About IR Smoke/ Countermeasures

[MercDT]

The IR Smoke/ Countermeasures for the vehicle of your choice requires a 100 certification points to unlock at the moment. For some this might seem a lot and for others this is a quite an easy amount to acquire.

However I am bit confused at how they implement these, not so much in function but rather by making it a requirement to unlock. I feel like SOE is making the same mistake that another game made since it became quite problematic for newbies who are late comers to the said game and are often at a disadvantage (no surprise there) to others who have already unlocked lock-on weapons. The aforementioned "game" later fixed the issue of this specific unlock by applying it as a free "unlock" for anyone who hasn't unlocked the defensive item...although if I recall correctly it was only applied towards aircraft and not ground vehicles.

So how do you feel about this? Do you think that it's easily acquirable by freemium players who are interesting it just vehicle play? Or could this potentially drive away some of those new players?