You have me swaying back & forth on how I feel about these changes. You make some pretty awesome/valid points here. The concern I have w/ "specialization" is that it is going to create even larger barriers for newer players to venture out of the InfantrySide mindset.
I don't think balancing will be too difficult. We already have an idea of how items of the same type compare to each other, and with similar tick rates on each resource, you can sort of extend that to how much vehicles / infantry resources are worth compared to each other. Even if it takes a couple changes it'll be worth it. To be fair, that's how it is without this change. Resources are far too spam-able, particularly for large groups, and the only response is to spam in return. Hopefully, this limit should make decisions / tactics more meaningful.
Acquisition timers unfairly punished new players, as they tended to hit timer problems before resources. Won't make any difference to older players, except we get our certs back. This was probably the single biggest hurdle in learning to use any vehicle, particularly aircraft, as people die/crash within a minute or so and can't continue practicing for another ~15 mins. It made absolutely no sense to limit force multipliers in 2 separate ways. It's an excellent change. Why is it a good thing for gameplay when players can spam 40 mines, or 40 C4 etc. in a short space of time, without caring about resource income (any income is just a bonus) and strategic situation (territory getting cut off)? Don't think of it as getting less, think of it as making things the way they should have been from the start.
I guess I'm not going to be pulling air vehicles anymore. It's not like I pull them all that often as it is right now, but with them costing their own separate resource, I don't mind pulling one and getting destroyed immediately afterwards. I'll pull a Scythe or a Liberator when I'm low on mechanized or infantry resources or when I feel like those 750 aerospace resources are just burning a hole in my pocket. It doesn't matter to me if I end up wasting those aerospace resources since I can still turn around and pull a tank. I suppose that's part of the point, though. If you're careless in a Liberator you can't just go and pull a MBT. Players will have to be careful in any vehicle they pull, particularly the expensive ones, since it affects your ability to pull any vehicle, not just another vehicle of the same type. However, that will mean, like I said earlier, that I'm just not going to pull an air vehicle. I suck at flying and haven't had much drive to become better. Therefore, I'm not going to waste my only type of resource on a vehicle I know I suck at. I'm only going to use the vehicles I know I can use to get the most out of my resources. At least on live right now I can pull a Liberator and fly into a tree or get owned by an ESF skygod less than a minute later and just shrug it off. I'm kinda wishing I could get a refund on all the certs I've spent on the Scythe and Liberator. Oh well.
Increasing strategy is one of the main goals of the Resource Revamp, though it may not be as noticeable in the first phase. If you haven't already, I'd suggest checking out the threads in the Roadmap section: the latest July - Resource Revamp, and the archived June - Resource Revamp. The important bits: Cutting off a faction's resources should be a means to an end, I.E. to help you win a base and make progress towards capturing the continent. Right now, the system we have requires capturing multiple bases in different areas at which point you're already closer to winning the continent and the advantage comes far too late. The new system will, eventually, allow players to target individual bases through blockades and ambushes. This is totally new strategic gameplay, turning vehicles into mobile objectives and giving them a way to truly impact the battles other than spawn room camping. Also, reducing vehicle spam from zergs is going to make a huge difference to the quality of fights. Even though we're not getting the resource carrying and manual refill mechanics right away I'll be happy to make do with this in the meantime. As for variety, this system provides more consistent resource income that places more focus on moment to moment decisions. If you want to mix up your play style you still can -> spending 10 minutes as infantry, 10 minutes as armor, 10 minutes as aircraft is the same as 30 minutes as armor, or 20 as infantry and 10 as aircraft etc. Specializing is treated the same as diversifying. The fights will still be combined arms. Under the old system if you spent any time with maxed resources on one of your pools you were wasting them. This led to players using vehicles as throwaway bonuses and rotating their resource use so they never ran out, despite being so careless. It didn't simply encourage players to play everything, it punished you for not doing so. In an environment where everyone else does it, if you don't you're simply being less effective. Yeah, we'll have to wait for the other phases, but these sorts of major changes take time. The point is the RR is set to vastly improve gameplay and add more strategy than any other change we've seen so far.
