So, the proposed resource cost price increases don't seem to be going down all that well on ye olde forumside. I've yet to see a good figure based discussion on this though, so here we are. The Price Hikes: Old Costs - New Costs Flash: 25-150 Sunderer: 400 - 400 Lightning: 200 - 400 Main Battle Tanks 250 - 450 ESF's: 200 - 250 Liberator: 300 - 350 Galaxy: 350 - 350 Harasser: 200 - 400 MAX: 100 - 350 So there's a few big changes (combat vehicles), and a few smaller ones (air), and a few stay the same (support). In justification Higby has said currently the spend rate is 1/4 the earn rate, so there are a lot of resource capped players. And the majority do not concern themselves with the resource mechanic at all (excepting infantry ones cos you can stockpile them). So the resource system is almost completely ineffectual. So with the basic info down, I'd first like to theorize what the goals of the resource system are: 1) Stop vehicle spam 2) Create more strategic options 3) Facilitate continent capture And to expand on these somewhat. 1) Cooldown timers address this to a degree, but in a different and more simplistic way by just delaying pulling the same type of vehicle. Resources mean you can't just pull and waste three different types before hitting the cooldown timer. Vehicle spam is an issue because they are a force multiplier, while infantry can kill a tank easily if they are sneaky, tankers have higher K/Ds because their tank is a force multiplier and more effective at killing infantry than infantry are at killing tanks. 2) Fighting on specific territorys gives you resource of that type. Holding specific territories gives you resource of a certain type. Holding continents give discounts of a certain type. Currently these factors don't seem to affect overall strategy at all, due to how cheap all the vehicles are. More expensive vehicles means these thing offer more strategic benefit. 3) This may sound like a bad thing, surely lower territory holders should be given a boost right? Well, cont locking is coming, and with the dominating faction having to fight 2 enemies for those final territories is going to be quite difficult. I think it is fair to give them a resource benefit for owning the vast majority of the continent so they have more of a chance when taking on two foes. thus allowing the fight to move around the continental lattice instead of stagnating on indar again. So lets look at income, on everyones favorite continent, Indar; and the resource type of mechanized, as it gets the biggest price hike. Now there's two types of resource income, passive, and active. Passive resources come from territories held on the continent you are currently on, ticking in every 5 minutes. Active gives you one resource point for every 25xp, which type of resource is the same as the passive resource type granted by the territory you are currently fighting in. Indar has a total of 212 (or thereabouts depending on my addition) mechanized resources. So take the equal control situation, and you get 70 every 5 minutes, or 14 per minute. So it takes 32 minutes to get enough for a tank, seems a bit long right? Well, by itself it is; that's where active gain comes in. Say 10kxp per hour as an unboosted average resource gain, that gives 400 resource points or 7 per minute, now that next tank is only 21 minutes away. However, 10kxp may be on the low side. Lets look at the kills, 100xp per kill, or 4 resource points, other tanks are 20 points each. But what if you just have one bad or suicide run, how long does it take to get that 150 resources to pull another one. Well time alone would be just over 10 minutes, or 8 tank kills (probably not a bad run), or 38 infantry (also probably not a bad run). In any case, the minimum cooldown timer is 5 minutes, so a combination of the above may actually get pretty close to that. However, I suspect most who make use of a max rank cooldown timer will be boosted, which smells a little like P2W tbh. But MBTs are two people tanks, and are much more effective when used as such. Having both the driver and gunner alternately pulling tanks will halve the delay based on a lack of resources. Basically what I think this means is tankers that keep their vehicles alive for a while, and prioritize fighting on vehicle tiles when resources are low, will be largely unaffected by the changes. Those who do not use their tanks effectively, namely the tank spammers, will find themselves unable to pull more tanks; thus fulfilling goal #1 but not at the expense of the proficient tanker's game. Those who don't play the map might also find themselves out of resources quicker; thus fulfilling goal #2. A faction pressed back to their warpgate will lose most of their passive gains, and be more vulnerable due to a lack of force multipliers; thus fulfilling goal #3. TLDR? What may appear to be a heavy handed overall tank nerf, is in my opinion likely to prevent only Tank Spam, while encouraging strategy, and effective tank utilization. The arguments come down to what is an acceptable level of tank spam, as outlined above, the resource balance is pretty simply to work out the income under what situations you will get, and thus how long between tank pulls, therefore what level of tank spam there will potentially be. It won't be a clear 'sky is falling all tanks are rubbish now', but a graduation of how many and at what level of not so good tankers will have to leg it more often while the good ones keep tanking. Finally, if you disagree with the changes and on principal think tank spamming is a good thing, and that bads always having a tank available so they can get to be a good tanker is a good thing (which you can't have without spam), then yes, the figures back up your side. But in such cases its really the whole concept of the resource system and cooldown timers you disagree with, rather than a price balance which actually makes them effective.
Attempting to re-create the certification system in Planetside 1 by using Resources is absurd. Period. That said, increasing the costs of combat effective vehicles would slow the 'spam' down... A little...... 2000 people man. The cooldowns + the new system does not offer much difference. Tanks will still be there.
