Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Purely my opinion on how I would like to see it done.

The license for SKINS would come in two flavors much like Blue Prints come in two flavors. The main difference will be that you cannot make copies of the SKINS. Thus an Unlimited SKINS license can be used until sold or traded while a Limited SKINS Licenses can be Sold or Traded until used.

Currently we have one shot paint jobs available. Ones you buy for aurum and others you get as drops/loyalty rewards. I dislike the current method of applying paint jobs to ships as it means the destruction of any rigs should you not be using a clean ship and is ultimately clumsy. With SKINS it is a given that a packaged ship will not be required to alter the ships appearance. Converting all paint jobs to limited license SKINS will make the best sense and when SKINS is ready to be released, we will have permanent paint jobs that can persist beyond a ships destruction which will be great for corp/alliances. For the sake of simplicity I would avoid multiple runs on the Limited Licenses which means that current BPC Paint Jobs with multiple runs will be split into multiple individual Limited Licenses per the number of the BPC runs.

For Corporations and Alliances an additional tab will be added to the corporate management window and any Unlimited SKINS can be dragged and dropped into the window and then become a corporate owned asset. These will automatically become available to the corporation as a whole to use. If the corporation is the Executor Corp of an alliance, then an additional panel on the SKINS tab will be available and all Unlimited SKINS dropped into it become available to the Alliance for use and thus become an Alliance owned asset. Any attempt to drag Limited SKINS into the windows will be meet with an error. The SKINS can be removed by dragging and dropping into a hanger. Assignable permissions and roles will need to be created to manage these on a corporate/alliance level.

Any SKINS in either the corp or alliance SKINS tab will be seen and be available to any pilot in the corp/alliance when they open whatever window will be meant to manage the SKINS application to individual ships.

Finally, since corps close, alliances disband, and executor corps change there has the be a mechanism to retrieve these licenses as well as maintain their consistency. When a corp is closed, all SKINS licenses are moved into the hanger of the now ex-CEO. When an alliance is disbanded and closed, all SKINS licenses are moved from the alliance section of the SKINS tab to the Corporate section of the Skins tab of the executor corp. For changes of the Executor Corp, the Alliance portion of the SKINS is closed to the former executor corp and is then opened to the new executor corp with all current SKINS at the time of transfer visible and usable.



Random thought: a limited license of the ships current SKIN has a small percentage chance to drop when the ship is destroyed... call it a 'burned SKIN license".

Yes they are. But this is more than just angst with the existing paint job method.

The implementation of SKINS that CCP has already mentioned would definitely not require the ship to be packaged to apply so rig destruction would not be an issue.

CCP seemed to imply that SKINS as a license would be non-destructible. Which other people in other posts mentioned as a problem with the current paint jobs in game. For certain traits - such as corporate/alliance paint jobs, one shot SKINS makes no sense at all. I would image that the price point would certainly be higher for such persistent and unlimited applications of SKINS but to answer the question about the price point of destructible paint jobs ask yourself this: is the current price point for the paint jobs, whose application requires a packaged ship not counting, acceptable?

There are currently no permanent paint jobs to make such an assessment. And the expiration of a SKINS job was implied, not stated, so clearly it is something subject to change. But I would agree that the current cost in AURUM of paintjobs is higher than I am willing to pay aside from something I might ship spin or PvE in High Sec in.

I think what has happened is that CCP looked over the usage data for ship skins as they are now and, while they may have sold enough of them to justify continuing to develop the system into what we now know as SKINS, that same usage data also indicated that not very many painted ships are being lost, let alone undocked at all.

With how loss-averse most of the EVE playerbase is and with the cultural meta that has grown around killmail values, I think the only way people are actually going to use painted ships in any kind of combat that isn't a mission is for that paint to not be lost with the ship. "One-shot" SKINS may seem to make sense from a business perspective and probably are the right way to go in any other game, but this is EVE and people are ... not like that here.

Which is a problem if CCP is not taking into account the reasons why the data is the way the data is. Data mining is great and all, but it does not tell a complete picture. As you said: given how risk averse people are, their data is effectively bad data except to prove that one shot paint jobs are not a winning strategy.

I suppose the closest comparison they will get is: how many more people buy clothing - either from NES or from those who resold from NES? This is still an imperfect comparison since we are fighting and dying in ships and it is the ship that many people really associate their in-game identity with rather than clothing.

Honestly, their best method of comparison would be unlimited paint job runs, but then that is best left for SKINS itself.

By the way, I would imagine that if CCP really wants to get into the value of it, they should contact Piranha Games of Mechwarrior Online and find out how much money they make from people buying camo and paint for their mechs. It also will not be a perfect comparison because there is another factor to contend with: MWO is free to play while EVE Online is not. People will say: "I spend $14.99 a month to play and now CCP wants me to pay more?".

They better have plenty of fig leaves as back up should that happen.

But the identifying factor for EVE are the ships, not the clothes, so I don't ever see that changing.

I know. I actually read the dev blog and watched the o7 program.

Since you do not seem to get what I am stating I reread what I wrote and I see where I edited out a sentence that would have made my point clear. I will also assume others are missing that point as well: this is about several things, one of them relates to the how current Paint Jobs should be converted to SKINs, not "losing rigs sucks wah". With SKINS it is a given that a packaged ship will not be required to alter the ships appearance. What I have seen are other posts in other threads where people are concerned how SKINS will effect existing Paint Job runs and their value. That is what this post also aims in part to address.

I hope that clarifies it.

edit: I added the missing statement to the original post.

Hmm... which is why someone else's suggestion that the name given to the ship appear on the kill boards. Just imagine how many of those would be named: "pinpmobile"

Not quite sure what you mean there, but I have visions of one day seeing the production lines of arrays actually producing ships in POSes... but that is another story.

@ Colette Kassia - I think what could be considered 'higher end' and thus more 'expensive' would be skins designed in house - artistic and not something easily done in whatever paint studio we would use for the SKINS. Though, I imagine some of the people that play EVE will give CCP a run for their money in terms of what they come up with on their own.

And of course skins are created per ship type due to the varying geometries.