Boycott Implants!

You can still use them if you think they help you, sure.
But if you spend money on them, DON'T! It's a waste anyways! You'll end up just flushing more money down the crapper! This is not just my opinion, this is SOUND financial advice! Heck! SOE is trying to bleed you dry now since they dropped the drop rates... AGAIN!

Heck, I've never spent a penny on them and the couple that are actually worth using I manage to keep charged just from my gameplay, even with the drop rate decrease!

Stock up on uberchargers crafted from extra implants!
Buy implants with certs if you've got plenty sitting around!

JUST NEVER SC!

I won't ever spend money on implants, and it isn't even about sending a message. I just don't see the value in buying random implants when I want specific implants, and I don't see the value in paying for chargers which only last a few hours.

Don't you know!?
You buy implants so you can take em to the slot machine for a chance to win BIGTIME for the implants you wanted in the first place! Oh by the way the nice implants cost way more energy and most implants are garbage nobody uses!!!

I bought the 5 pack of cigars *cough* excuse me, implants once, and they were all FREAKING tier 1!!! WHY!!!! WAH WAH WHYYYYYY!
(purchased with certs)

I've technically spent money on implants because I buy game cards at GameStop instead of giving Sony my credit card number.

Otherwise, I can't imagine spending money on implants. Even if they were straight up pay to win OP.

I forgive you of your sins. Go forth and sin no-more!

I dunno, I've quit ever since cyber monday. Tired of SOE's shenanigans. Been playing Elite Dangerous, haven't looked back. I just play Forumside now just so I watch the ship sink.

A noble pastime indeed.

I was under the impression that no one actually used SC to purchase implants or chargers in the first place, because semblance of sanity.

Thank you for this helpful and constructive post, CapEnTrade.

It's posts like these that will obviously help advance gameplay in PlanetSide 2, and foster a positive experience for all playing the game.

</sarcasm>

I'm starting to run pretty low on chargers, but I'm sure as hell not buying any AND paying for a monthly sub. In fact, this whole P2W road SOE has gone down has put a bad taste in my mouth. I may just cancel my sub and stopping buying SC completely. I'm not keen on supporting P2W games.

Lol, i've never spent money on implants because they have horrible value per dollar. A new gun? Woo, I can be using that thing forever. Buying implant chargers? only a few hours of fun and then my investment disappears. Implants need to stop being pushed as a source of income and focus on stuff people will actually pay for.

Sounds good to me.
Implants are a great example of Pay-to-Win.
I'm against Pay-to-Win in gaming. It sets a bad example.
Games are the great equalizer. Rich or poor the play the same - except when they become Pay-to-Win.

Boycott by just not buying them?
I boycott them by not using them at all.
I'm an All Access member (this isn't the only SOE All Access game I play), but I've never paid any money in the PlanetSide 2 Market Place. It's a F2P, right?

Far too many Pay-to-Win items in the Market Place.
Don't want to wait until you have CERTs to get something you want? Pay for it instead? Pay-to-Win.

Practically the only thing I would buy would be another character slot. 1000 SOE is crazy. Even with the AA discount - 900 SOE is crazy. Remember. It isn't like if I purchase a weapon that I could use it on ALL my characters. I would have to purchase them individually with CERTs or SOE. So why would character slots be priced so high?
It just confirms to me that I shouldn't purchase anything in the cash shop or get involved with anything that is a cash shop lure.

A quick back of the beermat calculation on how much I'd need to spend on chargers (given my current % play time I'm out of charge) makes me wonder how they can think anyone would regularly and constantly buy chargers no matter what they do.

Basically they've moved back to their intial point with implants (effectively rentable), which most at that time were up in arms about, but I'm pretty sure the reality is that it won't make them money, it will just annoy many of their customers.

You're right, but the thing about that issue is it is a one time deal (and honestly PS2 had the best F2P model around from a non-P2W sense up until these Implant changes).

That is someone can take the shortcut and buy a weapon, and that may give them an advantage, but only up to the point a F2P player can earn the certs to buy it too, then they are back on level ground.

The huge problem with rentable stuff is that basically the ground is never level, no matter how well or how long you play, unless you pay (constantly and forever).

You do realize that Implants were designed as another monetization source? They overshot their idea and gave too many implants to players per "tick", which meant no-one needed to ever buy them.
So now they toned it down. They didn't even tone it down by an incredible amount. But now there is an incentive to actually buy them. And you should be happy with that, as it keeps the servers alive, gives them more money for software engineers and updates and gives the makers more incentive to actually give a crap.

I dunno, I earned 200 certs last night (boost, but nothing else), and I got 1 charger drop. Since the change to drops (and after I went through my surplus) I spend 90-95% of my play time out of charge now.

Well, i think you'll have to start crafting them then. I don't think that's a bad thing either. And my chargers have slowly, every so slowly started dropping. I'm at 444 now, where I was between 450 and 445 since the update. Even so, I've been using tier 4 Sensor shield almost continuously... I think the drops are as random as what kind of drops you get. Some people complain about getting too much of one and none of the other, while i have too much of the one they are missing and almost none of the one they got a million off. So maybe some people were just unlucky beyond count. But as long as i have chargers, I'm going to use them. It was ridiculous that we could even hoard more than 100 chargers, let alone the 1000+ chargers some of my outfit mates claim to have...

Yeah I'm not crafting them into chargers currently, because I'm trying to get the T4 implants.

But even so 1 charger per 200 certs.... I can't see even 50% up time with that sort of drop rate, even with conversion.



As for hoarding I suspect that is why some people aren't seeing the issue, they will though, it will just happen later when their stocks degrade.

is most likely they reused code from last Christmas for the christmas event than a nerf in alerts and implants... after christmas you will see most likely things go back to where they where.

Maybe the way implants drop should be altered. Currently things like spotting, recon darts/motion sensors and repairing pay out much more implants because you have more "tics" at which you can earn one. So maybe the goal would be to equalize the amount of implants over an amount of experience, rather than per tick. So every 10 XP there is a chance one drops, only the chance is very tiny. But when you kill one person, you already get 10 times this chance that one drops. The likelyhood of multiple drops is ofcourse incredibly low, the chance you get even 1 is low, but it's there.
You can then create a scheme, for each 50 certs (12500 XP) you get one charger drop on average for instance. This drop rate needs to be calibrated to the average income per player, and set off against the average usage of energy per player, then you can calculate the amount that the average player will never be able to have continuous energy and apply that to the drop rate.