Higby's reddit post.

This was pulled off reddit.

[–]PS2 Creative Directorlas0m 72 points 3 hours ago*

First of all, as usual we appreciate all the discussion on this, seeing a lot of valid concerns. I wanted to address a couple of them.

1 - We've run the numbers too, of course. We're looking at average resource income and spend rates across multiple roles, i.e. people who play tanks primarily, those who play air primarily, those who play lots of stuff, etc. We've found that in general the resource income is about 3-4x the resource spend rate for most players, with a few exceptions. Not only that, but most of the time most players are CAPPED on aerospace and mechanized resources, including those who play those roles primarily. This is leading to resources being largely irrelevant. The only one that this isn't the case with is infantry resources, where you can spend without using, so more people manage to use those resources effectively without "wasting" their by earning while capped.

2 - The purpose with resources is to be limit the flow of force-multipliers being used, vehicles, explosives, etc. If you're upset that you can't chain pull tanks over and over every 5 minutes, I don't know what to tell ya. That's kind of the entire purpose of the resource system to limit players from doing that. It's never been the intention that tanks and aircraft are always available and you never have to "do without", however, our current tuning basically allows for that - making resources, and therefore one of our strategic drivers largely irrelevant. Did you know you actively earn resources by fighting in certain areas, in addition to the passive gain? Most people don't since resources don't really matter. If you want to get tanks faster, you can do that by fighting more in mechanized resource hexes. Mechanized resources are usually more plentiful outside of warpgates too so sunderers and MBTs, the backbones of forming a push are earned earliest. None of this matters or is important in the current meta - hopefully this tuning starts to make that gameplay surface a bit more.

3 - I know you're not saying this Roy, but just so everyone else sees it - this isn't a "Resource System Revamp" it's just a tuning pass. We still have longer term plans for more systematic adjustments to the resource game, including changes to the way you acquire and utilize resources. This tuning is an attempt to see what we can do to make resources more relevant in the current system without waiting several weeks for the new game systems to be coded and tuned. We also want to see what a more restrictive resource model feels like so we can refine the design direction for that larger change. These type of resource adjustments are fast and tiny changes to game data and are easy for us to adjust and even remove if it proves to be as bad as the doomsayers think it might be.

4 - Currently resources and XP are boosted by being under-populated. Of course hardly anyone realizes that resources are boosted since they don't matter very much right now, but they are. We are considering greatly increasing the resource side of that bonus, meaning that under-populated empires will have a lot more availability to spawn vehicles. I'm sure the first thought is "if we're zerged back to the wg we're screwed anyways so this doesn't help", and that's true and is already the case. Yes, if they're pushed back all the way to WG, this won't be as huge of a benefit, but if you're under-pop while you're being pushed back it could matter a lot. Being able to out-pull vehicles, MAXes and consumables while you're fighting to hold territory as an under-popped empire could hopefully prove to be an alleviation of the population imbalance pain that some players are feeling on a couple servers. edit: since I know someone will show up to bring up that if you're evenly popped and pushed back to WG you'd be hurting - that's true, but that's kind of the point. This is the component I'm personally least comfortable with.

Once again, the goals with this tuning is to make resources more relevant, decrease the time that players spend 'capped' on vehicle resources, limit chain pulling powerful force-multiplier vehicles such as MBTs, and, ideally, to allow under-popped empires to leverage force multipliers at a higher rate than their over-populated rivals while actively contesting territory.

At any rate, I'll take the concerns to the team, and we'll continue to discuss. I agree there are some big issues to watch carefully with this type of change.

The good news is it's a very simple change to implement, iterate and even to revert if needed. Like so much in Planetside 2, "TheorySiding" and mathematical models only get us so far (both ours and yours), it's really impossible to accurately predict the actual results until we can see it played by real players in real situations.




I like that part that says this is not the vehicle revamp, that is still to come.

I missed the Patch that made Vehicles Force-Multipliers.
BRB, downloading it.

