Summary of Quinn Duffy's Q&A

I sincerely doubt it will shift to the physical terrain - in DoW II, where the capture points mattered much less (no high or medium points, no cutoffs) it just shifted to the VPs. Letting people customize their natural points opens up new strategies in that it lets them get their resources from a safe base that can't be harassed rather than from the field where they have to fight for it. What made DoW/CoH innovative in the first place is that they moved resource collection out of the bases and onto the field so that exciting fights happened in the middle ground instead of skirmishes at the resource lines. We'll still get those, but they will be clusterfucks around the VP, if DoW 2 has taught us anything. Teching will be more like Starcraft where players come in with a build order because they can know (even more than SC2!) that their res won't get harassed.

DoW2 had such an extreme focus on the VP's because the tick down rate was SIGNIFICANTLY faster than in CoH. As for capture points mattering less, that's not really true. (But that's irrelevant to the topic at hand)

As for why I feel the terrain will matter more, it comes down to a few things. I'll preface this by saying that I did not play in the Alpha, so I'm purely speculating on how these mechanics work. There's a lot of new mechanics in the game with blizzards, ice rivers, truesight and heat. With maps being designed around these, physical terrain becomes more important. Since campfires will be crucial, their placement will also be important. Being able to fortify a key point on the map physically; one which may not have any crucial resources could be crucial. (Chokes in particular) Truesight presents possibilities of blindspots or ambushes, the frozen rivers present high risk/high reward alternative paths etc etc

There's more tactical considerations than ever, and the relationship between the terrain is simply going to be more important when you have to deal with all these other factors.

All of you raise valid points, nevertheless I can hardly see how dumbing down the resource system will enrich gameplay. I think relic's decision to omit predetermined resource values is a good one, however to counteract the resulting campier gameplay, they need to employ a feature that motivates a player to vie for territories that aren't as easily held. My suggestion was one of many solutions. I just hope that with the Beta and the resulting player feedback, Relic will tune and maybe alter it so that the net result is a resource system that is both complex and dynamic.

Here's my suggestion, for those of you that haven't seen it:
The further a territory is from your base, the more valuable it should be, and accordingly outposts will also increase in worth the further they are built from your base. The desired effect is that it’ll encourage players to vie for territories that aren’t situated in the most convenient location, which will in turn force them to be clever about it. This dichotomy will hopefully induce an interesting interplay between capping aggressively and yet hindering your opponent from doing so themselves.

I hope that people can respect the beauty of having a forward resource connected by a strat point, which can then be cut off. It makes for incredibly dynamic gameplay, and it is a way of representing a real WW2 issue. Supply lines were always difficult to maintain, even moreso on the Eastern Front than they were in Normandy. This cut-off mechanic is part of the beauty of COH. It is essential to the gameplay that we all know and love and shouldn't be mussed around with.

I hope that people can respect the beauty of having a forward resource connected by a strat point, which can then be cut off. It makes for incredibly dynamic gameplay, and it is a way of representing a real WW2 issue. Supply lines were always difficult to maintain, even moreso on the Eastern Front than they were in Normandy. This cut-off mechanic is part of the beauty of COH. It is essential to the gameplay that we all know and love and shouldn't be mussed around with.

Seriously. Imagine how different so many of the classic CoH games would've gone if there had been no jockeying for cutoff points from the very beginning. I can't even picture CoH early and mid game without fighting around the cutoff on the left hand side of Angoville.