I agree that the PS2 Devs are a little to liberal when it comes to "bare w/ us, this is only the first phase" mentality. I realize that there is a lot of pressure for them to constantly churning out content & it must be incredibly difficult to make changes to something as game-critical as resource management. After all this is the Test Server & this where 75% completed development projects go for refinement & feedback. However (in my opinion,) I feel that we don't usually see that last 25% & things go live incomplete, even for an initial phase. Below are some 75% completed Phase 1 projects I think could use some work: Resources- Issue: Concept of nanites is fine, but removing any strategic value of holding territories takes another Meta element away from the game. Possible Solution: Incorporate lattice system so that there is a benefit to being connected to the warp gate & a penalty for being cut off from friendly hexes. Tanks- Issue: You nerfed the tanks to reduce Vehicle to Infantry spam & force tanks to "get closer to the battle" but neglected to offer any advantages. What cautions tank driver is now going to say "I want to take my now crappier tank, closer to a battle I was originally afraid to get close too" Possible Solution: Continue to tweek the roles of all 3 MBT's main guns & adjust TR & NC anti infantry weapons to better match the PPA before going live. Air- Issue: You over powered the Liberators armor & weapons in their first round of updates, then decided to reverse all those changes & reduce the weapons even further rendering them generally useless. Possible solution: Less drastic shift's from one extreme to another. Try only nerfing either it's offensive or defensive capability. If something requires such a ridiculous change, it likely went live w/o enough testing. InfantrySide- Issue: PS2's niche is huge battles w/ combined arms. Recent shift seems to favor Infantry Zergs. This will create even larger blobs of people fighting at more concentrated locations. Possible Solution: If your going for core gameplay based on Infantry combat, hit detection & additional optimizations specifically targeting frame-rates in huge battles would likely make the game more attractive to your Zerg population w/ mediocre PCs.
These changes are good. The rocket and Tank changes are really bad, and the whole community agreed that they are negative and unwanted.
As long as a player can last 5 minutes, they will never have to leave a vehicle or max. Infantry will have less resources to fight vehicles and maxes. This update is catering to the vehicle zerg. Vehicles and MAXes need an acquisition timer when the vehicle/max is destroyed. It would be nice to go 5 mins without seeing the same champion pull another ESF, tank, or MAX. Also this acquisition timer should be entertaining so the said operator will have something to watch while waiting in the spawn room before their advantage is ready for deployment.
Thank you, sir. Well, I can tell you the cert barriers will be lower due to no more timers Discouraging spreading out ones resources, discouraging versatility, might make some focus their resources on infantry, true, but switching up once one has enough certs invested into, say, a tank, doesn't seem like such a leap to me. The incentive to specialize comes with the fact that one will be able to focus their resource pool into one thing, the drive to improve ones skill in that area of interest will go up, and while not being able to use other things, will be able to use the chosen thing more often than with the system we use now, which in later phases will be subject to strategic denial.
This is how it already was for longer term players that have all the acquisition timers unlocked and survived for a little while. Except that not only can they keep pulling the same vehicle, say a tank, but if they swap to another resource type for a moment then they can treat it as a throwaway because killing them had 0 effect on their air resource and infantry resource pools. The only people that timers ever limited were new players - the part of the population that dies quickly while they try to learn how to play. Limiting players through 2 methods is pointless. Resources treat players equally, so they're the best to pick. Also, the case of someone pulling a vehicle over and over assumes they have a decent resource rate. If you're part of a "vehicle zerg", or any zerg, you're going to get less resources than a smaller group of players, so you'll have to stay alive a lot longer. Evening out fights by limiting zergs, making them very vulnerable to attrition, and giving smaller forces the most access to force multipliers is one of the best parts of this system! Right now, it doesn't matter how many are in the fight as resource income is individual, so if you want 48 aircraft or tanks you can have them.
Remove the bloody membership == more resources thing. That is 100% "My money gives me an advantage no one else can have" if there is no other way for people to generate resources than the timer. I didn't really like it before, and there's no reason to continue it. Otherwise, a decentish Phase 1. I dunno if it's enough on its own to make me start playing more frequently again, but it definitely helps.
I got almost 10,000 certs returned to me .... off PTS... I can't wait for this... on live. I will be able to just about max out everything. You don't want to be hording certs when this goes live you might loose them if it goes over 10,000 ....
No, you can go over 10k certs if it's from a grant/refund. You can't earn certs when you have 10k or more. So if you have 10k+ certs after the grant, then you will not EARN any certs until you drop back below 10k... forcing you to spend down to get under the cap. I was WAAAY over the 10k limit for the X-Faction unlock cert grant and had to dump certs all over the place. Made some bad choices
Hmm... still no word on better control customization........ One can still hope.. even though it's been YEARS.
