons is going to cost you an extra 25 resources. You can also extend this to weapons and their attachments(5 resources per attachment?) but I don't think it needs to go that far.

Throw in resources being shared among the entire empire, ammo towers and bases that must be resupplied with NTUs trucked in from the warpgate,make it so that once you log into a character you can't switch empires for a set amount of time, and your all set.

[ringring]

Originally Posted by JesNC

So because the game doesn't supply mechanics and an incentive to strategic gameplay atm we should simply abolish anything that could eventually be leveraged to accomplish this and instead turn PS2 into a true TDM meatgrinder/cert farm?

Way to go PSU!

No need to get annoyed at PSU, it was me and all I did was voice an opinion.

BTW I've also voiced an opinion on how tank spam should be countered..

In short
1. Resources don't do the job intended and have perserve effects, ie farming.
2. Tanks are too prevalent within the in-base fights but not the fight outside bases.
3. The game is overly complex and if you recall PS1 was essentially simple and the complexity such that there was was added by players.

[igster]

There are three systems in the game for limiting access to vehicles and in particular MBTs.

1) Timer
2) Linked Tech Plant benefits (doesn't apply at the WG)
3) Resource Cost

The Resource Cost is probably the one that is most broken since it does lead to forcing people off a continent. Most of the time, resources don't mean anything unless you are warpgated. Being warpgated at the minute means that you will generally be forced to footzerg against MBTs or move to another continent.. i.e. push you away from a fight and towards a ghost cap.

The timers are fairly severe in this game and are quite enough to limit the spam of tanks and aircraft.

Don't make players hang around doing stuff they don't want to do in order to let them build up enough resources - it just pisses off the casual player. This comes from experience of really good friends and long time planetside players giving up the game because of the having to log on to wait for resource ticks to play the game they want to play.

Timers and benefits are more than enough to limit spam.

[Sturmhardt]

Originally Posted by phungus

Resources are an important aspect of planetside 2.

I laughed