Awareness and Sensor Shield - How awareness works is ambiguous, and the sensor shield in its proposed form is damaging to the game (at least as I see it, there's obviously some subjectiveness here, hence *relatively* legit). I'll also be talking about other effect immunity based implants. Awareness I expect works by spotting targets that do damage to or who damage the user, but these spots are NOT SHARED and follow all normal spotting rules, ie breaking line of sight makes it disappear quickly, and cloaking removes it immediately. Sensor Shield in its current wording seems to imply it is a hard counter/immunity to sensors of all forms. This is an overwhelmingly bad call in my books, as I will explain below. However if it were to be introduced in a non damaging or less damaging fashion, I'd expect it would only apply to normal radar (scout radars, upcoming deployable for infils), and only apply when they are stationary. This way it would not affect the function or reliability of the recon device, while having powers similar to the infiltrator cloak vs radar while not being an infil, or allowing infils to hide indefinately and completely against radar while using it, until combat (moving cloaked, recharging stationary). This would ensure the only people who can effectively dodge radar will be making loud cloaking noises anytime they need to move so that you're aware that they are moving if you're actually in the area. Additionally it would make the way you handle sensors fairly consistent, movement would almost always show (and when it doesn't you would only need to think about cloaked infil), though you still have to watch out for the rare stationary targets. ________________________________________________________________________________ So what's so bad about the idea of a module that will make you completely immune to all forms of radar and motion sensor? Immunity takes reliable mechanics/combat tools and makes them unreliable. Some people would pull an analogy like some percentage chance for a weapon to not work or something, but this is a stupid analogy. It's actually much worse, because it's not chance, the person immune to it will be aware of their immunity and actively exploiting the situation to take advantage of it... while it's still a stupid stupid analogy, it would be like if the enemy KNEW your weapon wouldn't work before you knew, doesn't take much imagination to see that this would result in things not being fun. tldr summary (don't comment on this unless you read the damn paragraph above); If awareness doesnt work the way I state above, it's likely a problem, but the wording is too unclear to go off on a rant about it. radar immunity is a bad idea, it makes an established mechanic inconsistent/unreliable in the case of motion sensors, its main appeal is that it is completely reliable (for me at least). this will lead to exceedingly unfun deaths, I do not believe we should be adding unfun deaths ________________________________________________________________________________ You might ask: But wait, what about the thermal dampener, emp shield, concuss/flash shield... these also provide immunity, how is this not the same thing? Well these are a bit sketchy as well, however these are different in the awareness of effect, ie you will know, with a normal level of observation, that these effects are happening. In the case of thermal vision, obviously for the immunity to be a factor - you allready need to be seeing the person it applies to. In the case of the emp/conc/flash shields, the devs should be implementing appropriate feedback that these people were not affected, with an icon or animation... though I get the impression they might not have actually thought this one through, and I would be strongly opposed to the addition of these implants as well if the immune subjects were not clearly indicated when subjected to the effect. Actually I'd go as far as to say it would be a problem if you couldn't tell at a glance if someone was immune or not to the effects of your grenades (before you even use them). It's also worth mentioning that the people who will get the most use out of these implants would be the people using the emp/conc/flash nades, however this is NOT a good thing at all since it allows them to use these items much more easily, resulting in a lower skill floor for items which just aren't that much fun to fight against. Tactical nades give a very clear combat advantage, but their one disadvantage is that they can be tricky to use - self-immunity would severely reduce that trickiness, potentially making them downright easy to use, and in the case of concussion and emp grenades, probably ludicrously overpowered (these grenades both explode on impact). tldr summary (don't comment on this unless you read the damn paragraphs above); therm/emp/conc/flash immunities arent as bad as radar immunity I dont see any clear problems with thermal immunity, but they could be there. emp/conc/flash immunity can still be extremely bad for the game (as I see it) if there is not clear visible feedback indicating when someone is immune to the effects Actually I think it would be a problem if you couldn't tell just by glancing at an enemy if they were immune or not, before you even use the nade. Additionally self immunity has absurd anti-fun potential for everyone else, especially for concussions. ________________________________________________________________________________ Right, lets just get away from the specifics and get more abstract. Dying, or even taking damage by unpredictable chance is generally not fun. You want things that you can rely on in a game, you want as many consistencies as possible so that you can make intelligent, informed decisions, so that you can be creative and crafty, and overcome things by your own will, and not by being lucky nobody had the items that specifically counter whatever tactic you're employing. When you die, if you are one of the four or so players who is reasonable and level headed, you should be able to say that you got outplayed, that you did something wrong, or that you succumbed to the accurately calculated, predictable risk you foresaw. If you concussion a group of unaware enemies with a nice nade, walk into