Main takeaways from the video.
Both of these are being resolved later this year.
I realize you probably made this video a while back, but we've already said both of these things are happening, sooooo...
Thank you wrel! Even tho implants are likely are huge part of your revenue, its steps like these that show the devs really care about what the players want.
Definitely. We've been moving that direction from the start, just slower than folks would like. I'm not a huge fan of lootbox mechanics, personally, but it's undeniable that they've been extremely valuable as a monetization system.
For most of the game's life, the economy has mainly revolved around certs. Prior to the implant system, Weapons were a big revenue generator for us. Unfortunately it got to the point where dropping 1000 certs on a new weapon was chump change for the average veteran, meaning those weapons no longer monetized as well as they should have, which meant there was less incentive to create them in the first place (remember back when every new weapon was NS?); and since new weapons are considered a form of content for a lot of players, being tieing into directive chase and leaderboards and such, it was depriving the playerbase of a form of content they enjoyed.
We never wanted to increased the cost of weapons, though we have been increasing cert gain and the amount of double experience events greatly over time. So we needed something new and longer-tailed that ideally would help players thin out their cert wallets as well.
Enter - revamped Implant System, now with new and improved lootboxiness. Outside of the infinite ISO fiasco on release, it did what we wanted it to. Veterans sunk certs to get packs, and then sunk more certs to upgrade those implants. One of the problems here is that this system also impacts new players, which is one of the main reasons we later added easy-to-get implant packs from low-tier directives, and implant packs/ISO gain from alerts and seasonal directives and such.
Knowing that this doesn't make RNG feel any less bad, we had a long term goal of introducing the ability to craft implants, a feature we completed last year. We still want players to engage with pack unlocking (there's still a monetization element we need to preserve,) but it shouldn't be the only way to unlock implants. Exceptionals, the big chase items, were the... well, exception in this case. Since the ISO economy is still powered by certs, before allowing them to be craftable, we wanted to have a better throttle beyond ISO to keep them feeling rare and limited. With the introduction of Sanctuary and the Mandate system, we plan to have Exceptional crafting on the menu.
devtrackers.gg