Do players generally prefer mechanics to "pay" for a powerful move rather than have a cooldown or limited # use?
I've been on this train of thought and would love to hear what others think about it:
Im thinking about how to limit powerful moves and encourage variety in the action economy of my turn based game. I find that the most common methods of limiting powerful actions tend to be (please share If Im missing anything obvious):
-cooldowns (time)
-limited # of uses (frequency) ex: PP in Pokemon, D&D per rest actions
-a resource or energy cost (payment)
But as I think about it I find myself thinking that paying a resource cost is almost always going to be more fun. Im not sure if this is my own bias, but I find "paying" to be satisfying fit for real-world analogues. It empowers the player by giving them choices and allows for a whole system of collecting and managing those resources.
By comparison, I really like the elegance of the cooldowns and/or limited use approaches. And I keep trying to find a way to use them as dynamically. But I can't shake the idea that they feel articifical, in the sense that they still encourage you to use your strongest moves over and over as much as you can (big D&D fights can devolve into this), but then the rules just pop up a stop sign to keep it from endless repetition.
It might be argued that worrying about costs and resources is a bore and signifcant overhead, and perhaps that is the main reason to use simplified time and frequency based limitations. But, in my experience, even these simpler mechanics are either meaningless (the player shrugs when a move is suddenly unavailable) or anxiety inducing (the player never uses their best move because they never want it to become less available). In that sense, the resource based approach forces the player into reckoning with their own action economy, and requires them to think ahead so they are actually engaged with their choices. And so it feels like that is almost always going to be more fun and engaging for a tactical scenario.
As a side note: this is a single player game so that removes one downside of a resource system: in competetive games it can turn things into an escalating race that may not always maximize fun.