the room behind them and one of them can shoot you perfectly because they were immune, you didn't get outplayed, you just got unlucky. And not unlucky like that group of players you concussed, but unlucky like a specific game mechanic was knowingly added that would result in chance based deaths like this. You got "unlucky" that the feature was added. The less things you can rely on in game, the more you end up playing the odds, this results in a drop in tactics, and adapting to meet situations, and favours more just "well see how it goes", available equipment/weapons and rudimentary fps skills like aiming. A certain level of chance can keep things fresh, however the more that is added and the more contrived the scenarios become, the worse the game is for it. I think the chance of there being a cloaked sniper with excellent aim and a bit of luck in an unexpected area should be the very top level of chance in this game. You know, the type of chance that actually requires effort on at least one person's part, that sniper had to work to get to that spot, not just equip a flippin item. Actually I guess that's part of what really irks me about this, it doesn't require any effort to get these overwhelming boons that nullify previously guaranteed functions, you just equip an item. People can complain about alot of stuff being OP or not fun to die to, but no matter what you're complaining about, someone had to DO SOMETHING to give you cause to complain. In fact, the greatest arguments against most things that people complain about are based on the level of effort these people take to do it. AT mining sundies was *way too flippin easy* to do, suicide c4'ing was *way too flippin easy* to do... this *way too flippin easy* is the part of the problem that was genuinely compelling and was ultimately changed. These proposed implants aren't just easy, they're completely effortless! You don't have to do a damn thing to be completely immune to something, you're not even working around something, you're just flat out immune to it. Anyways, I think I've managed to put most of my main concerns into words. tldr summary (don't comment on this unless you read the damn paragraphs above); the potential for immunity creates unpredictability unpredictability is not what I want in a shooter, especially one on a large scale that will hopefully revolve around meaningful strategic level conflict. The amount of actual/reliable strategy/tactics decreases as unpredictability increases. there is no effort involved in gaining the advantage from these items, it's simply given to you, and I think this is not a good philosophy I believe you should work to gain any advantage in any proper shooter - outthink or outplay your opponent, not out-equip. There is a certain level of comfort when you die or take significant damage in a cheesy way, knowing the player who caused it did so using skill or effort, and not just some cheese item. If I'm in a group of people and die to a awesome concussion nade cleanup by a guy, I can think "hey, awesome nade, nice going"... if I was immune to the conc and just turned around and shot him in the face, it was definitely not my skill that changed the scenario, there was no effort on my part, and his nade was *still awesome*, but he got shot in the face for it... and for what? ________________________________________________________________________________ This is NOT the direction I want to see this game go, I think the core shooting and combat mechanics are quite good, and the focus should be on giving this combat form and meaning, rather than ... well, muddying it up. If you keep adding situational counters, you'll just end up with a pointless clustermuck in anything but high level competitive play. Obviously this is just how I feel about certain aspects of game philosophy, I dont expect everyone to share my view. I've been fairly happy and impressed with the development progress and philosophy employed by this dev team, but this change and ones like it are things I just cant stay quiet on. I want this game to be one I can play for ages, and I am deeply worried that they will make the mistake of "adding options" under the false assumption that it increases tactical depth. Typically the options added are for dealing with specific scenarios, it doesn't seem to register with players or devs adding the options that the option effectively destroys the reliability of the old scenario, and all the tactics previously devised to overcome it, instead it's replaced with a single option, and failing that, disorganized play. Why use thought/intelligence/trickery/tactics to overcome a situation when you can just get an item specifically built to overcome it right? Anyways, I might have gotten a bit off track here, but I was pretty damn shocked when I saw the implants, and after thinking about it for awhile I absolutely need to get my opinion and analysis out there. To clarify my position, I think it'd be best if immunity based implants were simply not ever introduced to the game, I cannot see these implants ever adding more positive effect to the game than negative, though I welcome SOE or any intelligent soul to show/educate me wrong or misguided or whatever. I think the thermal immunity is fairly safe to add, as the situations under which it applies are easily covered simply by observing what you're already looking at, however all the others do not seem potentially beneficial, even if all the conditions and caveats I proposed were fulfilled. Edit: added fancy formatting, fixed sentences with more than 12 commas, and lines. Edit again: also I know the only way I'll get the vocal crowd to comment on this thread is if I have pictures... if you have some suggestions reply with a link to them before my post reaches the 30 min mark and I cant edit it anymore =/
Well I know the implants have been kicked back to the design phase, but dangit I wrote alot and it's still relevant until they confirm immunity implants are no go. So yeah, if you are one of the 10 or so people who will actually read this, and you think there's anything worthwhile here, please drop a reply; if you don't have any feedback then just let me know you like cheese or something, so that the thread at least has a chance.