This is a long post if you don't like reading skip to my bullet points at the end Overview The new resource costs planned for GU011 are proving quite controversial for alot of members here. I don't think personally SOE are wrong to be reassessing the cost associated with pulling vehicles because at the moment there is an ease at which you can endlessly pull whatever you want. What is also correct is what Higby said in his reddit post, "That resources don't mean all that much because they are too easy to obtain". This is completely correct, the average player won't run into a situation where they can't pull a certain vehicle because they are out of resources. I never personally find it an issue. Fact is they have the figures and they know this to be true. Now what they have done is imo half right, they have increased the values to all vehicles to better represent their value. This will in turn make it more important for you to fight over control of particular resources. A mechanized focused outfit will want to and need to control territory that grants them that income. And this change to value may make them more important. Hex better than Lattice for what Higby's comments suggest they want A big problem with this though is the lattice. On a hex system you could tactically decide to go attack certain regions because of what they give to you. The lattice restricts that and forces you through hoops to get there which seems at odds with Higby's comments about allowing players to fight purposefully in regions that grant you a bonus to a certain kind of resource because you couldn't take it over or force a fight there. Dynamic Vehicle Resource Value Another issue is that it is a base cost to pull any kind of vehicle. My proposal is to make resource cost dependent upon what the vehicle in question is equipped with and allow players to decide what they want or even if they can afford to take a certain set up. The Flash as a prime example is a very steep price at 150 considering a lot of people use it purely as a taxi, I know I use that particular vehicle for that purpose and taking that away from people is only going to add frustration. It doesn't fix the issue. i don't think Flash spam is something I have ever seen complained about on these forums. I suggest keeping the base Flash at a value of 25 and adding a cost to the various things you equip it with obviously these values I'm giving can be tweaked to better suit their usefulness and power but these are just examples Example: Flash Buggy: 25 M40 Fury: 25 Scout Radar: 25 Mine Guard: 10 Surger Power Chassis: 10 Total resource cost: 95 This allows players to tailor what they are doing based upon the given situation. Maybe they can't afford to pull a fully loaded Flash but maybe they will be willing to lose the Chassis. It gives the player more strategic decisions to make and gives the player more interactivity and power, which is never a bad thing to give a player. This can be applied to all vehicles where a cost is added to everything. Cert Tree for Vehicle Specialized Outfits and/or solo players One thing this system can't do is penalize players that like to play a certain way. Preventing players from playing in the way they find most fun will only give them cause to grow frustrated and leave and that is the last thing a business or the player base needs. Having them fight for those resources is one way to make fights happens and is a good direction. However much like the acquisition timer players will imo with this system need another tree that can help to overall reduce the cost. I'm not talking a huge amount but noticeable enough that players that specialize aren't left out in the cold. Other players that play infantry, air and tanks won't notice so much as they switch freely to what ever takes their fancy or suits the situation. They therefore would be unlikely to spend hard earned certs into the trees I am suggesting as it wouldn't give them visible results. I would instead suggest that much like the acquisition tree there be 10 ranks each decreasing resource cost by 2% so the top rank is 20% with a cost similar to the acquisition tree where the last rank is 1000 certs. So say a MBT were to in my new system cost 600 resources when fully kitted out, well this could be reduced to 480. If vehicles are to cost this much they need to be tougher As it stands a MBT can be destroyed with 2 C4, this will be completely unbalanced when you take into consideration the new cost to pull these vehicles. Either tanks need an overall buff to armor or C4 needs to reduced in power. It should still be able to decimate a group of clustered soldiers but shouldn't make an air walking LA God Summary - Dynamic resource cost system that takes into effect what any given vehicle is equipped with - A Hex system will better suit a game where resource giving territories are more of a focus for certain groups of players - Cert tree for resource cost m thee acquisition timer tree. Only specialized players will heavily cert into this and mos others may only grab the first couple ranks if that. It will prevent players being left completely out in the cold - Vehicles need to be better protected against C4 if cost is too be so high Thanks for your time if you managed to reads it all, I know I waffled on
The new Flash costs are plain daft (especially considering the small ESF rise). I like the idea of Dynamic costs for it (above) though. I think MAX costs are too high as well, whilst I'm not against a rise, I think 100 to 350 is far too much, more like 200 should do (infantry resources disapear quickly enough in any large fight as it is).
A lot of good points in there. Fully agree on dynamic costs. Hex would suit better in this regard, but would be a step back in terms of battle flow. Perhaps some reassigning of resources dependent on lattice lanes rather than blobs around tech plants and warp gates. yeh I see no problem with this either, so similar to the aquisiation timer. Don't agree on this one, I think its up to the driver/gunner or other supporting infantry to make sure the C4 doesn't get there. Pods could use a nerf though, I'd say some sort of heat distortion making it really hard to spot tanks on the drop down or something. Because apart from pods, all other infantry approaches can be countered by good positioning and situational awareness.
I am genuinely surprised at the new flash cost. Supposed to be an inexpensive disposable form of travel, now it's almost the cost of an old lightning? uwotm8?
You can thank the Fury Wraith and C4 suicide Wraith drivers for that. I think most of these increase in resource costs are more of a server wide test to see what can be done to encourage less and more strategic/tactical play of vehicles and more infantry centered game play. I doubt some of these increases will be permanent.
IMHO the Lightning, Harrasser and MAX should be cheaper, like 300 maximal. And the Flash should not cost more than 100. But i agree, a dynamic resource cost of the vehicle would be the ideal solution. Give people the chance to spec and specialize on one vehicle with reduced resource costs (cert tree that could be quiet expensive).
I'm all in favour of increasing vehicle costs. In its current state I hardly every run out of resources, and vehicle timers are not really a problem as I have maxed out the cool down on stuff I regularly use. Flash for example, I usually use radar, stealth and the fury.... can spawn these constantly - I have no cool down and it costs 25 resources. Unless I am warp gated the flash is to all intents and purposes a free vehicle. That means that as long as my team has control of a vehicle spawn I can always have a radar flash up. I really like peoples idea of costing a vehicle depending on its equipment, but that would take a lot of work and a lot of balancing. Seems like they have made a good start and can always tune the resource costs based on their data.
I think that is one of the main things to remember. The resource system revamp is scheduled for september iirc; only makes sense that they would want to make that system actually come into play before then so as to get some ideas how to balance/revamp it.
