Player Features and Ideas Discussion

It is widely known that CCP is going to remove attributes and take a hard look at implants. I am going to identify some issue with implants and propose some solutions.

Here are some of the issues that implants have:
1. Lack of mobility: In other words you can't take a clone that has snakes and another clone that has slaves with you in the same trip. You have to move one, then jump clone and move the other. Also, WHers can't have multiple sets of implants at the ready.
2. Slot overlap: Omega implants overlap with the slot 6 hardwiring implants. Warfare mindlinks overlap with slot 10.
3. Slots: Hardwiring implants are arbitrarily assigned a slot. There is very little rhyme or reason and these assignments cause conflicts with desired implant combinations.
4. Attribute Implants: Attribute implants still exist.

Solution:

• Capsuleers can build and own any number of pods.
• Pods have slots that can accept implants. The slot layout is 5/1/5/1 (H/M/L/R)
• Slot 1-5 are pirate implants (high slot),
• Omega transfers to the Omega slot (mid slot)
• Hardwiring implants take up the 5 hardwiring slots (low slots).
• Warfare mindlinks take up the rig slot.
• All hardwiring implants lose their slot allocation. pirate implants retain their slot allocation.
• Each type hardwiring implant can only be used once. So you can't use AA-01 and an AA-02 implant.
• Attribute implants are removed from the game. Attribute bonuses of pirate implants is removed.

Let's tackle each issue one at a time and see how this solution fixes a lot of the issues with implants...

• Issue #1 Lack of Mobility: You can treat pods as ships and move them as if they were ships. You can hop into your slave pod then load up your carrier or hauler with pods that contain snakes, crystals, or any combination of implants. Then you can move those pods to wherever you are going. Once you get there switching from one set to another is as simple boarding another pod.
For you WHers you can also store any number of pods in your POS hangars and board them as you need them. No more going back to HS to swap clones.

• Issue #2 Slot Overlap: Omega implants and warfare mindlinks get their own slots respectively. No more overlap.
• Issue #3 Slots: Hardwiring implants are no longer assigned a specific slot. This way you can have any combination of any 5 hardwiring implants you want. Simple and allows you to be as creative as you want.
• Issue #4 Attribute Implants: Attribute implants being removed from the game frees us of slot conflicts with slots 1-5 and makes Eve better.

What next:
This frees CCP to create any number of new sets of pirate implants, hardwiring implants, or plainly new type of implants. Which means more choices and fun for everyone!

Preemptive question answering:
But implants are a part of your clone, not a part of your pod?
Correct. So think of your pod as a pod/clone combination. The game may show the pod as having the slots, but really the clone part of the pod/clone combo does. Think of boarding another pod/clone combo in station or in space is sort of a "No cooldown instantaneous jump clone". To do that from far away you will still incur the cooldown of jump cloning. For you RPers you can think of it as connecting a cable and doing a quick transfer as opposed to uploading and downloading yourself to a far away pod/clone. Also, podmails show implants so there won't be much to change for podmails.

Removing attribute implants will mean that everyone will run around with pirate implants!?!
Actually... They won't. At a perfect remap and a full set of +5 attribute implants you would gain 2700SP/hour. Switch the implants to a high grade set of pirate implants and you gain 2610SP/hour. Most pilots would consider the advantage of the pirate implants to be worth more than 90SP/hour. If they didn't they wouldn't use pirate implants at all. Seeing how people are still choosing to fly with attribute implants over pirate implants shows that when those implants are no longer there they will not switch over to pirate implants.

Removing attribute implants will create a vast hole that was previously filled with easily tradeable implants. What do you propose to fix this?
I admit that attribute implants do sell well because there is a large demand for them. However, CCP can add any number of items to the LP store to compensate this loss. I personally predict you will see an uptick in hardwiring sales from those who want more performance. CCP can always create unique combination implants and add them to the LP stores. For example, the Imperial Navy Modified 'Noble' Implant already exists in game already and give a 3% bonus to armor hit points and a 3% bonus to repair system repair amount. You can't get that combination with another implant. tl;dr things will be fine.

