Smedly comments on Implant changes: "sorry but we are actually trying to make money"

Well they clearly have no clue on how to tap their potential at all.

There's no gifting for example, ie. allowing someone to buy something with SC on behalf of another player. A very simple construct that doesn't involve making the game more P2W. Say I get a friend who helps out in my tank a lot - I'd like to give him a nice shiny helmet or something, but I can't even freakin do that.

Then they come up with hair brained schemes to make more money that's all about making money and not making a better game. It all doesn't pan out, so they make it even worse (implants) in hopes of gaining something out of it. SOE seems to love pouring kerosene on a fire.

Look, they even had that idea (now lost in the archives of features that never seem to come to fruition)...

https://forums.station.sony.com/ps2/index.php?threads/unscheduled-gifting.83002/

I agree, they have done a good job of not making it P2W. But now, with the implementation of a system that gives benefits, that you cannot sustain all the time with only in-game mechanisms, all players are not on the same level. This clearly is a game-play benefit to those who pay to keep it alive, making it so others who cannot sustain the implant at a disadvantage to those that can. This is bad practice for a open-world PvP-only MMOFPS game.

They've done almost all of these things. Is there more of it to do? Yes. But they've only got so much time, and so many people working on it. Should they throw more people at it to make it go faster? Sure. Can/will they? I'm not certain. Apparently they aren't making enough and need to squeeze more out of the player base or they are making plenty and are just greedy. I'd like to thing the former and they actually need more money to keep up existing development.

I don't enjoy playing FREAKING slots with my implants so I can get implants thank make me need more energy just to afford them, then you have to go back to the slots for your implant energy. The Slot machine (cough, crafter) is SO @#$%ING SLOW TOO! Waste of my time!

So ridiculous.
SOE is so desperate.
*rolls eyes*

They are sacrificing the game in behalf of marketing, which is TOTALLY the wrong way of doing F2P.

Just quit playing Planetside 2. Planetside 2 is dead.

Just like World of Tanks, you keep playing something hoping it will become better in all ways (especially ones you want to see it become), and eventually when your hope dies you quit. The implant change is a massive blow to hopefulness about the future of the game, enough to keep me from resubscribing, but it'll take whatever Smedley alluded to next in the P2W scheme to make me quit.

If they want to make money,they should sell alternate weapon models for the different weapon classes. Maybe expand the amount of armor choices and allow you better customize it. Maybe pick different shoulder pieces,legs,chest,etc.

I've actively ignored implants. I tried crafting tonight though, six attempts, six tier 1 results.
Huge waste of time from all I can see.

If you use 5 from one tier you should get a random from the next. What exactly did you do?

If you all just would have bought more silly hats, jack-o-lantern camo and whale horns this wouldn't be an issue.

3 at a time.. guess I could try adding more, didn't know it worked that way. Guess that would explain the slot machine references

Laughing so hard at this...but it's probably true in some dark ways...

• Three Of The Same Tier Of Implants = A random implant of the same tier used in the crafting process. Will not return an implant of the type recycled if 3 of the same implant are used in this formula.
• Five Of The Same Tier Of Implants = A random implant of a tier higher than the tier used in the crafting process. Tier 4 implants can't be used this way.
• Two Implants Of Different Tiers = A tier 1 and tier 2 implant create a Super Charger. A tier 2 and tier 3 implant create an Ultra Charger. Tier 3 and 4 can't be combined this way.

you could've even pushed the damn help button. it's bright yellow, I think it's even blinking. epic fail.

What they should have done is balanced it so that you would need to spend a small amount of money to maintain a Tier 4 Implant. Maybe even reduce the former drop rate so that a Tier 3 would slowly exhaust an average players energy pool.

Rather than just introducing a more energy expensive implant tier they seem to have cut the drop rate in half which will lead to most people running out of energy pretty quick. That's the difference between someone running Battle Hardened 4 constantly over a free player who can only run it when their energy pool charges up. It's pretty much the same as someone paying for a gun that has less recoil

battle hardened 3 and 4 don't even work btw.

As ive mentioned in other threads, implants are not needed, the reason people dont like this change is because they wont be able to sustain battlehardened 3 and 4 (once they work). How about we get the the real issue and talk about removing or atleast reducing screenshake so we wont need battlehardened?

good news for ppl like me though. if you don't really have anything to spend certs on any more, you can keep buying ultra chargers for 750 certs. with a decent score you can probably sustain a tier 4 even without boosts and membership

Yeah it depends on the implant, some are more like that, but ones like sensor shield (in general) or clear view (in specific circumstances) are just plain and absolute upgrades (to not having them).

It is just people get into the whole P2W = pay and you always win idea (which never has and never [ever] will happen as it is plain insane - even EA Games would never do that).

Where as really it doesn't really matter what it is called (yet ridculously SOE itself is now trying semantics on what is or isn't P2W - they must realise you cannot just PR the wool over peoples eyes with a defination), only what it does, how it affects gameplay and how players feel about it.

This is the thing, SOE have decided to abandon the subscription model...... fair enough.

Yet actually their "F2P" model has a subscription....... it is just that the subscription doesn't give you the entire game (as it did in PS1).

Then to try and add P2whateveryouwanttocallit on top of that is........ well most of the adjectives that most suit would get me into trouble.





To my mind if you cannot make your game pay with F2P+microtransactions+subscription all in one Frankenstine "model" then you've got a problem with your game (or costs or unrealistic profits), and adding P2whateveryouwanttocallit isn't going to save that business model, if anything it is just likely to further undermine it.

It reminds me of a garage that use to just put its labour price up it if wasn't making enough for the month, they never seemed to realise that they actually lost more customers and therefore didn't gain anything........ unsurprisingly they went bankrupt.

I think F2P is basically unsustainable, people saw LOTRO and its short-term success (against a back ground of nothing but subscription models) and believed it was the Golden Goose. It isn't, especially with MMO games.

At best F2P keeps your game going when it would otherwise fail, but I don't believe there'll ever be a F2P MMO as profitable as WoW was (with the subscription model).

The main problem with the subscription model was really, 1) bad and/or unfinished MMOs [SWTOR fell right into this], 2) wanting to be WoW instead of EQ1 [without realising that only WoW has ever remotely been near WoW for every other MMO EQ1 is the standard].

I could probably live with the current system IF they allowed you to turn implants off and on with a UI click, but they've purposefully design the system so doing that is impossible.