Improvement: (video)Fight to Gain Technology, not resources.

wave · 2013-03-03, 11:25 PM

Here is a somewhat long (25 min) video that I put together on how I feel the PS2 resource system can be changed for the better. It does not stray too far from the current system, is simple to understand and imho would be a much more interesting and meaningful system than the current one. Sorry if I ramble on at bits...

I would love to hear your feedback.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=a3sresXsqCQ

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Rothnang · 2013-03-04, 01:42 AM

Yeaaaa.... no. Sorry.

There is a lot of stuff just really wrong with this idea.

It screws people who like vehicles even worse than the current system does when you start losing territory. Being locked out of the weapons you payed for, in some cases with real life money, is absolutely unacceptable.

It would make the snowball effect that makes people give up the fight even worse when they can't spawn anything anymore and have to try to retake the map with a flash or an unarmed ESF.

Tying the resources for unit pulls to your XP gain encourages people to play for XP over objectives even more. This doesn't reward good players that sacrifice going for top XP to help their team, it rewards farmers.

I honestly don't see any real redeeming qualities to this. It takes all the worst things about Planetside and makes them worse. Less fun for vehicle players, more snowballing, more farming. I don't see the good in this.

I feel bad saying this because you obviously put a lot of effort into explaining it. It does make controlling territory more important, but in all the worst ways. People aren't rewarded for holding territory by this, they are punished for not holding territory, and are held back from playing the way they want. That variety of play styles should be something the game always capitalizes on, not something it holds hostage until you own enough land.

wave · 2013-03-04, 06:43 PM

Originally Posted by Rothnang

Yeaaaa.... no. Sorry.

There is a lot of stuff just really wrong with this idea.

It screws people who like vehicles even worse than the current system does when you start losing territory. Being locked out of the weapons you payed for, in some cases with real life money, is absolutely unacceptable.

It would make the snowball effect that makes people give up the fight even worse when they can't spawn anything anymore and have to try to retake the map with a flash or an unarmed ESF.

Tying the resources for unit pulls to your XP gain encourages people to play for XP over objectives even more. This doesn't reward good players that sacrifice going for top XP to help their team, it rewards farmers.

I honestly don't see any real redeeming qualities to this. It takes all the worst things about Planetside and makes them worse. Less fun for vehicle players, more snowballing, more farming. I don't see the good in this.

I feel bad saying this because you obviously put a lot of effort into explaining it. It does make controlling territory more important, but in all the worst ways. People aren't rewarded for holding territory by this, they are punished for not holding territory, and are held back from playing the way they want. That variety of play styles should be something the game always capitalizes on, not something it holds hostage until you own enough land.

Hey some good points here and I suppose some of your concerns would have been allayed if I had gotten into scenarios and into more details of the system. That would have required a lot more time in the video and it is long enough as it is.

When you say being locked out of vehicles and weapons that you have payed for you realize that it happens in the game today right? Right now when you lose a tech plant you lose the ability to have MBTs and all associated weapons that you may have purchased for it. It seems to me that not so many people are complaining about not being able to have MBTs at all times. It also points out that everyone knows that tech plants in the current game are very important and therefore worth defending. Factions religiously defend the Tech plant on Esamir. My system just reinforces the fact that all bases are worth defending instead of just one.

As for the snowball effect, I can certainly see what you are trying to point out. For example in my system maybe the air tech level would fall to a point where pilots would not even bother trying to fly and would just leave the continent. I tried to make the system fair enough that the tech level would have to fall to a very low level before people would just give up. But this goes back to the fight over Esamir or even on any other Continent in game today. Factions lose their tech plant all the time and you do not see people giving up because MBTs are not available. I think you are worrying too much about how people will react. I think people will react the same way they do now, when you lose a tech plant, you try hard to get it back so you can get the vehicles you want.

As for trying to retake a map with flashes and ESFs without weapons, I could have explained this more thoroughly. This system works with the planned roadmap enhancements sony is implementing. Most importantly in this case Vehicle Zoning, and Continent Locking are going to be implemented very soon. If you have ever played PS1 you would know that to attack a locked continent requires bringing a large force of vehicles from the sanctuary because it is known that no vehicles are available on a locked continent. Also of note in PS1 is that if you do not have a tech plant on a locked continent you do not have access to MBTs or even Reavers! People bring those things from the Sanctuary as needed. In my system in PS2 as it stands today you would have to bring your high tech items from a warp gate on another continent in the same way they come from the Sancturary in PS1. Just like in PS1 you would need stategy and cooperation from within your faction to successfully create a foothold into a locked continent. It was not easy task, but could be done with enough determination. It only makes sense that locked continents should be hard to assault, it brings continuity and long lasting consequences to the game.

