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Dear CCP Terminus,

I will start saying that I did not agree with the current implementation of ship skins, which every skinned ship is a new entity at overview and database. You are solving that problem, and I appreciate, thank you so much.

The second point are that I do not agree with the NexStore and the Aurum stuffs, but in that matter, I recognise that I already lost that battle.

The third are that I also disagree with skip skins became a not destructible item. In my humble opinion the ship skins should be similar to a rig, where you “fit” that skin in the ship and then it became attached to it, and are lost when the ship get exploded. You said that you are moving always from that model because people are afraid to lose an item with they pay real money to get. I counter argument saying that people are indeed afraid to lose it, because they paid a “big amount” money for it. However if you charge one dollar for a hundred “small skin rig”, people will buy it and will not be afraid to lose it, because it was cheap, very cheap. In fact, they will buy it, and then sell at the market the spare ones and buy another different type. Set the price at a hundred small for one dollar, a hundred medium for two, a hundred large for tree and a hundred capital for five dollars and every one will buy.

Make “skin rigs” (or create a new name for it), similar to the actually rigs, but with a new skin slot, so they do not broke the real rigs. That way, everybody wins. CCP rocket they money greed, players get several skins types and pvps brag themselves for killing skinned ship. Even put a new column at overview that show the skin fitted to be “the primaries”.

After all, that is my vision. Thank you for your time and attention.

Castelo

The other thing I don't get, and which really exposes the silliness of the 'licences' shoehorn, is that you're saying that ship SKINs are licenses for pilots, that aren't like standard modules and are with the player, not the ship, so we don't lose them when our ships explode, and yet they drop from NPCs, and one can then use them as timelimited SKIN licenses. What the hell is going on? Are they items or are they licenses? It's a system built entirely out of monetisation shoehorns and appeasements. It's a bad system. From the ground up.

Well, that's good to hear. Thanks for replying. The whole microtransactions thing has been so damaging to so many games, with entire systems being designed around milking the paying players harder, or exceptionally good artwork being reassigned to something in a marketplace instead of being used for its originally intended purpose. (I'm thinking of specific occurences in other games, here.) I'm just still afraid of seeing Eve go this way. That would probably be the end of online gaming alltogether for me. Nothing else out there feels worthwhile right now, and one of the big attractions of Eve is that it's not packed with microtransactions for every little thing. I can just pay my subscription fee and play, without being subjected to repeated attempts to seduce my credit card.

Edit: I'm still not convinced CCP isn't taking Eve in this direction, but thanks for the reply, nonetheless. The best thing that could happen to Eve at this point is the complete removal of the New Eden Store.

Forgive the wall of words, but...

I tend to disagree with everyone who thinks that everything in EVE is or should destructible, fundamentally our toons are permanent so long as we fund them - the consequence of "death" in EVE is relatively trivial, particularly once your ISK account reaches several billions. If everything in the game were destructible (NPC stations for example, and by by extension NPC agents and services), we'd lose much of the infrastructure we rely on to actually play the game, and I suspect it would be a massive deterrent to attracting and retaining fresh players. Whilst it may on the surface appear attractive, it could prove self-defeating in the longer term.

The argument that everything in EVE is player created/generated is also skewed. When you start out you are allocated default skills and provided with "free" stuff, and the game generates countless modules, materials, blueprints, skillbooks, implants etc which no player has the ability to build, develop or otherwise create. I'll concede that players have to do something in game for many of these items to drop, but the rewards remain game generated rather than determined by the player's intent.

As for SKINs (as they are being implemented) being "immersion breaking", I don't see it . The concept seems quite simple, logical and perfectly in keeping with the game. All ships are produced with the nano-coating in place and configured to the default setting, the "license" is attributed to the toon (in much the same way as your skills and wardrobe are), and the nano coating responds to the license to determine how the skin configures the refractive qualities of the hull to alter the outer appearance of your ship. It's in no way worse than all ships having identical slot numbers and attributes (and colours) regardless of the skills, level or blueprint research or even the background of the of the industrialist who happened to throw them together. Sticking with the Industrialist theme, for me, fact that your toon always develops complete amnesia after inventing a T2 blueprint is something that completely defies credibility and is a bigger affront to the "realism" of a point and click space sim.

I can see why people might favour a rig-style or station service approach, and I remember thinking those were better options myself, but if you want to encourage uptake of a cosmetic or vanity modification it needs to be attractive to the player base, particularly if there is a real world financial cost. Since their introduction, I have yet to see anyone flying a custom skinned ship - how many Rifter pilots are likely to be attracted to a ship skin when they know the ship will last minutes in a hi-sec gank fleet and likely only appear as red cross on the screens of their victims before they are swatted by Concord? To me a one-off license makes much more sense, although I do agree that players should be capable of repackaging licenses for sale on the market should they so wish.

Whilst I think there is still a way to go, I am more content with this new approach to ship skins than the ill-conceived blueprint model. I'd still like to see a greater emphasis on bespoke player and corps customisation options (which seems a common refrain) and shift away from the continuation of prescriptive CCP standards.

Love the idea CCP looking forward to Corp tags aswell.

But the new way of keeping them is excellent love the new mechanic.

Good luck putting anything in the mouths of the silent majority, whose mouths are, obviously, closed (on account of their being silent) .

The fitting window SKIN selection menu can have SKINs made available in any way we want. So theoretically we could certainly have them unlocked in the way you describe. Something like this will probably not exist in the initial release though.

CCP is going to be shooting itself in the foot if players lose the ability to profit from their investment. For myself what makes most of the custom/limited ships attractive is that they increase in value as time goes on. If I can fly it but never hand it on to anyone else to fly and it essentially turns into a T1 hull it's a wasted investment. To me this seems like a perfect excuse for CCP to prevent player profiteering. Sure you may gain a few bucks because the skins will no longer be trade-able however I think you will lose more when everyone realizes that they will never recover their investment in isk value.

EDIT:

Had to go back and re-read.

So for current limited edition ships if I had say 50 Sarum Magnates that were changed over to the new system then I would have 50 skins when the system changed over and I could still sell them and thereby not lose my investment?

Hopefully the somer blink magnate/ishukone scorp fiasco taught you guys something too, let's not have a repeat of that on a grander scale in the NES store

FTFY