Concern ... let's call it #1.5, The Treadmill The short answer on this is that any temporary purchase is only going to be a realistic option for endgame players. Anyone who still needs to cert roles, weapons, or vehicles will be hurting their progress too much by putting certs in something that wears out. That makes it vitally important that these be sidegrades to the free option. Not "give up a token benefit for something better", but a genuine "all the certs in the world and I'd still stick with this sometimes" default. The fact that you have multiple tiers already makes it sound like that won't be true. You can't have multiple tiers and still call everything a sidegrade, unless you're also ramping penalties up with it. (I've never seen anyone prefer nanoweave 2 to nanoweave 5.) If you can make the default good enough that players are happy to pretend this system doesn't exist for a while, you'll have a viable cert sink for the high levels. But if implants are something people defer their Lightning upgrades in order to get, they will do it and then be unhappy when the power wears off. That's what you need to avoid.
Just forgot those implants already, they will ruin the current game mechanic. Those implants will cause more problems then they will solve. Even the average players would become dumber, becouse of those implants thay would dont care about the others. And how somebody mentioned it befor me: why should i use emp or concassion sensor detection if it probadly would be ineffective against enemy, why should i bother with healing others, if thay probadly got auto healing, why should i be cautious where is the enemy or their explosives if they gona be autospotted, why should i use suppressor, or knife for stealth kill if my location would be autodetected, why should i care from where i jump down if i wuold survive it... I know this is very fierce, but how i sad: by those implant you will loose tons of loyal players, who keeps this game in life, and the newbies and average players just would become dumber then ever. We dont need those implants, thats all.
My concerns regarding Awareness remain, I think the current implementation gives it too powerful of an advantage. For infantry combat it still has a detrimental effect on Infiltrator and Light Assault playstyles that rely on flanking and hit-and-run tactics. Introducing an implant to lets you know you've been spotted won't change much since it's often already too late. As for the example you provided, I don't see why running carelessly head first into a room and getting yourself killed should provide the rest of your team with free intel. It defeats the whole point of setting up a defense. My bigger concern is regarding vehicle combat. With its current mechanics Awareness can break the Vehicle Stealth based flanking playstyle that many players enjoy and that Magriders especially often rely upon. It's already a risky and hardly an "overpowered" way to play since it rewards planning and successful flanks and is already easily countered by being mindful of your surroundings. With Awareness you now run the risk of being immediately spotted for all vehicles, aircraft and infantry in the area after firing a single shot which means you're likely to get focused down quickly and destroyed. If Awareness must go into the game then it should only spot for the person who has it equipped. If he's in a squad he can communicate this to his teammates so the implant would still be valuable for organized play. Automatically Q-spotting for everyone in the area though is just too much.
Regarding the "I Am spotted" implant. Please in future avoid putting all cool ideas into an implant. This should be a default ability. Sensor, aircraft or vehicle with active radar -> you are aware you're being spotted. We all had the "enhanced targeting" abilities on launch and they disappeared sometime around an early iteration of Implants came along. I am glad to see that tier filters are being added. Please also add the following options : check box for "preserve unique Implants". This prevents you from accidentally crafting that T3 by mistake .. flag on individual implants for "preserve". so you can mark individual implants as safe. Also, thinking ahead .. please add multi-crafting or a toggle to remove the animation option. For testing I hopped on the PTS and bought about 200 implants. It was boring to keep crafting and combining. The animation only needs to play once .. if I don't close the Implants window just craft it. I'd really like to chuck multiple stacks of tier 1 implants together and do a batch combination. For the simple reason that end-game players will probably sort out the huge stockpile of tier1 crap every now and again ..
