Why the Implant System is not P2W

Before I get started, I would like to define a couple of terms:

Quality of Life: When I use QoL I'm saying that it in general, it makes your life easier. I know that maybe some other people could have different definitions of it, but this is the one I am using.

Pay to Win: When I say P2W I mean that it gives you an outright advantage that can only be bought with money, or an exorbitantly huge amount of certs.



With that out of the way, let's examine the implant system:

Target Focus: a small QoL implant that let's you see enemy health bars and let's you hold your breath for longer.
Not P2W because a BR1 without that implant can kill a BR120 with that implant (skill difference aside). Also, level 1 is free to all.

Safeguard: a QoL implant that makes you a little bit tankier after being revived. Not only is level 1 free to all, but a maximum of 30% (i think) dmg resistance would let you survive a total of ~2 extra bullets, with NW, ~3, if in a Max suit with max kinetic, ~7.

Ammo Printer: The definition of QoL, as the only thing it does is save you time from running/driving to get some ammo. It in general saves you maybe ~3 minutes of your time.

Assimilate: At max rank it will restore 100 shield. 100 shield with NW it will not even save you from a single bullet at close range (143 dmg tier). Now granted, the only people who would probably use this would be HA with resist/adrenaline, with resist shield: it will let you tank 1 bullet at close range, and at longer range: 2.

Battle Hardened: Out of all the implants, this is the one that gives you the biggest 1v1 advantage. However, it is such a small advantage that I honestly don't see any use for it.

Vampire: At max rank you get 200 health for killing a planetman with the knife equipped. You know what that means? 2 bullets. This is the most worthless implant out of the bunch. 200 health is practically nothing, if you are within knifing range of your target, that means they are within range of you. 200 health would not save you from a quick melee.

Catlike: At max rank it gives you a 75% movement speed bonus while crouched and you can jump higher. Not P2W because a 75% bonus is roughly normal movement speed, and if you can't hit a target at normal movement speed then you need to practice your aim a little bit. The jump boost is useful for getting into a better position to shoot/ambush from, but if you have 60+ fps, then you don't need it.

Sweeper HUD: The explosive detection is just a crutch for people who never learned to look for mines. The range indicator is a small QoL improvement.

Safefall: Let's you fall from much higher and survive. A QoL improvement for the LA in that they won't take very much dmg at all if they forget how much jet pack juice they have left. I have no clue yet as to how the 20% resistance to vehicles will play out. (Will maxes be able to survive a wraith flash?)

Regeneration: Gives you heals when out of combat for 10 seconds. A big QoL implant that gives you health. For those who would say that it replaces medkits, just picture this: imagine you just killed a planetman, you are low on health and you see someone coming after you. What do you do? yell "Hey, can you wait 10 sec for my regen to kick in, the about 5 sec to fully heal up?" No, you would be dead. Medkits are infinitely superior to regen.

Counter-Intelligence: It automatically spots enemies that dmg you. I can count on one hand the amount of time's I've been damaged and did not know where it was coming from. If someone is above you, the odds are you'd be dead anyways, because due to his superior positioning, he will basically only hit headshots.

Minor cloak: Ask Demigan, I really don't want to even explain this one, TLDR: it's practically useless.


So now we move onto the pricing:

First off, I feel sorry for those that cancelled their subs. I saved 2 months worth of cash claims to get 2 packs.

I see how some people could complain about the prices, here's the most prominent thread of it, but, why rewrite an argument?

I believe Demigan single postedly gave the best argument for the pricing:

So there are my reasons as to why the implant system is by no means, pay2win.

As a new player I have to say it seems like you're underestimating the benefit these implants have. Keep in mind that one thing that bothers people is not which implant is better but which are available. I will never be able to afford new implants which means veteran players or those willing to spend money will always have more options or a small advantage. If a track runner gets to start the race 10 meters ahead of the other runners, yeah maybe it's not a huge advantage but it is one nonetheless.
I am sorry for how this will sound but to be honest your post comes across as a bit disingenuous.

I disagree. Some implants increase your odds of winning substantially.

Target Focus - Its pure math really when sniping. Imagine an enemy running around far away from you and standing still for a short duration, repeating this pattern. He does not stand still long enough for you to sense this and act by pressing the shift, then perfect your headshot aim and shoot. But if you already hold breath already you can perfect your aim when he stops and score a kill. This has happened to me many times and it is only the limited hold breath duration that works to the enemy advantage. Doubling my hold breath time allows me to win, seeing the health bars allows me to pick opponents.

