Balancing Factor: Resource Storage Limit

[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.

[Xyntech]

Originally Posted by Malorn

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?

By what definition? They aren't AS good, but they are still better than nothing.

A quarter isn't as valuable as a dollar, but I doubt you would find a lot of people who would say no to a .25 cent raise.

You bother to have them so that you can still have a reward for those who spend a little less often.

Originally Posted by Malorn

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.

Reward is the means, which makes it the whole point. The "end" goal is that they want all of the territory to be valuable, and also that they want some way to control the number of things like tanks and aircraft ans MAXes that are pulled. The way they go about achieving that goal is to reward players with resources for holding those territories and offering cool things for the players to buy with those resources.

The original goal may not have been to have a reward system, but a reward system is how they are achieving those original goals.

By your own admission, the system rewards players to motivate them. Kinda hard to use it to motivate them if they aren't being rewarded, no? Obviously not all players want or need a reward system to motivate them, but that doesn't mean a reward system shouldn't still be ever present trying to do it's job.

Originally Posted by Malorn

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.

You seem to be under the impression that the resource cap will be so low that one side won't be able to get x piece of equipment pretty much the moment the enemy takes control of that resource from you, similar to how you could no longer pull an MBT the moment your tech plant was capped in PS1.

Considering that the devs have suggested having an offline resource collection as a perk for subscribers, I highly doubt the cap will be too low, soft or hard.

Now we don't know how things like orbital strikes will be balanced, like whether they will require multiple types of resource, but let's just keep it simple with a single resource type.

Soft cap starts at 100 and ends at 150. Orbital strike costs 100. Nobody can ever fire off 2 in a row, but a person at 145 can fire off a second one a lot quicker than someone at 100.

Tanks cost 40. Someone who keeps spending all of their resources the moment they get them will have a harder time if they need to pull a lot of tanks in a row to push back an enemy assault, but someone who has been saving their resources up to 120 can pull 3 tanks in a row the instant they respawn, potentially being a large factor in helping turn the tide of a battle.

We can also look at it from the point of view of resource denial, as you have mentioned. As far as we know, losing control of a resource won't instantly get rid of any you have banked, or start trickling it away, it just means you don't get any more until you take the resource back. What this means is that, again, the player who has saved some up will be in a significantly stronger position than the player who has spent it all the moment they earned it.

With a hard cap, everyone has up to 100, meaning that if you had it maxed out, you can pull 2 tanks and that's it. With a soft cap, you could potentially pull 3 tanks, at the cost of having not earned resources as quickly while you were saving up.

A cap of some kind, hard or soft, is needed to keep from having players with millions of a resource where they can pull whatever they want no matter what territory they hold. Comparing a soft cap to no cap is just insane. You claim to know what a soft cap is, and I'm sure you do, but it's hard to take you seriously when you make such comparisons.

No doubt a soft cap would be different than a hard cap, both for better and for worse, but I believe the good would outweigh the bad. The bad being that it would take a small amount of extra consideration when balancing how much things like orbital strikes cost and potentially confusing a player or two who isn't very smart but tries to think about it too hard. The good being that those who spend resources quickly and freely would be rewarded in their own way while those who saved up resources would also be rewarded in their own way, as opposed to only rewarding those who flippantly spent what they had because "fuck it, I'm near the cap anyways, may as well go for a joyride in a tank" while ignoring those who see that they could potentially lose access to a resource soon and decide to save a little extra for a rainy day.

It's not even that big a deal to me, but I think it would be an improvement over a hard cap. Both would be balanced, but a soft cap would allow for more variety and just generally be smoother. Less rigid, still balanced.

Just don't be so flippantly dismissive of an idea you don't agree with. No doubt there is room for debate between having a soft or hard cap, but it's not like either idea is without merit, or that either kind of cap are even in the same ballpark as having no cap.

I'd ask that you lay forth what advantages a hard cap would have over the type of soft cap I have suggested. I believe I have done as good a job at laying out the advantages of a soft cap as I can, but I see little advantage to hard caps myself. Maybe you can make a better case for them that I haven't thought of.

"It isn't needed" or "what problem does this solve?" don't count as valid arguments for a hard cap either.

[Malorn]

Fulfilling one intent at the expense of the others isn't success.

Having a cap on resources doesn't make the reward worthless. Players adapt and change spending habits so that the cap isn't an issue.