He probably means the 1 out of 50 people that know how to keep them alive by staying far away from any threat and use them as artillery instead of what they're suppose to be.

People are far too careless with their MBT's and attack aircraft. They drive them right into range of enemy zergs and cry when half a dozen lock-on rockets come zooming in on them. They are supposed to be used with finesse and tactical awareness; something that 90% of players lack.

You mean "resource" revamp, not vehicle, right?

Sounds reasonable. I do wish they put the actual resource revamp in first though, or at least put this on PTS and had a focus test.

As long as your not Vanu aye higby. After all Vanu cant play unless its over powered......

They've been reduced to force multipliers, rather than an actual playstyle. As of right now you have to basically use them as glass cannon artillery that is terrified of any given infantryman.

Utter nonsense. At the moment infantry have so many tools that they often win in open field combat. Between ESRL's, lock on's and AV turrets for ranged combat. And then C4 / AT mines for close combat. It took a zerg of tanks to accomplish anything. A handful would die in seconds.

I.E Making life even more ridiculously miserable for people who don't pay for subscriptions...while disregarding the 300 bucks you already spent on this game...not paying the 9 bucks a month? Go sit in the corner and wait for your resources peasant!

This is SOE's way of ignoring the problems with the metagame by just introducing artificial delays and stand around and scratch your *** time before you can do something useful.

And he's talking about changing the way they're acquired? Oh boy...that's just what everyone here wants...to have to grind for resources.

I am not sure if using your MBT like Artillery, exactly what Jkar is saying, is the way a MBT should be used.
Of course, most of the Players dont know how to use them properly, but the same Players have no Problems grabbing an AV Turret, MAX AV Weapon or Lock-On Launcher to destroy Vehicles with ease.
Using AV Weapons properly makes you as strong as someone that uses a MBT proberly.
No need for Vehicles at all.

blah blah blah, really they just want the resource buff on their subscription be mean something and resource boosts in their cash shop to sell.

If they really cared about balance they would fix a lot of issues and make warping vehicles and maxes at the warp gate possible first.

The new resource system makes all cool down cert investments pretty useless. Hmm, lets not fix that first!

This is a money grab.

Reddit

this is how SOE operates mate, plenty of people seen this coming. I canceled my account so they cant get any more money off me, because its jsut a scam. the so called 5$ SC a month for 15$ lol.... not to mention the exp an supply bonus all irrelevant. They have every intention of making the game unpleasant for those who cant or dont pay.

no tanks are made for breaking enemy defenses, leading the charge in front lines, protecting high priority targets and or killing them

not sitting in the back waiting for the next LA to jump out of a tower

You are correct that people are careless. However enemy infantry AV and AA range may as well be infinite. You can't even reliable counter attack it with infantry snipers since the range is so extreme on AV and AA.

Also I suspect some areas will be damn near impossible to capture now with a little bit of defense. It will bring the offensive to a jarring halt and pushed back. Then hands switch and before you know it both sides are out of resources and we have a foot zerg on our hands.

That's my favorite.

Bro, do you even planetside?

o and if you are very good with velocity and height calculations you can hit mostly anything from a eng on a hill with his AV or a plane hitting you, just yesterday i hit 2 mosquito out of the air back to back when driving up a hill wish i could have got that on video

Ya, can't edit though...

These changes are awesome. Now it will be viable strategy to slowly bleed enemy out of resources and then steamroll them with vehicles of your own. I can see this being applied in Alerts.

And vehicles definitely should be lot more scarcer than they are now. Then they can be buffed in next tuning pass.

It will interesting to see how these changes will interact with upcoming shield domes on Esamir.

i support these changes. apart from the flash cost.. too damn high imo. flash+fury is rare and easy to deal with if u are an average player.

people complaining: play some infantry for a change ye? maybe now there will be less players ramming each other with esfs/libs/gals/etc.

Right now, vehicles definitely don't have the survivability to justify being made that much rarer. Implementing this change without addressing infantry vs. vehicles balance will create more problems than it would solve.