OK so I agree people will try to farm XP to get more Araxium currency. However people already do that in the game today but instead they are farming XP for Certs. Honestly I am not seeing a level of farming these days that is ruining the game today, do you? Most people play how they want and seem to make enough XP as it is. Future enhancements in the next few months include Player Generated Missions and Regional Empire Priority Systems that reward players with higher XP for fighting the way others want you too. Does it make the people who follow orders XP farmers? I think not. People will still play the way they want either way, they just will not be rewarded to the same extent as those who follow where the game wants them to go.
OK so maybe my idea for currency is not perfect, maybe some changes would have to be made to ensure farming techniques are discouraged and maybe some passive Araxium currency system would be needed for the players who do not generate enough XP needs to be in place. The point is that people who do more, get more, and therefor feel rewarded for their actions. Just like any other game out there tries to do.

As for not being rewarded for holding territory, I am not sure what you are trying to say. Factions defend what they need and are rewarded when the enemy is repulsed. Back to the Esamir Tech plant example, factions will defend that to the extreme to maintain their hold on MBT technology. It is meaningful and therefor worth defending.

As for being punished for losing territory, once again I am not sure how you think games should play out. Do you think you should be rewarded for losing a base and rewarded for winning a base? In the end no one would care either way....it is a win win situation. IMHO, players need to be slapped on the wrist if they lose a base, losing is LOSING. The greater the sting of loss, the greater the rush of victory is how I see it. OK, so maybe it is a very black and white way of looking at it, but it definitely gets the point across that what you are fighting for has meaning, something that is desperately missing (with the exception of tech plants) in this game as it stands. Sure they could tone down the level of what is lost when a faction loses a base, but there should be a loss, whatever it may be. My system may be the extreme of what that loss could be, but there should be a feeling of loss, and with that, a need to take back what has been lost.

My system does not grossly inhibit play styles, it just requires a bit of flexibility and understanding of where to get what you want when you want it if that makes any sense haha.

BTW I only spent 2 hours at work after having an epiphany, writing it all down, then making a lame video haha. You do not have to feel bad for crapping all over it.

Rothnang · 2013-03-05, 12:20 AM

As far as i'm concerned the "metagame" stuff in the game should not ever just flat out ruin your fun and cause you to leave a continent or log off altogether.

I think that large scale consequences in the game should be something that shifts over the course of days, if not weeks depending on how well your faction does cumulatively. Any kind of tech-bonus shouldn't be something you can quickly snap up by zerging a few facilities and then lose again an hour later. Making the effects more extreme doesn't do anything to alter the fickle nature of control rewards we currently have, it just makes dealing with them more annoying when you're on the losing end.
The Metagame ultimately should not be something you engage in to scratch a momentary itch, it's what should prompt you to think long term, and look at your factions actions as a whole.

I am completely opposed to a resource system that limits what you can pull, especially if it limits you more the worse your faction is doing. Restricting people from playing with the units they like best adds nothing to the game. What the resource system should do is simulate logistics on the battlefield, and it shouldn't convenience the winning faction or the hugest zerg, but be their Achilles heel.

wave · 2013-03-05, 08:16 PM

Man that would be really cool if they could bring all the best elements of RTS and FPS together like you are imagining but I think in this case it might be a little too much too soon.

I think the real problem here is that SOE right from beta kept on saying that things were going to change, that they are listening and understand what people want and are going to implement it "soon". This has given everyone the impression that the game is going to be exactly the way they envision it. In the end it seems that no one will ever be completely happy. Just look at the controversy the plan of implementing a hybrid hex/lattice system is generating.

Honestly though the idea that there would be a metagame system where there would be a lot of logistics just does not fit into a casual FPS. From what we have seen so far SOE has be pandering to the casual FPS fan and not really to the RTS crowd. I do not see this changing any time soon.

On another note, I really did not even consider that the system that I proposed would even be considered metagame. I always thought of metagame as what type of rewards there are for continent locking and the type of behind the scenes command infrastructure that was in place in Planetside 1. My system would certainly affect metagame, and I suppose you are right in saying that it is metagame, but it would only be a small portion of the metagame. More indepth metagame stuff could be added later.

We will have to agree to disagree on this one for now. It would be cool if you could provide a link with a system that you like for me to read.

Rothnang · 2013-03-05, 08:49 PM

I posted my own a while ago:

http://www.planetside-universe.com/s...ad.php?t=52906

I think a logistics system doesn't have to be horribly complicated. It can be pretty simple. The only time it should really come into play is when people either deliberately cut off your supplies, or if your army gets so bloated that you need to run additional logistics support to keep it in the field.

Casual players aren't badly affected by that unless they try to zerg. Fielding a giant army shouldn't be the easiest way to go, it should come with significant challenges.