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I posted this in the CSM minutes in regards to the player retention, and stupid little things that make games fun and drive motivation to do other stuff...posting here as this seems to be the proper place:

I think you would be amazed at how much of a difference it would make if you could do something as simple as customize the skin of your ship directly (especially for new players or bored bitter vets).

If anybody ever played City Of Heroes, that would be a good analogy of what I am talking about. All the archetypes had the same power sets and nothing you did in character customization made any difference in the actual play, but it made all the difference in your investment in the toon, and made character generation a blast.

In Eve, the ships are the toons in my analogy, and if those could be customized using an in-game interface similar to the UI, but specifically for the ship, people would want to get in different ships just because they look cool. This is anti-utilitarian, and seemingly stupid, but it's the little thing that make a game fun and worth it. It also drives goals and motivation for new players.

I have played this game on and off since '03, and surprisingly enough, the one thing I don't really feel like I am ever really doing is making stuff mine, it is just stuff I happen to hold. There is nothing special about any of my beloved ships. No battle scars, no tweaked out appearance, my thorax is just a thorax like all others.

Half the game is also shopping (my Wife loves shopping and yet still hates eve), I guarantee if she could shop for a thorax that was custom skinned and on market as a "customized" model (simply a different player designed skin) she would be at it for hours, or designing and selling her own, hell, she might even go into production, and mine and do all the other manufacturing crap, just to have her own line of designer thoraxes. It's the seemingly stupid trivial things, that make bigger mechanics work. I have manufactures all kinds of stuff in eve, and it is just variations on a bland theme to play the .01 isk game etc, it's not like me making it felt like I made it, but rather jumped through the right hoops....might as well shoot the red crosses. In other words, even though I made it, there was nothing special about it whatsoever, might as well makes drops in the ocean...if that makes sense.

The current skinning is a PETA, and the licensing and aura driven funky model now where they are yet still made on your behalf is likely in the wrong direction (I am probably describing it wrong because the mechanic should be right there in the fitting window, or a fitting type window instead of some external store that I have to do things and stuff to get it, which I will likely never bother to learn or care about).

I love Eve, and have played it forever, this is by no means the one thing missing, but having tried to recruit all kinds of people for years, mostly unsuccessfully (and more importantly seeing what they do end up playing) I think a simple thing like this would go along way to drive new subscriptions and give people reasons to try all aspects of the game.

Minecraft is insanely popular because building stuff is fun, especially stuff that is unique to you, even though it functions the same or similar to all other similar things.

This was meant for the droppable SKINS

You might say that, but it would be a foolish thing to believe. People remaining silent is not indicative of any opinion.

I'll see if I can answer your questions:

There is no reason we can't have both exist in the game. In fact the plan is to have multiple ways of acquiring SKINs. Permanent SKINs will be purchasable from the NES for Aurum but also in every case, found on the market for ISK as long as someone is willing to sell it to you.
Skins that drop today as loot will continue to do so, they will be converted to time limited SKIN Licenses. The time limit will begin once you apply the SKIN. They are time limited to keep the market price from collapsing.
There is no reason in the future we couldn't have time limited SKIN Licenses which are manufacturable by players through industry. A SKIN License is not special in that way.

You will be able to find all the existing SKINs in the market for ISK. If you want to stay away from Aurum and the NES completely, it is more than possible. Even the sidebar we are adding to the Fitting window is collapsible.
In terms of self-customizable skins we don’t have any additional information to provide at this point.

The old Ship skinning system was a pilot program, and from that program we gathered a lot of insight into player behavior and the popularity of the system. For example, frigate sized ships were far less likely to be skinned by player than battleship sized ships, even though we sold frigate ship skins at a lower cost. This is due to players assuming (probably rightly so) that they will lose their ship more often when flying a frigate.
We don’t want to tie a player’s ability to express themselves and look cool to a recurring cost in the game. We want as many people flying cool looking ships as possible, and they won’t do this if it takes a bunch of time (going through an industry process, making sure to stockpile skin items, etc.) and/or ISK to obtain a purely cosmetic item. An item which also currently has the negative gameplay impact of making that player a bigger ganking target.


Our stance so far has been to offer only cosmetic items and account services for real money, and this will most likely continue. On the other side, personally I am extremely against any real money transactions that directly affect gameplay, and I believe as a whole CCP also feels this way as well.


Oh no are they? You should get that looked at.

Again, buy what you want from the market for ISK. The volume of new skins we've released in the past was a technical issue stemming from the system used. For the new SKINs, we’ve made sure that any player who does not want to interact with our Aurum based system can completely ignore it, while those that do can purchase SKINs directly for personal use or to sell for ISK to others. The system is also flexible enough that we can create SKINs for in-game loot drops and potentially as part of some industrial process in the future.

