[Malorn]

From the PS 2 announcement

Originally Posted by Matt Higby

Resources are going to be used throughout Planetside 2 for a variety of different things, such as upgrading your weapons, attaching new weapons to your vehicles, or even short-cutting different skills on the certification tree.

This was also from the Public Panel Video

Originally Posted by Matt Higby

As you go and capture these pieces your empire is then gaining resources at an increased rate, gaining specific resources. And those resources can be used for things like upgrading your weapons, upgrading your vehicles, training skills on the certification tree. There is a huge level of interactivity between resources, character advancement, and the core gameplay.

This little bit about cert tree short-cutting caught my eye. The key difference is that most of the things listed for resources are short-term benefits, while the skill tree one appears to be a permanent benefit. Anything that is a long-term benefit would be preferred since it is something that will always help you as opposed to something that will only help you in the short term. Its like having cash now or having cash in the bank earning interest. The interest-earning cash will pay off a lot more in the long run. My immediate concern with the short-cutting comment was that people would just not upgrade weapons or vehicles so they can speed up their cert tree training. If the players can 'make do' with the sub-par weapons then they'll do so for more character advancement. Sort of like playing a few rounds with an MP5 and scavenging weapons while building up your cash flow. Only then the player wouldn't spend that cash flow on better weapons, they'd spend it on permanent skill-ups. If that is spread out across the playerbase you could see a lot of folks not using upgrades all that much in favor of permanent benefits, or preferring other people to buy the upgrades rather than them so they can spend their resources on skill-ups.

However, to caveat this Matt did not say that the short-cutting was permanent, and it could be that resources used on cert tree training are temporary, sort of like a "try before you buy" thing, or a way for a player to fill a much-needed role in a pinch. You could also use it to try out certs you might be uncertain of before you set them in your skill queue. For example I might be interested in trying out a specific piece of gear unlocked deeper in the infiltrator tree, or trying out a specific tank upgrade. I could spend resources to unlock that for a time and try it out and see if that's where I want to put my cert advancement.

But that's just speculation. It could go either way, though I worry that permanent skill tree benefits would trend players toward not buying other things with their resources. I like the idea of temporary cert tree advancement to try out stuff or fill a role/get an important piece of gear on short notice.


Discuss!


And just for some context the way I expect the resource system to work is sort of like Counter-Strike buying only instead of money its a few different currency types (lets say steel and cloth). Body Armor might take 100 units of steel and 50 units of cloth. A gun upgrade might just take 100 steel, or much more of other resources. And like Counter-strike the upgrades are temporary - if you die you lose them and have to re-buy. And also like counter-strike there would be a maximum on the amount of resources your character could have. The max is important to encourage people to use them and not just hoard them. You just need a reasonable buffer to be able to buy most of what you want most of the time, and your performance on the battlefield augments that. Die a lot and you'll spend more re-buying, etc.