Implants- Making them ready for primetime

[GeoGnome]

I know right? Another implant thread.... Well I'm going to try and make this exhaustive, so here goes:

Brief intro:
To those not in the know, implants are a system by which you can equip items to your loadout that will grant certain bonuses to your character. The bonuses are things like: The ability to fall twice the distance, the ability to auto-spot anyone who shoots you, the ability to not show up on radar, etc. One implant will be equip-able at a time, and they can be purchased for certs or station cash. It has been indicated that the implants will be consumable. It is implied that you can either purchase them in bulk using SC, or set up an auto-resupply with certs. There is no word on how long they will last, or their cost.

Issue:
Incase you have been hiding under a rock, the issue is that many people are concerned that this starts the game down a slippery slope, towards overt pay to win (p2w). It's not as much because you can purchase the implants with certs it is that the pricing of the implants, could limit their regular use by people of low BR who are not paying members of the community, because they have fewer certs to work with, and they are busy spending every cert they have to get those few things you need early on.

Old Implant Systems:
Okay, implants aren't a new idea. They were in PS1, you could have up to 3 on your person, they were unlocked via BR, and their use was limited by a Stamina meter. When you ran out of stamina, you ran out of implant benefits. Other games have tried them in the past. Another version of implants was shown by forumite vinLauria, from an old source engine game called Dystopia. In that game there were active and passive implants. Active implants granted an ability that had an energy bar, while passive implants would always run. All implants in that came could be deactivated by an EMP grenade.

Abilities:
The abilities the implants grant straight negate certain grenades and stealth. Whole items that were absolute are now situational. If you have invested all your time and effort into making a stealthy character with a silenced gun and what have you, you even put on a sensor shield so that you don't show up on radar, if you shoot someone with Awareness, your location is pinpointed on the map. If you have certed out your flash with radar and parked it so that it is telling you who is coming through the back door, 7 heavies with sensor shield can walk right past it and you'd have no clue. As of now, the Sensor shield, Fall damage, and regen implants work for sure, they can be seen in the test server. A few others do not. With the abilities being as powerful as they are, how do you protect against implants? A good response would be EMP grenades. A thrown EMP grenade can negate the ability of the implants. Also giving the implants some downsides would mean that picking an implant means that you need to weigh it's pros and cons. If you use Sensor shield, maybe when your manually spotted you show up for longer. If you use Awareness, conc and flash grenades effect you for longer. As is, with straight upgrades the next point becomes a really big issue, but by reducing the effectiveness by making the implants also have downsides, the next point on price becomes less of a big deal for the developers and number crunchers who are trying to make money from this system

Price:
Here is where the pay to win and power of the abilities all ties together. How do you charge someone for the implants? Permanent implants will mean people can save up for implants and will pay 1,000 or 2,000 certs after a while, but this does relegate them to the "High BR Player Only" side of things. Temp implants that are cheap means low BR players can get them, yet when you break it down to Price/hour it starts getting difficult to know who you are targetting. A good player can have a KDR of 4, and kill hundreds of people an hour. Their cert gain makes the implant an easy purchase that can be paid for entirely with certs. A low BR player just starting out, people who have shorter play times, and people who need certs to buy weapons and upgrades around the mid tier battle ranks, these people may not have the ability to get the implants with certs unless their cost is minimal. As to SC, yes everyone can get them, but for this, unless the cert price is lower than the SC price, and considering the power of the items, it does show preference towards paying players over grinding f2p players. This may not be the literal definition of pay to win, but it's disconcerting at the very least.

Solutions (Effectively all you need to read)
1.) Make the price of implants under 5 certs or 7.5 SC an hour. This shows preference to playing over paying characters, and still lets a 10 hour implant be at such a price that it's ability can be offset in a single play session of 4 hours

1a.) Make implants permanent. Many people who are upset about the implants, that I have talked to, have said this would be acceptable, as it means you can save up and it's something to aspire to. That said, the same basic pricing rules of preferring playing over paying members should be kept in mind.

2.) Make implant abilities something you can turn on and off, with an energy bar. This way the always on implants have some sort of control on them, and you don't get this sizable ability granted all the time to people

3.) Make hard counters for the implants. Cert lines to reduce implant effects, some kind of other player ability to negate implants, EMP grenades, something that can shut down, confuse, or destroy the implants so that people can counter them.

4.) Introduce negative implant effects. If I am immune to conc grenades and flash grenades I should have some weakness, elsewise it's just an over scaling up of my personal power in a way that I have no way of indicating to other people

5.) IFF indicator of implants. If someone is using an implant there should be some indication of it. Simply put, not knowing what you are getting into, when going into battle means that you are setting yourself up for failure. So you throw a conc grenade into a room, and everyone in the room has Clear Vision on, yeah you get an indicator that it had no effect, but why on earth did the game let me waste that grenade then? If your going to use implants, there should be a way to automatically distinguish the implant users, from the non-implant users.

Final Verdict:
Implants are just not ready for prime time, and should be held off until something more balanced, with counters and indicators can be introduced to the system.