EVE General Discussion

Like many other eve players, the prospect of player corporation and alliance painted ships is something I would like to see.

That being said, I always envisioned this to be a player driven activity; perhaps with one player creating the schematic, other players gathering the materials required, and then finally the schematic being applied to the ship using a facility of some kind.

http://evenews24.com/2015/01/16/super-kerr-induced-nano-coating-ship-painting-2-0/

The suggestion being put forward at the moment is that players would purchase the skin via a micro-transaction, and then that skin would be automatically applied to every ship which the said pilots steps into.

The strange thing about this is that the ship magically paints itself in space, and then magically un-paints itself once the pilots leaves. So slightly immersion breaking. Also we do not get the opportunity to do interesting things, such as stealing another corporations ships and then using them against them. And I am sure there are many other such interesting prospects available to the imagination of the creative eve community.

Another factor is that linking this much wanted feature to micro-transactions would tarnish it for those opposed to micro-transactions. For things like clothing no one gives much of a thought about as they are generally regarded as vanity items, but apply that to a much wanted feature such as corporation ships and it leaves me feeling similar to how I felt when I heard facebook was buying Oculus Rift.

On the flip side, I do like the name.

But is CCP missing a trick here?

Though I do agree with the part where it's weird how it is applied.

It is finally there, and it is still a vanity thing that you can buy with micro-transaction.
People aren't against micro-transactions in general, they are against micro-transactions that give you an unfair advantage on someone who doesn't want to pay to win.

So, clothing is a vanity item, and a ship skin that does nothing but change how your ship isn't vanity but .....

So, completely fine with how they put it out now.

Ah yes, you are correct there. I had actually forgot you could convert PLEX to AUR as I never use that system myself.

Alright, well ignore what I said about the micro-transaction part.

And yes, it is not a complete feature so there is hope for the future. I'd really like to see the application of these paint schemes in the hands of industrialists rather than this currently proposed system of it magically appearing when the character boards the ship.

I would like to be able to set what skin I get as a function of what ship type I enter. Obviously, I could do that manually by changing the skin when I change ships, but that would be a click fest. After all, I have a computer, it should be able to remember my desires and do it automatically.

Edit: As for immersion, I figure all ships have a coating that allows for any and all coloration schemes. It's a color changing skin. Up until now we have not been given access to the systems that control it.

Should we prepare for the uglification of space? (Can you believe uglification didn't alert as a misspell?)
I know we all think our ideas are Einstein quality. But...how many Jack Sparrow ships can you endure?

Can I haz your shirt ?

I kind of agree. We've wanted player-generated decals on our ships since, oh..., round about forever. Over the past 11 years I've seen all kinds of suggestions made about how it could be doable without bringing TQ to its knees, and the best solutions were always things like pre-approved decals, added to by alliances being able to submit their own (which would consist of a skin tint and a logo) the same way they submit their alliance logos, and having them produced via standard blueprint + authorisation to use alliance logo, and then the item is irretrievably (think rigs) applied to a ship. The new assets get added to the thin client the same way alliance logos do, TQ stays upright, everyone's happy.

That's what I always considered to be the gold standard for how this mechanic would work, when CCP got around to implementing it. This new system, however, smacks of a perfectly good system being corrupted to make another system seem more valuable: the New Eden Store.

In the many years between the birth of EVE and the birth of the New Eden Store, the game has gone through several changes that have gradually made more and more of the items in EVE playerproduced. It was already impressive that, at the dawn of the game, almost everything was playermade. The New Eden Store introduced an entire class of items that are not playermade, and, now that it's there, I'm worried that CCP are going to forego the value of the 100% playerinvolved economy in favour of trying to prove that the New Eden Store is successful. I'm worried that, for every new thing like this, the first question is going to be "how would this work in the NES?" rather than "what's the system going to be for players to make this?"

I'm going steal an analogy from Dave Gorman, here. I think it's like the big coffee machines they have in coffee shops. They buy these big expensive things, which are absolutely brilliant for coffee because they put the water out at the right temperature for coffee (i.e. not hot enough to burn it), and then to try and make sure it's getting used enough they use it for everything, so you end up with cups of tea being made with water not hot enough to scald the tea leaves and get the brew going. The original method (a kettle) would have done fine, but because they've got this massive machine at a large investment they feel the need to use it for things for which it shouldn't be used. If they could steam a panini with the milksteaming wand, I'm certain they'd try it instead of using a panini grill.

Obviously, as has already been said, this is a system that's going to go through iterations before it becomes something CCP is happy to deploy, but I hope these iterations bring it in the direction of something a lot more EVElike and a lot less Zyngalike. I'd hate to see a longawaited feature like this become fodder for the PLEX->Aurum stored value system and the New Eden Store.

Sheesh ... get a life, Grumpycorn!

I think they got it just right.
As has been said before, it isn't really immersion-breaking, since Super Kerr Induced Nano Coating isn't just a simple paint job.

Also, I like the idea of the Skinning System being somewhat like League of Legends' Skinning System, where you buy the _entirely optional_ skin once to use whenever you like.
All it needs now are some unique skins for single ships, some "fleet" skins available to a certain pallette of ships and corp / alliance skins with their own logo and maybe own colour scheme.

10/10 would farm PLEX for this

Heads up! There is now a devblog on this topic, with its associated feedback thread here.