This will allow people to sell pods with implants on contracts. which means people can sell implants that are used on a clone by only selling the pod!
Yeah. Someone could sell their slave pod. Is this good, bad, or something else? If CCP doesn't want people to do that then they can disallow it. If they don't mind some free market transactions then they can allow it. I don't think it will matter a terrible lot either way. Feel free to voice your opinion about this.

Feel free to post any thoughts, questions, or comments! I will try to answer them as quickly as possible!

Mind posting some links to this "well known" fact that attributes are going away.

and not the csm minutes where they talked about it

Yes, this is one of the better quotes about this issue. It is from the CSM minutes which I know you don't think counts. What is so interesting, and why so many people (many are current and former CSM members) involved in these types of discussions considers the removal of attributes a done deal, is that there is very little discussion of "should we remove attributes?" in the minutes. If they were considering removing attributes they would open up the discussion with "should we remove attributes?" and the minutes would show that argument. CCP didn't have that discussion. CCP essentially came into this meeting and said "Here is what we want to do. Here are some solid reasons why we want to do that. Here are some effects (in this case attribute implants and rate of SP/hour) we are concerned about. Can you give us feedback about those effects?" That was the discussion, not the other way around.
What is also key to understand is that this is not the CSM Summit a few years ago where CCP would present something or start a discussion and very little to nothing of that discussion would happen. CCP put some thought into this before they presented it. They have a game design team discussing and working on it. It's not a "maybe someone will work on it" and "maybe something will happen". Someone is working on it. Someone is going to do something about it.

tl;dr Feel free to pretend this is old CCP, but this is a CCP with a plan. That plan is to remove attributes.

Oh boy they "talked about it" in a CSM meeting.
For now all we have is a discussion in the CSM meeting minutes. When or IF this gets into the dev blogs then we could consider it something that may make it to the game. But even then in my 5 years in the game there have been many things discussed in CSM meetings, or in dev blogs, many of them have even made it to one or more of the test servers and then been scrapped.

In other words when this discussion moves from speculation on forums like this and the CSM meeting minutes to open dev blogs or requests for feed back from the community then and only then can we even start to consider the removal of attributes as a done deal.

Since EvE is supposed to be a game of choices and consequences, and given that the attribute system is a major source of choices and consequences I do not see it going away, at least not completely. But time will tell who is correct.

The main doubts i have are based on restricting slots 6-10 (the whole omega not being in slot 6 and mindlinks not being in slot 10 i am willing to experiment with) that seems like it leaves an aweful lot of space open for gankers with NOTHIGN BUT ALPHA IMPLANTS or super carrier pilots with nothing but the slave set and the hg-1008s... I feel the current "well if i want this i cant have that" is pretty cool...

My personal solution has always been to allow clones to be carted around in space as an item with ~10-20m3 of support hardware i mean surely the clone tube and other peripherals dont care if they are on a freighter or on a station aslong as they are fed power from some kind of socket.

I was going to jump on the "well known fact" bandwagon but I realize I'm late, so I'll just point out that the amount of times I've found myself having to choose between an omega implant and a 6% hardwiring for that slot is just too high for it not to be a conscious design decision by the devs.

While implants could use some iteration (crystals vs slaves for capitals, anyone?) I don't see this particular slot overlap going away.

Lets see. You can now stack the (newly affordable) complete geno set for 4.7% more CPU and PG with both a 6% for PG and CPU. Hmmm, I can only think of about a dozen ships this allows to do hilariously OP things, like 100mn MWD vagabonds with guns.

Having it on a list is not the same as it will happen, or even if it happen sometime in the future it may be 5-10 years from now...

Until its officialy released from CCP that they are removing attributes or attribute implants we should all assume its NOT going to happen anytime soon.

I'm going to quote this because it pretty much sums up my sentiment.

While I have no problem with removing attributes, the OP's proposal basically wants to do away with any an all conflicts that may arise when equipping implants. This does not jive with the ethos of EVE where everything comes with a tradeoff.

A good example is the Slot 6 implant; you either get an Omega Implant (amplifying the primary 5 implants and their secondary effects)... or a really powerful bonus to a really critical ship system (CPU, PG, etc).