Safeguard - One less death when you are down in doorways etc. So this implant is more of a "pay 2 not loose".

Assimilate and Vampire - If you are in a heavy firefight or being a knife maniac these implants restore your health, allows you to live longer and win against more opponents

Sweeper HUD - Driving fast in vehicles, (or at night as one other guy pointed out), anti-vehicle mines will not be rendered before its too late. Besides, there are not all situations where you can move slowly and look for mines. So it increases your "safe" movement speed and saves you from death. Still this implant is in between pay 2 win and pay 2 not loose, since you might already be engaged in fighting and can take out more opponents.

Regeneration - Honestly, you can use medkits, but then no C4 wins. I acknowledge your one example where regeneration did not guarantee a win, but if you were to get away you could regenerate to full health and win more.

So if I read this right - all the implants are bad except some which aren't AS bad but are still pretty bad because you're awesome regardless.

So we should get them all for free at max rank then.

Battle hardened is the most pure P2W implant, especially if your NC heavy. Take the Gauss SAW for instance, with its 500 RPM. When your 1v1 against an enemy heavy, you can expect to get hit at least one time between each round you fire, and the resulting flinch makes you miss completely or not get that critical head-shot blow, or go in a flinching death spiral.

Free battlehardened to the NC's!

I disagree as well.

Even if basing the implants of off the flat-out stupid idea that one shouldn't have max-ranked everything, the actual cert costs to upgrade just one implant is still quite excessive in a game where there is always more to be certing. This is especially true for new players, whom already need 100s of certs to upgrade a single class.

As for the implants themselves, I don't care enough to argue that most aren't arguably simple QoL things, (though by all means they aren't, in my opinion) so I'll just mention the few that I do half-heartedly care enough about to dispute.

Battle Hardened - This is actually quite a substantial upgrade, basically cutting down on the number of "forced" misses. The true effect is something like the difference between nanoweave ranks 4 & 5, or an auxiliary shield. Minor, by enough to have an impact. Both, though mainly nanoweave, have saved me many, many times.

Catlike - There are a lot of places when one can reach with Catlike than one can without, even by blatantly exploiting as you seem to endorse ( ). The jump height allows one to travel further as well as higher. For example, one can jump to the second floor of a techplant from the outside shield gate with Catlike with fair ease. While anyone can get on top of the gate with a bit of practice, it would take a jetpack for anyone else to reach the small lip on which the railing rests. Today, this allowed me to get to the point faster, easier, and from an unexpected route whereas my allies had to come through the longer standard stairs and lift.

Sweeper HUD - As said above, it isn't always practical to go slowly to check for mines or other explosives.

Safefall & Regeneration - Not likely to be directly useful, but can give one the slight edge in a fight following their respective circumstances.

Let's examine some of the OP's claims more closely.....

Perhaps not P2W, but virtually mandatory for snipers. Unless you're shooting at largely stationary targets (other snipers, engy turrets) you're going to need that extra hold breath time.

Personally, I kinda think this one is irrelevant. In general, if I die in a really bad place, I'm not getting out of it. Rez or no rez, Safeguard or no Safeguard. If you so much as twitch, people pour fire onto you and you're "dead" before you even stood up again. If you die in a decent place, you'll get away anyway, and Safeguard won't change anything. The number of times Safeguard will make the difference between survival and death is massively niche. Even for zombies on a point, it's not likely to make that much of a difference.

Very popular amongst vehicle pilots none the less. Might be QoL, but they'll WANT it.

The number of people who will find this useful can probably be counted on your hands without recourse to your toes. Almost pointless for the vast majority of the playerbase.

Here we're going to massively disagree. "Small advantage"?? Hitting headshots you'd otherwise miss is not a "small advantage". There's a damned good reason everybody's screaming about BH, whether on reddit or the forums. Sorry, but I'm pretty sure you're just straight up WRONG on this one.

Sure... if you're attacking a group. But the majority of knife stalkers generally try to pick off solo targets unless they're specifically going on a suicide run, and even then - if they're wielding a power knife - this implant may well turn a 3-kill streak into a 5 / 6 / 7+ kill streak when you're beserking in a group! In addition, the final level of the implant gives you health when you get a pistol kill too..... This implant is virtually mandatory for Stalkers, and means that you can easily run mines rather than skill sticks and get your healing from your kills.