I like the idea of the immunity implants (Clear vision and EMP Shielding) being a mitigation thing, ie. they have less of an effect and/or the effects last for a shorter time, but if they completely make these tac-grenades useless than that is not cool. Also it has been stated that these implants will give you an indication that they were not effected so that is already covered. Sensor Shield, my thought on it are that it should decrease the effectiveness of the implant the faster you move, that would make this a much more balanced implant.
Exactly! What's the point of using radar at all if you know the information is going to be unreliable?
Yeah I thought about the mitigation based effects but after giving it some thought it seems a bit cheese or just negative overall. The game would not benefit from this type of mechanic is my overall conclusion. The statement was that if the grenades were ineffective it would tell you by not showing hit markers or something, they havent made any specific comments that it would indicate who was unaffected. The old post has unfortunately been destroyed so I cant quote the line. Decreased effectiveness based on rate of movement creates the same inconsistency/unpredictability problems, and even worse it would potentially give these problems to the player using the implant as well as everyone else. Really the more I think about implants the more of a problem I see with the fundamental design of them. Since they are purchased repeatedly and operate on a per loadout timed basis, they require some level of minimal boost to be competitive, but making these boosts non gamebreaking is almost counter-intuitive. Some of their ideas are pretty good, safe fall is fine, enhanced targetting is okay, regen is probably okay... just it's kind of hard to go beyond things like this without seriously screwing up how the game is played. I think implants should all be things which indirectly affect combat, or are useful outside of combat, anything that directly affects combat effectiveness or ability should not be on the table.
Much like the benefits of implants, the detracting complaints people have for them are entirely situational at best. Having some sort of visual indicator for grenade immunity might be neat and stuff, but is it really going to make any lick of difference in how you play the game at that moment? Sure maybe if you know for certain that there's only one person in the room and you throw it in there and get no hit marker and you know that they didn't get it...yeah, ok, it'd work there. But who's throwing a grenade at one person? It's usually a room of multiple players, not all of whom are bound to have immunity. So it really don't show up as anything different to you. Even if there was a separate indicator like "omg it didn't flash this dude!" is that going to stop you or your team from doing what you would normally do? Just far too many assumptions and "worst case scenarios" to really be bothersome right now...especially with implants going back to the drawing board anyway.
SOE already knows that the community doesn't like it and have stated that implants will not be in GU13, and that they are back in planning. So good job setting another feature back with incessant complaints guys. I sure hope that it was worth it and that you and SOE can come to some sort of balanced agreement and that you'll get to test the new implants out on the test server before they release them.
The community? Even though the Roadmap was almost 2:1 in favor of having them added? Let's not get ahead of ourselves here...
Yeah. Okay Tradewind. I QUOTE: Implants never made it to the test server. People whined and argued about it since the GU13 info was released. >Cue SOE postponing the implants.
Where did I say that negative feedback didn't exist? But it was a segment of the community, not the community as a whole. Try to keep up.
I think you're getting ahead of yourself with your assumptions here, please take a moment to look at the roadmap entry for the implants: https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/july-implants.82986/ You'll notice the advertised implants: And the most popular types of suggested implants, ex jumping higher, faster run speed, proximity mine detection Tend to follow a significantly more conservative and generally non gameplay altering view of implants. I cant speak for everyone, but to assume people just wanted implants in any form based on the roadmap is utterly absurd. The implants we were presented were dramatically different than what was suggested on the roadmap, and definitely downright game altering. Additionally the largest concern in the roadmap thread was that it would reduce skill, which I think you can reasonably argue the suggested implants would do. I did a quick search for "flash" on the first 3 pages of the roadmap thread and didnt find a single suggestion suggesting a flashbang resistance or immunity, it wasnt even on the radar. Speaking of radar I also looked for the words "radar" and "sensor" on the first 3 pages and didnt find a single reference, suggestion or implication of radar or sensor immunity, quite the contrary I found several suggestions for making these more effective or prolific. Basically I think it's reasonably safe to say many people who endorsed the roadmap entry for implants did not get what they had reason to expect, and some were upset about this. Personally I'm not one to get upset over a failure to meet expectations, however I do see reason to get upset over the proposed implementation. That said, I can totally understand how some people would be upset on a failure to fulfil expectations to such a large degree.
Much better would be an implant that showed you the radius of enemy sensors on your minimap and gave you a HUD indicator when you're being scanned by one.
Agreed, most options would be far superior to the proposed ones. Counterplay is good, hard counters are not. I think showing scanners would be a great idea for an implant, work around it, not nullify it.
The GU13 changes to sensors and the kneejerk reaction from many less thoughtful infils makes me worry they might reconsider sensor immunity. DO NOT.
