Implants are such a big part of Planetside, being able to tweak your character for special abilities that fit with more or less specific tasks, is such a great thing to have the ability to do. In my experience with new players, most of them never cared about implants until a long while, likely one of the last things they ever really paid attention to in the game (sometimes even after paying attention to construction). I don't think the game fails to drive attention to an important part of the gameplay. Planetside so much to offer, that it would be very overwhelming to new players. I think it's more than okay that after lots of time put into the game, you can still be discovering new things to unlock and mechanics that keep the experience interesting. So why the wall of text? Well, one simple thing: the barrier of entry is not helping. Once a player wants to figure out about how useful an implant actually is in more realistic terms than raw numbers, they'll want to try them out, which is possible in VR… Sort of. A lot of implants give passive benefits that you can test without interacting with other players, and some give you features that you can only realistically test in a live environment. But a lot of them do give you special abilities when killing enemy vehicles or players, yet, these abilities are never triggered in VR training when killing dummies. It means that implants like Gunslinger, Regeneration 5, Salvage, Vampire, Assimilate, Critical Chain, Ransack, Scavenger, Aerial Combatant, Combat Surgeon, Deep Operative 5, Firestorm, Overdrive, and Nightmare, will not give any effect when killing a dummy in VR, forcing players to test it live, but noticing an improvement on a very specific stat when the effect happens instantaneously and often only lasts a few seconds, doesn't allow you to pay attention to it in the heat of the battle. Even as a seasoned player, I find myself frustrated not to be able to test out by myself what firestorm's "cone of fire suffers significantly" means in practice, or to train my aim a few minutes with critical chain to try to see if I have the mechanical skill to chain targets, or how big of a benefit Scavenger would be when trying to figure out which implants are best to use with pistols, and so on. Which makes even less sense, when we're given the ability to test out any implant for free in VR. ➡️ On the same topic, but still a very important talk: a lot of implants could very much use a little more flare when triggered, as a way to notice their effect has activated while in battle, and to be just a little more aware about how often an implant's benefit has caused something that helped. Few have such benefits: for example, Firestorm and Critical Chain will give your weapon a particle effect; Counter Intelligence gives you a handy indicator in the HUD and the implant's icon itself; Ammo Printer makes an audible noise; and some can be noticed through effects that are visible to other players, such as Electrotech's pulsing wave, or Robotics Technician's shield around turrets. I think there is a lot of room to give many implants a subtle but noticeable sound effect, color change in the HUD, or other animation that would make it so much more engaging and understandable for everyone. Nothing distracting or annoying when using that implant forever, but something you may think back to a few seconds later, or notice if you're paying attention and waiting for it to happen. I'm not saying it's an easy job, but to me it feels like an obvious improvement, (the game already has lots of specific sounds and short music bits playing when hitting a player, hitting armor, progressing in a directive, obtaining a ribbon, or even just gaining XP) which, if not overdone, I doubt will let anyone unsatisfied. ➡️ TL,DR: implants that trigger on kill should work against VR dummies, no excuse; and more implants would really benefit from subtle effects indicating that they have been triggered. Sorry for the long read. I tried to explain my reasoning. Please criticize, debate, or/and elaborate below!