Thank you CCP Terminus for answering a few of our concerns.

We'll see how this unfolds but I really wish SKINs involved more active aspects of the game (again: http://i.imgur.com/Mmj8jBk.jpg ). The same way I had hoped that making clothes for people could have included Planetary polytextile production. The truly amazing thing in EVE is that most of it's economy and industry is player based. Even cosmetic items should not differ (i mean some people use faction ships just for the pretty paintjobs, it's already a cosmetic choice).

Every new feature of the game should be a reason to add depth to microprofessions and link them together in surprising ways.

The CSM meeting we had had plenty of requests for #2. We'll see how it goes, there are a few issues which need to be resolved.

And yet people have no problem fitting a CNR/Golem with faction/deadspace equipment for mission running, which also has the effect of making them a bigger ganking target. No one said these skins have to cost a billion ISK, and I'm getting the impression now that the amount of Aurum you intend to charge for these things is going to be exorbitant.

As we all are. But I think we're in danger of shoehorning things into the NES, for CCP's profit and satisfaction with the NES, purely because they're cosmetic and we, the players, accidentally gave you carte blanch to monetise anything that isn't performancerelated, regardless of whether it's a good idea to do so, when we agreed to draw the line at the word 'cosmetic' during the original microtransactions shitstorm. I think that was a mistake. I don't think any of us realised that ship customisations was on the cards, and I think we all assumed we were talking about Perambulation, not 'real' EVE.

There's a difference between being able to ignore the Aurum store and being able to not be affected by it. I'm concerned that these things -- purely due to the 'licenses' shoehorn that's assisted you in removing the lossmodel and thus validating your intention to monetise them -- are going to be exorbitantly expensive in the ingame market as a result of them being realmoney items in the NES, which will, in all probability, based on historical data, be completely ridiculously priced.

2/2 (quotes limit)

Phoenix Jones has a point. #1 is very promising and I'm looking forward to it, but what people really want is #2.

If people like customization so much, its because it gives them a sense of identity for their character / ship / whatever. And clearly, corporation and alliance logos are more representative of their identity than a bunch of pre-made skins. Of course if we were able to make our skins ourselves it would be different.

I mean, of course its a lot of work for all these systems, and of course this is only a first step... But don't underestimate the importance of step 2.

Not entirely out of context - you're still having a time-limited system for some of the skins. This might work on the ones that drop, but it will most certainly limit the desirability of ones purchased for LP. I foresee near 0 demand for those unless this time limit is several months to a year in length.

Like someone else mentioned, I don't want to take month long break and see something like this time out on me. Why would I bother spending resources on something like that?

And for the permanent ones - where is your long-term market for these? Expensive one-time purchases will rule out a lot of people like me. I would be much more likely to spend billions of isk on an implant set that will gain me advantages than I would a permanent paint job for X ships - and the implants are at risk every time I undock.



That's a plus that you're willing to consider industrialisation of the SKIN market. It's a step towards a more EVE-like solution, but then you're still saddled with this on-character license that cannot be removed and sold after use. Still don't like it.



So really the lesson you should have learned is that the skin price was probably too high for frigates, not that people were afraid to lose frigates and their fittings/skins.

Personally I have yet to skin a single ship because they either apply to ships I don't ever fly, or in the cases I do own the ship (Dreads, Brutix) I would have to destroy my rigs to apply them. If I had ever had occasion to buy or fit a new ship that had a skin for it, I would have done so. I still have an assault frigate with large rigs on it - I don't go through ships that frequently. Your pilot program isn't a good gauge for the type of people that don't lose ships that often - and the limited selection of ships with skins weeds out the ships that I do fly and lose from time to time. And I know I'm not a unique case study here - pirate corps all over lowsec have pilots just like me.

Anyway, thank you for at least talking about the item issue. I still think this is a quirky way to implement what could've been a straightforward ship fitting that expanded on or spawned a whole new industry had they actually been real items. Items have value in Eve because they can be lost. I understand you want people to use the system but I think you're compromising a part of what makes EVE the great thing that it is with a non-intuitive alternate method of use.

Peace.

Then please don't place the "Buy" button everywhere like in the mockup. This is realy a thing that absolutely disgusts me in other games. It feels like this freemium mobile app crap where you are confronted with microtransactions every few seconds. And I don't mean the ability to collapse the skin section. Looking at and changing my skins will still confront me with the NES/AUR.