TL;DR: If you want there to be "choices" and "balance" in the use of implants, then implants have to be designed to only hard counter other implants. Unless effects and counters are based on making mutually exclusive choices, one mechanic that gives absolute immunity to another mechanic simply removes the second mechanic from the game. I get what you're trying to say about there only being one implant slot. But you seem to be blissfully unaware of the fact that players very quickly sort through any set of items you release and unerringly identify the ones that give the biggest benefit for the least cost, or are categorically vs. qualitatively effective, and therefore more valuable. Items that absolutely negate a frustrating or limiting gameplay mechanic with 100% reliability instantly sort to the top of this list and rapidly become used by everyone, or by so many people that they might as well be universal. For infiltrators, everyone will be running Sensor Shield and suppressors. There is no alternative setup or tradeoff or "choices." This implant gives you absolute immunity from detection. It will be the go to and must have item, and all forms of radar will be universally useless for detecting infiltrators. Other infantry players who favor a mobility and flanking playstyle also will be compelled to use Sensor Shield, because it is categorically the single biggest boost to their playstyle available. Detecting cloakers and flankers was one of the main reasons for using radar in the first place, and it now will be useless for that. So because this implant exists, radar will become a non-item and won't be used much or at all. For CQC infantry, stun grenades will become a non-item because enough people will use the anti-concussion implants that they won't be worth throwing at all anymore. The grenade already might or might not have hit everyone in the area, and might or might not have gone where you meant it to go. Now it might or might not have stunned 50 or 80 or 100% of the people that it does hit, so its reliability will be so low that it's a waste of time to even bring. Because this implant exists, stun grenades do not exist any longer in practical use. The thing you're doing with Awareness and the new unnamed implant to counter it is more of a choices and balances situation. I can wear implant A, which gives me an advantage in spotting you. You can wear implant B which negates A. If we each make those complementary choices, then we are right back where we started. If one of us doesn't, then the other has a slight advantage. Also, the more people wear A, the more incentive there is to wear B, which counters it. So there is an ongoing tension between these mutually exclusive choices. This means usage over time will vary, and it will tend toward 50/50 over time, because the more people wear A, the more mileage you will get out of wearing B, and an increase in usage of A will be automatically negated by increased usage of B within a short time. This is the opposite of what happens where, instead of negating another mutually exclusive implant choice, the implant 100% negates a whole other gameplay mechanic that is not tied to an implant. In that case, when everyone or nearly everyone wears a particular implant, or at least wears it in a particular role or situation, the other mechanic ceases to exist. It becomes unreliable to the point of uselessness and therefore goes extinct. The more people use the implant, the less incentive there is to use the mechanic that it counters, because the less effective it is. Now, if you had some kind of other choice you could make relating to concussion grenades that would overcome the anti-CG implant, then there would be a balance and people would have more incentive to make that choice the more people start using the anti-CG implant. The problem is they aren't mutually exclusive, so there is no automatic balance. Choosing "enhanced" conc grenades isn't automatically going to reduce usage of the anti-CG implant. The two could overlap so that everyone winds up using the anti-CG implant AND using enhanced conc grenades. And then the whole system is just a big stupid waste of time, which just leaves everyone right back where they started, having accomplished nothing to actually change or improve anyone's playstyle choices. The other problem is that anyone can wear any implant, so if an implant counters an implant, then anyone has access to both the advantage and the counter, and you can make the choice you prefer no matter what impact that has on your playstyle. However, with some of these implants you're giving things to everyone that specifically negate a class-specific mechanics of one particular class, which are an integral part of the class's overall power budget. The problem is that once that mechanic becomes useless, you're not going to discount its value and give that class something to make up for having a hole in its budget. You're going to assume that the item is still contributes just as much as it always did, which maybe it still does no paper. But in practice its a straight nerf to the class because now part of its power budget is eaten by a useless and extinct item.
Charging the implants should be completely removed... Make 'em buy once, use indefinitely. Then you could compare them to weapons, but not like this. Even if you remove the ability to buy chargers with SC (this is SO P2W, sorry, there's no doubt about it) and make 'em CP only, it's still P2W, only in a smaller scale. I don't want to spend all my certs on chargers just to keep up with BR100s! NO WAY I'll support this! Besides, XP boosts will be a resource boost for those implants as well then. And comparing the implant system to weapons... Come on guys, you are better than that. We don't need to put all our hard earned certs constantly into our weapons to keep them functioning! And we surely don't need to constantly put a bigger amount of certs into our weapons which have attachments (this would be the comparison to tier 1 to tier 3 implants which would eat more certs than you can earn without XP boost and going on a permanent farmspree to keep 'em running). Remove chargers completely. Listen to the community! Don't put off the remaining guys who like this game!
Here is my problem - Managing the energy is not tactical at all. It is strategical. You have to decide what implant you are going to need 5-10 min from now when you are at a terminal. Okay that part isn't bad, but it starts using energy right then, in the warpgate for the entire Galaxy ride over to your target and GOD HELP ME I already want to strangle those people that we always end up waiting for in the warpgate. The ones that the rest of us are sitting in the Gal for way to long while they zone in and dilly dally around. To be tactical in use the energy system needs a way to turn it on and off in ways other than choosing your load out. (if there is another way I have not found it) Heck have the act of turning it on and off each take 5 secs of use worth of energy to prevent people flipping on and off to exploit. It doesn't even need to be hotkey-able. Make it something you have to go into the menu to do so that it takes a few seconds and not something to be doing mid fight or on the run. Give me an actual way to manage the energy use and I would be happy with the rest of the system.
