After reading a little bit about the new mineral deposits and players using ANT's to mine this resource, to build structures, I think it would be very beneficial to have different types of resources and removing the Empire specific Warpgates and replacing them with intercontinental warpgates, that the factions would use to travel between continents. I think it would be a good idea to have a few different types of resources, because then we can not only distribute these various resources across a single continent, but we can make some resource more rare then others on the different continents. If this was done in conjunction with removing Empire specific warpgates and making them into intercontinental warpgates, then we would not only see fighting spread out more on each individual continent as factions use all parts of the map to drive down the different lattice lanes trying to reach the different Continental warpgates, so that they will have a better connection to a continent that has a resource they need. Intercontinental Warpgates along with different resource types, would introduce a new meta game to planetside 2. I think this would promote outfits creating convoys, which they would protect (this is something we used to see in PS1, when a base needed NTU's). If your faction or outfit needs the resource unobtainium, to build more base turrets or whatever, except it is in short supply on Indar or guarded by the enemy faction, but it is common on esamir, then we may see Outfits sending numerous ANT's reinforced with AIR and ground vehicles to escort and protect those ANTS as they travel to Esamir to the Unobtainium fields, then bring the resource back to their base on Indar. Having different types of Resources would also allow you the developers to use different recipes of different materials to make items. This would again force players to spread out to different resource nodes as well as different continents and it would also provide a means to balance or restrict these player built structures, because it will take more then just farming one resource node to get the materials you need.
Dude, slow down a little bit. I'm not exactly opposed to your idea, but..... It is over a month in the future that it will hit live. We have no Idea yet what it will actually do and how it will work - that description is pretty much everything we know and it is very vague. Let us see what they cobbled together before trying to improve on it. There might actually even be more than one resource, we simply do no know. Anyway, it has to supply enough power to be worth the effort, and be simple enough to be doable without needing a dozen people constantly assissting you. What I don't want is farming 3 units of black titanium, 2 units of adamantium, 1 alien power source and 4 freshly dropped vanu tears. At least not until I've seen something much simpler work. I also don't want to farm resources for 30 minutes so I can construct one or two turrets that get destroyed by random HAs with dumbfires in the first 5 minutes.
I agree it is very early and this is exactly the time we should be putting these ideas forward. If as you say it is going to hit live in 1 month, then it is probably a lot further along then you think and if they are only talking about 1 resource, then I think there will only be one resource and that would be a waste IMO of rolling out a huge new game changing feature... If you and other players do not want to spend time farming these materials, then why even bother adding them. If it only takes a few minutes to run out to the single resource, grab the materials and construct your turrets, then what is the point? If it isn't a challenge and has some substance to it, then it is just going to be an annoying aspect of the game. If the resource system has some depth, meaning players will need to spend some time and effort both to acquire the materials and protect them, then it will be fun, if it is easy then it will be annoying. What I would like to see is each continent have 4-6 different resources, in varying quantities, so while Element X may have 6 Deposits on Indar, it only has 1 or 2 on the other continents. Therefore this will create a demand for this material on every continent except Indar, which will drive people to either Fight over the limited deposits on Esamir, Hossin & Amerish or utilize the continental Warpgates to travel to Indar to bring that material to another continent. Biggest issue I see with this type of resource system is the Alert system causing players to flood to a continent and thus pop-locking it, but even then that just means those limited resource nodes would be even more valuable and fought over. People from day one have always asked " What are we fighting for?" I think the introduction of a strong multi-resource system that impacts game play would be a great meta-aspect that this game has been missing from day one.
