EVE General Discussion

Cool



I have a bit of an issue with this "express yourself" thing - since it does seem to play into the $1000 pants rhetoric of the NeX marketing men. I would be happy with letting people change the dyes and patterns on stuff to "express themselves" individually but I do worry that clothing without stats and attributes is all too easy to relegate to the NeX ghetto and that will prevent any actual integration with the Eve economy.



Depends on the complexity doesn't it really?

I mean take implants and implant sets at the moment - there is no one optimum implant set and instead you combine individual implants to make the ideal combination for you. Not everyone uses slave implants because not everyone flies passive armour tankers. Not everyone uses +5% large laser damage implants because not everyone flies abaddons. Even with the same ship preference you have different combinations of implants to work in different ways. Make the system complex and varied enough and you can have a big range of customization. Allow players to customize the look and feel further with dyes and patterns and you are golden.



I can see your argument but I don't agree with it - given a big enough range of stuff and varied customization options.

I am Herzog Wolfhammer and I agree with the OP.

Agreed with some of the ideas....But.

They only should keep it to clothing no more than that.
Just appeal, no player involved.

And with a price range of 1-8 bucks per cloth piece.
After they are done with the social areas of EVE , because clothing have no sense with no other person to show it.(only if you are fapping to your avatar, now that is another case)


As for the paint jobs in the ship, they should be for free and a way to players to make money by developing and putting their artworks in the market, so players that enjoyed that ship paint job would pay it in isk to have it etc etc.

Jade,
Some great suggestions here, + rep for that.

I am 100% behind your idea to make clothing/gear player produced and allow the purchase of OOG items with Aurum. But, as someone else mentioned, where I see this breaking down is the idea of clothing imparting stats for pod pilots. If we are to remain true to EVE lore, there doesn’t seem to be a place for this, at least in space. However, there are a number of activities that one can partake in while docked in station that could benefit from clothing stats. As an indy player, I see a huge opportunity for some new content.

What about making the stat improvements pertain to refining, research, invention, PI or any other activities one can do in station? I know one can also do these many of these activities in space, but they could get the clothing stat bonus while docked in station using CQ. This would drastically improve the usage rates for CQ and give indy players something new to chew on.

NO. The only bonus your boots should give you is +2 inches of HEIGHT. The only bonus your monocle should give you is +4 watery eye. What is this fascination with magic underwear? If the PLAYER operating an establishment in a station is so inclined to give you a discount on your purchase because your cute avatar is wearing an especially short skirt, then that should be his drunken CHOICE. Not an ingame mechanic. You wearing a lab coat should have nothing to do with your refining skills or how efficiently your corporation processes moon goo.

A lot of agreements with this post which is nice off course. But the objections are the most interesting part, those of us who don't like the fact that items would give an ingame bonus must remember that:


- They wouldn't be bought with aurum but ingame by players using isk
- They would be procured/produced/crafted by players
- The bonuses would be only to logical items
- As suggested only when actually wearing the clothes

For instance: (top of my head; purely speculation wise)

- Monocle gives bonus when scavenging equipment in the hangar bay you have your scavenging equipment setup (seeing structural weakness) or hate/likes from certain NPC's. Admittance based on fitted characteristics (high class clubs)
- Sarum ceremonial robe would give you a bonus for missions of the Sarum family (or higher level missions)
- Heavily tattooed Minmatar face would get you nowhere with Sarum family but high on the Thukker tribe list or even earn you bad/good points in political circles inside Minmatar tribes.


I don't think anybody is proposing that any pair of boots or any other outfit no matter how fancy would actually improve your ship stats, unless they are directly linked to ship performance, just like implants are. After all special goggles can 'partly' do stuff an implant can do, theoretically. The monocle is an implant as is the pirate patch like items on the nex store on sisi. They could do implant-like stuff but perhaps with downside/upside kinda stuff.

It comes to mind that Implant production, based on items gathered and produced is another item that could be moved into incarna. I can't say how many times I have seen crafters working away at social areas/private tables in so many other mmo's crafting jewellery, weapons, arrows, fletching, etc. It actually boggles the mind that all this has not been thought out or reviewed by CCP to be included into incarna and instead has been moved to the sterile NeX environment. No wonder they can't find anything to do.

I do however wish to state that any kind of magical cloak, boots of extra armour or any kind of other silly stats enhancing piece of clothing is a no go. And off course any kind of advantage bought with an item in the NeX store with Aurum is just plain CCP corporate suicide. In no way should my post be regarded as a suggestion into that realm of idiocy.

See this right here is a big problem. Just when did things change to make ship customization somehow an "optional vanity thing" rather than a part of the Eve Online that our subscriptions pay for?

This is the kind of pernicious shifting goalpost that makes me so deeply suspicious of the NeX concept.

Why the heck is ship colourscheme and logo customization not a part of the core game that paying customers can expect to get included with their subscription?



Well ultimately whats in it for them is that the game continues with a healthy subscriber base right? If we learned any lesson from the past summer its that the expected hordes of eager new incarna-ites didn't arrive to make up for the mass unsubs of unsatisfied long term players. Unless CCP keep us happy subs will drop and their ability to fund their future projects suffer.

Motive enough to give us content we want?

All your very long and quite well-thought-out reasoning and further exposition boils down to "I want magic clothes" to me. Figure out how to do all those things without introducing "magic clothes" and I'm on board.

Not a bad concept, all in all.

I do see one advantage. If current (and hopefully expanded and customizable) EVE store content were to become available through the Nex you could spend isk to purchase those items. Suddenly the idea of buying a high priced coffee mug with a Vexor on it becomes more attractive.

I must point out that all of these objectives could be accomplished by simply selling BPC's through the Nex... including items that confer advantages. Yes, I know the masses would scream Pay to Win, but the fact remains that even items that confer ingame advantages would end up for sale on the secondary market for purchase with ISK. The person with lots of cash would have absolutely NO advantage over a player with lots of ISK.

Lets face it, even now most people do NOT spend cash on Nex items. Instead they spend ISK to buy the PLEX they convert to Aurum to purchase items from the Nex, without even touching on the buying that occurs directly for ISK on the secondary market.

If BPC's were sold thru the Nex the entire EVE production/material aquisition sandbox ethic would be involved. Granted, the whole production process would have to be thought out completely, but that would be a very worthy way to spend dev resources.

I do share your concerns as to where the line is drawn between items available now for a fee, and items that should simply be part of your subscription. But frankly if CCP feels the need to increase revenue, I'd much rather people be able to purchase items that they may want and voluntarily give extra money for over the other option... that being raise everyones subscription rate.

While i share your ideas (although stat-cloths is something carefully to be balanced or it becomes mandatory = everyone looks the same) i don't think we live in times where CCP can and wants to go down that road. They look at WoT and drool.

Its way easier to do this in an MT-model (agressive MT with stat-cloths), and i'm sure many at CCP wanted to do this already. They are doing it with Dust514 anyway.

Lets face it: everything is already in place to do it both ways, CCP choose to do it the easy way, so you are of course right, if they have the choice they will go that road. You just seem to ignore the fact they are doing it already, and dispite Hilmars letter (i want to believe) how realistic is a 180° turn?