I too am concerned about the impact awareness could have on stealth-based vehicle play. There's basically a whole subset of ground-play that relies on stealth functioning correctly and reliably. So, what use is having invested 1000+ certs into the stealth line when it gets automatically negated by someone with an implant, even if i did everything perfectly and killed him without him even noticing where i am. Seeing how you state that suppressors are intended to counter this implant, the only fair and reasonable solution is to apply the same to high or max level stealth--when it's equipped, it should render the awareness implant non-functional.
Face it, you're charging forward with the implant idea regardless of what the players say. Why because you need another revenue stream that's why. Be upfront and honest about it and don't pretend you are listening to player input. Player input says don't implement this implant system. Now back to reality. If you are listening to player input about the pre-decided thing you are going to do then: People appear to hate the auto targeting. Don't do that. People appear to hate the random nature of the system. Don't do that. People appear to hate the charging system. Don't do that. People appear to hate a RPG style crafting system in an FPS. Don't do that. People appear to hate that an implant like thermal can undo certs spent by others. Don't do that. Are you really, really listening? I'm really, really worried about this. I love PS2 and waited so long for it (quit playing PS1 after game-breaking BFRs). Please, please, please do not break this game. Once implemented this system cannot be undone. If the above issues are not addressed people will quit over it. Fixing it later won't bring them back. Remember: This is the most downrated idea ever proposed. If you think it won't have fallout then you are denying reality.
If I recall correctly, implants in PS1 only gave additional advantages but did not provide any counters. Why not make it like that in PS2 as well? It would eliminate 90% of problems with them without making them useless (this includes eliminating or nerfing awareness since it would be a "counter" to stealth gameplay. One good way to do this would be that enemies spotted by awareness are only spotted for the implant user, and spot duration for the implant is low - say around 4 seconds).
For all those people complaining, how is this different than Perks in games like COD? The answer is there is no difference. The line that separates this is that Planetside 2 is designed for team-play at its core, whether or not that's the case in the game. All of the complaints are based on arguments that concern 1v1 encounters, or "Rambo" or "Metal Gear" style gameplay where one player tries to take on a a whole base and wipe any resistance out. Sure in those situations, Implants seem OP or Underpowered, but if you look at it from the team-play lens or even from current in-game scenarios, Zerg crashing, they work perfectly. Let's sit down for some storytime kiddos: Situation: VS are assaulting a base while NC defend. Numbers: NC number just under 2 squads, with 8 of those NC in an organized squad, the others may be in 2-3 person squads or running solo. VS number a 3 squad organized platoon, and around 10 more solo pubbies along for the ride (So we see a numbers difference here and some organized team-play and some solo play). Most of the players are running some implant, lets say the most popular ones are Awarness, EOD HUD, Sensor Shield, some Enhanced Targeting, (Which is the new default on TS) some Clear Vision, and maybe some Engies with Quick Use. The organized squads tell their squad's infiltators to start riddling the place with Motion Spotter and Recon Darts, causing everyone who is not using Sensor Shield or sprinting while using it to show up when the assault begins. Players start to frag and conc the Control point room. Those inside who take damage using Awareness have their attackers show up, even hose who were using Sensor Shield, if they fragged the room. Some with Clear Vision take less effect and put up some resistance before they are overwhelmed. VS have the point and have set up defenses (Proxy mines and Turrets), and NC make a push back in, some with EOD see the proxy mines and try to take them out, but others without the implant rush in and get blown to bits. Some of the solo players are going Infil with Sensor Shield and get past the motion spotter and take out 2 or 3 before they get noticed whether they just get seen or the players they killed were using Awarness. Some "rambo" players try to keep moving while usi, but will eventually get spotted or detected from Awarness. Killing them takes some time because they keep moving around, but they eventualy go down, to do it all over again. Where, in any part of this, did implants not supplement already existing gameplay? nothing was OP because there were multiple viable ways to get around the problem. Someone using sensor shield not showing up on radar? wait until he kills someone with Awareness. someone with EOD blowing up your proxy mines? wait for the noob without who doesn't check all the doorways and walks into one. Getting killed by someone with awareness? WELL, TOUGH ****!!! LEARN TO AIM FOR THE HEAD!!!! (ALSO REMEMBER THAT YOU SHOW UP EVERY TIME YOU SHOOT, UNLESS YOU HAVE A SILENCER, AND EVERY HIT GIVES YOUR OPPONENT A HIT MARKER THAT HE'LL SEE ON HIS SCREEN, THUS CAUSING HIM TO KNOW THE DIRECTION YOU SHOT AT HIM FROM. ALSO THE TRACERS AND BULLETS FLYING PAST MIGHT HELP HIM NOTICE YOU.) These will not make any player better or worse, you still need to be ready for any situation. it's not the MAXes fault if you bump into him the next room over, it's yours for not anticipating a max to possibly show up. Same goes for an Infiltrator if someone gets past his darts and motion spotters, he better be ready to shoot some faces in self defense. These will help gameplay be more diverse, if you know that an outfit uses Sensor Shield a lot, then start pulling Awareness on your loadouts. Keep dying to Proxy mines in the Biolab? pull EOD. Have bad spatial awareness and keep falling off the airpad? pull Safe Landing. These will just supplement game play. Just like perks in any other FPS game, they add to strategy and playstyle, and players need to be prepared for anything. If you don't like your targets shooting back and flanking around you, try another game that's easier for you. Planetside 2 is still FREE, it's your decision to put money in.