The jump boost is nice, but only really let's non-60 FPS'ers start playing around with some of the stuff the 60 FPS'ers could do before. Minor change, imo. However, you're dead wrong about the movement speed bonus. With Catlike, you can maintain your angular velocity, while bouncing up and down to screw with your enemies aim and dodge a bunch of headshots. Crouch-spam meta will directly increase your kills, survivability and KDR.

Mostly agreed, but it's really useful in vehicles when you CAN travel slower - which is a lot of the time you're approaching a choke / usual mine location. For vehicles, I'd say this is the other almost required implant. Also pretty useful as one of the few implants that really help MAX's out. Not hitting that AV mine is priceless.....

You're forgetting about every other class that doesn't have a jump-pack. There's lots of tower bases where you can jump from the airpads onto / nearly onto the points. Max Safefall will let ANY class do that. You don't have to drop as a LA to survive any more, you can drop as HA or MAX and pull it off too! Hell, it even lets you bring medics along for rez's and stuff. This is REALLY useful, if somewhat situational.

You massively underestimate the usefulness of this implant. I run it on pretty much all my non-medic builds any time I'm not playing with my outfit, because you simply can't rely on having a medic nearby and, unless you're chugging skill sticks, going into a fight with half-health is a sure way to lose. And not having skill sticks lets you take C4, or mines, or whatever. If it's a smaller fight, or you're not in the thick of the battle - i.e. any time you CAN afford to take 15 secs in cover - this implant will put you straight to full health whether there's a medic around or not.

I don't vehicle much, but apparently this is a massively useful implant for vehicles and particularly air vehicles. I know a lot of pilots have been screaming about how this one is now a super-rare implant, and how they can no longer target things that are shooting at them or whatever. I can't really comment personally, but there's been enough hullabaloo that I'm inclined to think you're underestimating this one too.

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Moving on.... I can easily see that those who have very limited playstyles won't be too badly hit by this, as they can get their 1/2 necessary implants leveled up and they're golden. However, I'm fairly sure that the majority of the playerbase are generalists rather than specialists. They're gonna need a lot more.

So let's examine a typical generalist infantryman (probably a decently large slice of the playerbase):

• He can probably skip Ammo Printer as it's largely a vehicle thing and not that useful for infantry.
• He'll want Regeneration to at least 4 though.
• Personally, I can't see much use for Safeguard, and would almost never take it over less situational things, so let's skip that.
• Target Focus is virtually mandatory for sniping, so he'll want that one to 5.
• Safefall is situational, but virtually mandatory in the situations where you'd want it, so he'd want to get that at least to 4.
• Sweeper HUD is really good for MAX's to avoid AV mines, and there aren't that many good MAX implants anyway, so let's get this one up to 4 as well.
• Assimilate is only useful to 'lites, so we'll skip this.
• Catlike is virtually mandatory, so we'd want to get this to 5.
• Ditto for Battle Hardened, although we can probably get away with 4 on this one.
• Vampire is almost mandatory for stalkers, and the pistol boost only comes in at 5, so that's what we'll need.
• Counter-Intel is super rare and mostly for vehicles, and Minor Cloak is just for trollin' so we'll skip those.

So basically, our dude is going to need : Regen 4, TF 5, SF 4, SH 4, CL 5, BH 4, and Vamp 5. Only 7 of the 12 implants, and none of the super-rares. And even then, only 3 of them need to be maxed.

That'll cost a total of 15,825 ISO (1,200 x 4 + 3,675 x 3). You get 225 ISO from breaking down a 9-pack, and let's assume that our infantryman gets all the implants he wants from those packs (not really a safe assumption, given some of the stories online, but let's go with it as a minimum).

To collect and upgrade the implants you'll need for our generalist infantryman you'd need to buy 71 implant packs. That represents 53,250 certs or 31,879 DBC (~$270). If bought purely with certs, and an assumed average earn rate of 100 certs / hour, that represents 533 hours, 22.2 days or, at 3 hours daily - 178 days or almost 6 months. ONLY on implants, nothing else! To put it another way, 53,250 certs represents 13.3 million XP, or ~BR 90.

