Originally Posted by Malorn
How does it solve that problem? All it does is expand the potential resource limit while retaining an "effective" resource cap. By definition things past the soft cap are not worthwhile. So why bother having them?
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By what definition? They aren't AS good, but they are still better than nothing.
A quarter isn't as valuable as a dollar, but I doubt you would find a lot of people who would say no to a .25 cent raise.
You bother to have them so that you can still have a reward for those who spend a little less often.
Originally Posted by Malorn
And the system isn't meant to reward players.
It's intended to motivate players to attacking all sorts of different types of territory and to help make all types of territory valuable. It gives reason to take a particular piece of territory. High resource cap can mean many players don't care about a particular piece of territory because they feel they have enough of it. Reward is part of the motivation, but it is the means, not the end.
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Reward is the means, which makes it the whole point. The "end" goal is that they want all of the territory to be valuable, and also that they want some way to control the number of things like tanks and aircraft ans MAXes that are pulled. The way they go about achieving that goal is to reward players with resources for holding those territories and offering cool things for the players to buy with those resources.
The original goal may not have been to have a reward system, but a reward system is how they are achieving those original goals.
By your own admission, the system rewards players to motivate them. Kinda hard to use it to motivate them if they aren't being rewarded, no? Obviously not all players want or need a reward system to motivate them, but that doesn't mean a reward system shouldn't still be ever present trying to do it's job.
Originally Posted by Malorn
It's intended to make resource denial an effective tactic. Not having a cap severely impairs this design intent, and having a high cap limits the effectiveness of resource denial. The deeper the pocket of the player the less likely they are to be impacted by shortages of a particular resource. Too large of a resource supply cap and the tactic is completely ineffective. Think of a tech plant in PS1 - no tech means vehicles severely limited and disadvantaged. Resources replace that functionality in PS1. If you lose a resource to pull a tank for an hour and it doesn't interrupt your ability to pull tanks the tactic is ineffective and the design has failed.
It's intended to provide another axis for balance - economics. Not having a cap also impacts this design intent. I gave the orbital strike example earlier. Having a higher cap lowers the effectiveness.
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You seem to be under the impression that the resource cap will be so low that one side won't be able to get x piece of equipment pretty much the moment the enemy takes control of that resource from you, similar to how you could no longer pull an MBT the moment your tech plant was capped in PS1.
Considering that the devs have suggested having an offline resource collection as a perk for subscribers, I highly doubt the cap will be too low, soft or hard.
Now we don't know how things like orbital strikes will be balanced, like whether they will require multiple types of resource, but let's just keep it simple with a single resource type.
Soft cap starts at 100 and ends at 150. Orbital strike costs 100. Nobody can ever fire off 2 in a row, but a person at 145 can fire off a second one a lot quicker than someone at 100.
Tanks cost 40. Someone who keeps spending all of their resources the moment they get them will have a harder time if they need to pull a lot of tanks in a row to push back an enemy assault, but someone who has been saving their resources up to 120 can pull 3 tanks in a row the instant they respawn, potentially being a large factor in helping turn the tide of a battle.
We can also look at it from the point of view of resource denial, as you have mentioned. As far as we know, losing control of a resource won't instantly get rid of any you have banked, or start trickling it away, it just means you don't get any more until you take the resource back. What this means is that, again, the player who has saved some up will be in a significantly stronger position than the player who has spent it all the moment they earned it.
With a hard cap, everyone has up to 100, meaning that if you had it maxed out, you can pull 2 tanks and that's it. With a soft cap, you could potentially pull 3 tanks, at the cost of having not earned resources as quickly while you were saving up.
A cap of some kind, hard or soft, is needed to keep from having players with millions of a resource where they can pull whatever they want no matter what territory they hold. Comparing a soft cap to no cap is just insane. You claim to know what a soft cap is, and I'm sure you do, but it's hard to take you seriously when you make such comparisons.
No doubt a soft cap would be different than a hard cap, both for better and for worse, but I believe the good would outweigh the bad. The bad being that it would take a small amount of extra consideration when balancing how much things like orbital strikes cost and potentially confusing a player or two who isn't very smart but tries to think about it too hard. The good being that those who spend resources quickly and freely would be rewarded in their own way while those who saved up resources would also be rewarded in their own way, as opposed to only rewarding those who flippantly spent what they had because "fuck it, I'm near the cap anyways, may as well go for a joyride in a tank" while ignoring those who see that they could potentially lose access to a resource soon and decide to save a little extra for a rainy day.
It's not even that big a deal to me, but I think it would be an improvement over a hard cap. Both would be balanced, but a soft cap would allow for more variety and just generally be smoother. Less rigid, still balanced.
Just don't be so flippantly dismissive of an idea you don't agree with. No doubt there is room for debate between having a soft or hard cap, but it's not like either idea is without merit, or that either kind of cap are even in the same ballpark as having no cap.
I'd ask that you lay forth what advantages a hard cap would have over the type of soft cap I have suggested. I believe I have done as good a job at laying out the advantages of a soft cap as I can, but I see little advantage to hard caps myself. Maybe you can make a better case for them that I haven't thought of.
"It isn't needed" or "what problem does this solve?" don't count as valid arguments for a hard cap either.