Any thoughts about the heal implant? At some points on PTS, it felt like there was no delay between getting hit and autoheal kicking in, but sometimes it was. How will this implant fit in between medikits and medics? I know that it's a tradeoff, so you loose the access to other implant abilities, but do we need this between the aviable options? I'm concerned that it will make one part of playing a medic, the healing and helping the team, pointless if many people should start using it primary because it's superior to the other options. This is just a guess/concern at this point since I couldn't collect much real combat experience with implants yet. Regeneration heals 6.67% Health per second, that's less than 15 seconds for a full heal and even less when you take cover as soon as you got hit and your shields went down.
I see it having the exact opposite effect. It removes a lot of the game's predictability through random immunities. A tactical plan on the other end aims at reducing as much as possible the unpredictable. So. your concussion grenades or radar may or may not work, with no way for you to know if it did. The only way to remove that additional tactical uncertainty is by stopping altogether to use these now-defective-by-design items, and replace them by something reliable. Why waste resources with consussion grenades the enemy may be immune to when you could have the squad rather throw AV/Frag grenades instead? I have a hard time taking your sudden description of "overpowered mechanics" too, when you're the ones to have implemented them and left them in game until the day came you could charge for the 'balance fix'. It feels a bit easy to find a mechanic perfectly acceptable for years only to deem it overpowered the day there's a counter in the store. That certainly mitigates the P2W feeling, though membership and xp boosters directly result in more certs, but there you go... However, this misses another issue with the Battery system. That is the advantage it provides to 'full' veteran characters. Once you have certed out everything you needed/wanted, you can sink all additional certs into a permanently running T3 implant. On the other hand, a player still certing up his character will have to choose between continuing the certing up of his roles and the feeding of a T3 battery. Basically, you have implemented a statistical advantage to veterans, which, though typical in mmos, is a major source of perceived unfairness. I'm far from BR100, but the difference in skill/experience is large enough for me to have a major advantage over newer players. I don't need additional stats to crush them even more. Heck, if anyone needs help it's them. Until now, though a high ranked player held an advantage in terms of versatility with more roles/vehicles certed up, it didn't take long for a new player to cert up his favourite role and reach a "best-in-slot" setup, putting him on a statistical par with everyone else. That allowed one to feel some fairness while collecting certs to unlock additional roles. With the proposed implants system, your player needs to continuously spend certs to maintain this "best-in-slot" setup, considerably slowing down his buildup of versatility. If he decides not to feed the battery, then he's no longer on par with the veterans which have nothing else to do of the certs. If you really have to push these implants despite the vastly negative reception and absolutely want them to use batteries, then have the batteries cost not SC nor certs but *resources*. A *lot* of resources. And push the resources revamp up, and have the battery resources be part of the 'reserved' resources that don't replenish while the implant is in use. Make the implants a choice, costing you the use of mines/grenades/MAX or something, not a no-brainer statistical advantage.
