Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ok, Nex prices are stupid. This post, however, is not about my sadness that a monocle is as much as it is. I'm fine with the AUR prices or at least, I don't care since I don't have to buy.

What I'm not fine with is the immersion breaking stupidity of shirts and jackets that cost as much as a faction battleship. SO, there needs to be something in game to explain this -- and perhaps to give me a reason to buy these items without feeling embarrassed.

A starter model for explaining this should be PLEX, which are really just game time but get immersed in the game as 'Pilots license extensions' or some kind of payment for a capsuleer's privilege of being a capsuleer.

So, the way to make this work for a shirt or boots is to say that you aren't actually paying for boots or a shirt. Buying those would, of course, be trivial to someone who trades in kilometer long spaceships. What you are paying for is a symbol of something else. Just as, for example, I can easily go out and buy a military outfit, that doesn't make me a military officer, the clothing in the NeX should actually represent position and not just an article of clothing.

So, for example, one might tie these items to standings and suggest that their purchase is really the purchase of a 'commission' or something like that which bestows upon the wearer the right to wear them.

Now, one could just tell themselves this story as a kind of RP consolation for NeX stupidity, but a more tangible idea is to give all NeX items standings prerequisites. So, you want to wear a sterling shirt, for example, then you need (say) 2.00 with some faction navy. You want to wear the Field Marshall jacket and you need (say) 8.00, and so on.

One great thing about this for CCP is that it would allow them to recycle currently used item graphics with the minor change of faction rank insignia (like the already existing ranks in militias) embroidered on the sleeves, etc. For the players it'd encourage mission running or faction war or other game activities so that they could wear the cool items associated with rank. And, as I've said, it'd explain why these items are so expensive -- in the dystopian future of eve, you not only earn standings, but then pay (through bureaucracy or bribery) for the requisite 'commissioning' that goes along with wearing an item.

I posted before about how I though the ishukone battleship paint job should similarly be tied to standings, as should all future 'faction' special paintjobs. I hope to eventually see alot of these but my hope is that they mean something, and this is a way to do that.

Of course, there has to be some items which have very low (or no) standings requirements, but even these can be explained in a similar way. So, for example, if I want a Quafe shirt, the description could say something like "you have paid for a very stable long term investment in Quafe industries which has afforded you limited edition investor t-shirt" or something like that. This way, when I sell my shirt for 400mil, I can at least pretend that I'm selling quafe stock or something like that.

Again, that's easy enough to fix with item descriptions and could on it's own add to gameplay and immersion, but to really bring it to life, some items should actually have standings prerequisites to use.