No matter which way you cut it, you're looking at a massive cert / paywall, and I stand by my assertion that the implants system is P2W.

Its not P2W, because you cannot guarantee the outcome of which implant you get, although you know for sure you get DUPLICATES like confetti. Its certainly an abuse on certs, typical DB, change means your shafted.

So if a person hacked their account to give themselves ALL Implants at max rank, I expect you'd say it's really not so bad because they wouldn't really be getting an "outright advantage". More like they'd be getting a slight "Quality of Life" bump. Kinda hard to fault a chap who's just trying to improve their situation and make "life easier", while at the same time never giving themselves "outright advantage".

I do have to say that P2W is a little bit more than just "you can get an advantage if you pay".

Timewalls can also P2W, but it's more subjective when they become P2W. For example you have a much more powerful weapon available to everyone. But it takes a minimum of 2 years to unlock when playing the game and other players can simply buy it. Then it's definitely P2W as for most of the player's carreer you can't compete with the players who paid for it.

PS2 has timewalls. And if you look at the complete picture you could say it's P2W. But if you look at it on a smaller level you realize it isn't (yet). PS2 consists out of many small timewalls. It doesn't take much to get your chosen infantry class up to speed, and the basic weapons you receive are for the most part some of the best weapons you'll ever get. From there you can dissolve another timewall and expand your capabilities, cert into another class or maybe into a vehicle. Ofcourse vehicles should be treated a bit differently. A vanilla HE tank is still more powerful against vehicles than a fully certed HA. So in a support role they are already pretty powerful from the get-go. But they also have a larger timewall for solo play (although I would argue that the biggest timewall for vehicles is learning to use it beyond pop-up attacks and full-frontal engagements).

Just my personal opinion (seeing as this debate is not going away).

• If you play the game for free it will take a long time to accumulate the certs for reasonably well-levelled implants. If you pay to play it takes less time. If that is P2W then it is justifiable imo - payers should get more initial benefit than free users, so long as the F2P have the chance to catch up eventually. If I get on a bus I have to pay like everyone else. If I could ride for free by agreeing not to use a seat for the first half of the journey I wouldn't whine about having to stand up .
• If you are relatively new you probably didn't have many implants or chargers to give you a starting pool of ISO4. Vets who didn't use their old stocks to make chargers will have got a big boost at the start but others will catch up eventually, so this is a temporary advantage. Even so, I can see the frustration in not being able to upgrade the implants you do manage to get, as being new in the game is already hard going. I do hope the plans for being able to collect ISO4 more easily come onstream soon.
• To help new players and free players the most, I'd have granted Regen as one of the free implants myself. I think Regen is possibly the most useful all-round implant to everyone. Fortunately for me Regen dropped almost imeedaitely every time I purchased an implant pack (and Regen 3 is slightly better tham my old Regen tier 1 implant - that'll do for me for a while).

I run regen on every avatar plus target focus on sniper infils, plus a random (whatever dropped) in the second slot - mostly Batlle Hardened which I got quite a few of. Never having used anything other than regen IDK what else to go for so I will probably stay with Battle Hardened as I rarely play HA and missing shots in CQC without the protection of an overshield is irritating.

The other implants seem a bit situational or dependent on personal playstyle imo. I haven't upgraded anything other than Regen yet as I am saving up and waiting to see what further implants will be launched before commiting fully to BH.

I didn't utilize implants with the old system and I've yet to see any reason to start now with this one.

The argument of never feeling behind an insurmountable 8-ball or indifference to a means is never a factor in the argument of whether that means is equatable to being pay to win. Where does it fall, however?

Implants give you an outright advantage. Its not important how big the advantage is, its the difference between having it or not that matters.

Now to the system. Its random based, so you cant get what you want. The System enters the P2W area at 2 points, the first is the point that 2 implants are rare so it take substential longer to get them. The second, and more important point, is that you have to buy packs over and over again to level up the implants you already get and doing this with certs takes alot of time. The second point actually fits your understanding of P2W.

The System would be alot less P2W if Implants, or at least upgrade resources would randomly drop in game.

Actually the second point helps prevent it from becoming P2W.

Imagine this: You can buy implants for certs. You can upgrade them for certs.
Any time you upgrade for certs, you don't have a chance at getting a new implant you might want.