Whilst the Awareness Implant seems to be the one everybody is worrying about, you have to consider the other options people will be forfeiting for the benefit of being able to spot where somebody is if they've shot you. If you're a sniper, all you have to do is cloak & your spot vanishes, so it kinda renders the best part of the Implant useless. I'd much rather go for Regeneration or the Implant which helps against Concussion grenades! I'm sufficient enough to know when I'm being shot at and I think plenty of the players complaining about it are too. It's also a Tier 3 Implant (AFAIK) so you'd have to craft 25 Implants to get it, and even then that's random. The charging system is fine, that is a compromise. I would only urge you not to be able to buy batteries with SC as that makes the entire system P2W. It's like being able to buy more ammo for your weapon using SC, or putting SC into speeding up your timer on spawning vehicles, or even removing the timer altogether. The charging system must only allow you to buy batteries using certs, and that cost shouldn't be a giant amount (60 certs for a medium sized battery is a reasonable amount). The crafting system atm seems glitchy but I'm going to wait until it's fully completed & functional before I cast my judgement over it. The current implementation is quite horrible in terms of how it functions but I think the base feature of it is fine and you only have to do it once if you're looking for your favourite so meh. I like how Implants are looking right now, a few tweaks in terms of how to obtain them are needed as well. Amp Stations should delay the rate your Implants use batteries as well, just adding in a little bit of base importance would help. Good work otherwise.
If SOE is really steadfast in keeping the charging system in the game, I've got an idea to make it fair for everyone. Make it an ability, like cloak or AOE healing (bound to a different hotkey of course) that drains as you use it, but recharges automatically after it's turned off. Make it so you can cert into it to make recharge time faster/make it last longer, as well as buying new implants (with certs or SC). I don't really see the downside to this system, a it gives everyone the same benefits, provided they can get the implants, which is basically like getting a new gun in this case. Obviously it would be a much slower drain and recharge than cloaking or healing, but it would be the same mechanics. Anyone spot problems with this? Edit: Just thought of the fall implant, I don't know how it would be balanced in my idea... maybe make it so that a bigger fall drains more than a small one, in addition to the constant drain? In fact, that might be a better idea. Any time the implant is used, that's when it gets drained, as opposed to the constant drain in place now.
How about an Implant that charges other peoples implants in a certain radius around the player? If we make it the defualt non-charging implant, it would encourage people to stick close and guide new recruits. The implant won't benefit themselves directly, but once they play long enough, they will swap for an implant that does.
ok, so when my teammates lay down smoke and my squad advances in using thermal... guess what happens? We're blind to anyone that has an anti-thermal implant. (we won't even bring up the fact that this helps the Vanu more than other factions) Nevermind that someone invested in underbarrel smoke launchers (thereby giving up any other underbarrel they could use). Nevermind that we all invested certs into INRV scopes (and have given ourselves near sightedness as a result). Nevermind that we used the existing tools to work as a team. Yeah, nevermind all that because someone out there has anti-thermal implants that negate all of the above. Shenanigans on these implants. The rule should be: an implant does not give you the ability to negate investements someone else has made. Otherwise all you are doing is the classic "sell arms to both sides of a conflict" then sit back and rake in cash. It's a win-win moneygrab on behalf of Sony and it makes players who have invested time, effort, and in some cases cash quite bitter and frankly willing to quit the game.
Folks, if you don't want to see a particular feature implemented in PS2, don't say it will be similar to COD, as it is clear that SOE wants to draw that demographic into their arena, something that they have not been successful at since PS2 is, as we all know, more demanding on the part of the player, not to mention the hardware. So, by complaining that something is going to make PS2 similar to COD, you are telling SOE that they're doing the right thing. Many among the lower-skilled players will feel the need to use some of these implants, particularly those that provide counters to the game-play of more creative and skilled players, but the latter will likely adapt fast against such compensatory mechanics, as they always have each time SOE forced something upon the player base despite their clear rejection of an implementation, if only to demonstrate how broken the game has become, thereby forcing SOE to balance the features subsequently, followed by more re-balancing and re-balancing of the re-balancing. So, they will go ahead with the implementation, there is nothing we can do to stop them. Now, as I am not a skilled enough player to adapt so swiftly, I share the view of people pointing to the investment of hard-earned certification points being diminished in value by some of the implants. This situation requires thorough thinking on the part of SOE as to how not to infuriate the majority of the player base when the implants go live. That being said, the only implants I would consider fair are those that enhance physical abilities, such as resistance to fall, provided they are not excessive in their effects, e.g., resistance to a fall of 20 to 30 meters maximum. Along the same line, I think an implant that allows a character to clear some of the obstacles would be an interesting one to have: when equipped, the character can jump over a rock, a fence, a pile of crates, etc... whose total height does not exceed, say, 1.8 meters. In any case, the benefits of the implants should be small when they go live, by limiting their durations, ranges and effects in the beginning, and adjusted after enough time has been spent to gather sufficient data and user input.
Except your entire story would be ruined because the NC defenders all had Clear Vision and beat the attackers because they relied on a grenade that can no longer perform its job. It is a good thing that outright immunities did not make the cut. Most of these are decent, except sensor shield, but given the nerf to sprinting infantry it will balance itself out.