But with the current system, if you go upgrade stuff you first get a free shot at a new shiny implant you don't have yet, and if you don't get that shiny new implant you still get the upgrade points! It's basically a win-win!

Well, I will reply to the guy that wrote a thread against this topic:

Focus is given for free to all, now granted, I am probably the world's worst sniper (Less than 200 kills with sniper rifle), but even at 1.5x as long, it is already a huge boost.

Battle Hardened: I'm going to be honest with this one, before the implant system FIRST came out I didn't even know there was a 'flinch' mechanic. So back in the day I got one and I decided to equip it to try it out. It did absolutely nothing for me, as my accuracy/Headshot ratio didn't improve at all. That all being said, I could be completely wrong about the t5 version of this implant, however I believe that there are far superior options available.

Safefall: You do have a point here, safefall would be useful in situations. I have yet to think though that "Man, I just wish I had safefall equipped." I could see it being useful.

Catlike: While writing this part I had only thought of HA using this implant with the over-shield on, thus slowing them down. However, I can only see this being useful when hip-firing, due to the speed reduction when ADS.

Regeneration: What you said very accurately describes what I believe the definition of QoL improvement is. You are absolutely right, with this equipped, you do NOT have to go back to spawn to get a medkit, you do not HAVE to look for a medic.


Let's move on to your pricing.

Regen - won't level 1 get you to full health in under 15 seconds? Would it really be necessary to get it to 4?
Target focus - The duration for holding breath increases from 1.5x(level 1) to 3x(max) that is only 1.5x extra as long, not a big difference imo
Safefall - haven't used it yet, but I heard that level 4 let's you fall from a bio-lab air pad with out and dmg taken, would you really want to spend that much ISO when earlier levels will help in most situations.
Sweeper - At level 1 it detects mines from 10m (I think), it would take ~3 seconds to walk into a mine as a max. This is more than enough time to avoid it.
Catlike - It is a 45% increase of speed from level 1 to max. Try crouch-walking half as fast and you will see just how big of a speed boost it is.
Battle Hardened - Once again, it's only a 20% difference from t1 to t5, not calculating the whole double bonus thing at t5.

Let's get to the chances. When you buy 9 implants, you know with 100% certainty that you WILL get 9 implants. What are the odds that you will get NONE of the above?

Ridiculous arguments. Of course its pay to win.

it isn't pay to win per se, but it is as close as possible.
750 certs gets you 225 lame-new-resource, and it takes 3,675 lame-new-resource to rank up an implant
(after getting lucky enough to get the one you want.)

so that is repeated 750 cert dumps until you get the implant you're after,
and then 12,750 certs to rank up that single implant.

i've made 140,000 certs on my main since joining in march 2013 so 12,000 certs is over 10% of all certs i've earned in 4 years.
that is INSANELY grindy...

so yeah, it isn't strictly P2W because you can waste your life away unlocking and upgrading them ingame,
or simply whip out your credit card and gamble away...

So much drama and unpractical arguments.
I do have some concerns about benefits some implants can give, but thats all adjustable (like when buffing/nerfing weapons), you would get your iso4 back if an implant is being adjusted.

After spending some time and certs with the system, depleting the 5k or so I got for my old implants and chargers plus 3 packs, I did not get any super rare, but still a quite functional array of stuff, which is practically all I need. So I had almost no useful implant before, but redirecting the resources into the new system (plus 3 implant packs) I got something much more useful (and without being super lucky with the gambling, just getting mainly common implants and a few of the less common, but no super rare, just as it would be on average).

The implants are very situational, none of them is mandatory, your supposed to be smart spending your iso4 on the stuff your playstyle needs, and remember you can't equip more than 2 anyway. The old system was much more frustrating, because upgrades where random, now you have to make a decision, thats a skill by the way (once you upgrade something and realize it was not the best option you will see what I mean, lol). You don't maxout all your vehicles your not using. If you would think that everything is mandatory, its just crazy.

Now even if I had the money, I would not just waste it into a possible maybe advantage in a video game. Anyway, you would probably not face anyone on your server who spend 1000 bucks into the implant system to get that bit extra, but then just using 2 lousy implants to fight you.
Most likely when the second wave of implant arrives, there will be also alternative ways of getting iso4. Also maybe new players should receive a bit of iso4. But the system in general is OK.

There is no Win-Win in a System that is build around making money.

Well, someone's making money ...