EVE General Discussion

Ok, this is something that's been bothering me since the new SKINs were implemented and they were quickly exploited to evidence that all SKINs could be applied to all ships. That showed how CCP's approach to implement paintjobs was not the usual in industry (!!CCP!! is always reinventing the wheel, preferably as a irregular polygon).

The ordinary way to add a paintjob for a object in a game is to take a "blank" texture map and paint it in the desired way. That is refined with all the intricacies of the business (texturing and lighting of 3D objects takes a lot more time than just modeling them), but you get the picture: each paintjob is a custom work made specifically for that object.

This is how EVE ships and objects are textured.

Now, with the coming of SKINS, CCP faced a tough choice. Thery could do things right, retexturing each ship so it looked perfect with a new painting customized to it, or go the cheap, fast and shoddy way of editing the existing maps.

Editing the map means that you can take a texture and apply certain effects to it -like, say change the color value of certian areas, effectively changing the colors. Since this is made based on the pre-existent attributes of the map, the result is somehow unpredictable -it will tend to scatter color patches on the model, based on the local values.

The advantage over a more conventional approach is that this way is faster and requires a lot less of work, compared to crafting individual textures for ships. By "faster" we're talking of "50x faster" or "100x faster". Meaning that you could "customize" 400 ships in the same time as would take to retexture 8 ships in the ordinary way.

The downside is that ships customized this way look shoddy and a same Skin will deliver different patterns and paintjobs, making them heterogenous and random (since they are, in a way, random: they change values which weren't incepted to be changed, on objects which weren't intended to match each other)

Here's some proof:

Orca in "Development" Skin

See what do we have here? This skin paints a Orca with partial yellow strips giving a "bumblebee" pattern, with some random yellow accents on the hull. Cool, but not as much as if the strips were solid and wrapped all around the hull.

Mackinaw in "Development" skin

Okay, same skin, so the pattern should be the same, right? Wrong! We have just some yellow accents randomly patched over the hull. No stripes can be seen. It's not just a completely different pattern, but it's difficult to notice that the ship is customized in yellow unless you compare it with the base model.

So, any ships with the same SKIN may look completely different, and aesthetically speaking, most of them look sh*t since colors and shapes don't match anything from the ship geometry. The result is that most SKINs are mismatched to most ships, even if they are tested to not be technically broken...

This way to customize ships is horribly cheap looking and shoddy, and yet CCP charges up to 35 $ for some of the SKINS. What can be done about this? Likely little, since the only real solution is to retexturize each ship individually, which would take a gazillion man-hours in a game with as many ships and such high quality as EVE.

Ship SKINs are a case of quantity completely over quality. The only missing part is that this poor quality work is being sold as if it was a good quality one. SKINs are being sold individually for each ship, rather than be sold as all-ship packages, which is exactly what CCP has developed. We're paying Full Texturing prices for QA'ed one-size-fits-all textures that in most cases don't look good.

And that bothers me and disuades me from buying the little SKINs which actually look nice. They should be sold as what they are: one pattern usable with every ship in game, rather than be sold indvidually for each shp as if they were a custom paintjob.

If you don't like the SKINS don't buy the SKINS.

It's interesting to try and analyze your attitude.
Not only on SKINS, but to all of EVE.
That little signature of yours talks loudly: "I want it my way and will rant on the forums if I don't get it."

What he said - simples !

CCP could do everything that you ask, in terms of skins and all the other stuff that you're constantly bleating about, and you'd find something else to moan about.

You come across as one of those people that isn't happy unless they have something to complain about; in customer services they add an N and a T to the word customer to describe people like that, it's not a compliment.

OK, but then I want Girls und Panzer Skins.

No. See, I'm getting a bit sick of this attitude. Why should they? Because YOU PERSONALLY don't like them? Well, news for you honey, I like them, I'm paying for them, and I intend to get ALL of them. My only contention is that some of them seem to be pretty weak-sauce efforts at artistry, like some of the Amarr reskins that really don't look that different from the original. Other than that, my Raata Sunrise Raven farts in your general direction.

If you don't like it, don't use it. That's it. They'll see whether or not people in general are disliking it as much as you by the lack of purchases. If there are enough purchases to justify continued development of skins and retention of existing ones as they cost now, then they are not going to change it for a few perpetually-negative whiners on the forums.

I plan to collect all the Kador skins....

... for obvious reasons.


One little thing I wish the art team would do though, is now that some stations... like Kador for example, have been changed from the golden opulence of days past to this newer blue/silver motif, the insides of the stations could stand a bit of color coordinated updating too. Just for the sake of immersion. It's still awfully golden on the inside and it clashes with my new blue/silver Kador skinned ships.

YK

My only true gripe is the same as Arthur's; Serenity from my understanding has a much better selection of neat skins. I would love to see them ported over to TQ, though for a gripe, it's not much of one since it wouldn't really bother me if CCP doesn't port them over.

That said, as for the price, the way I see it is that it is another means to support CCP monetarily besides subs, the SKIN of which is like a thank you gift from CCP for doing so. The price might not be vary fair if the SKIN's had some use in game other than pure cosmetic and were comparatively more expensive than what their worth denotes. However, since they in fact have no real practical value, there's not really a "fair" or even an "unfair" amount...it's what ever CCP decides. We've been perfectly fine without the SKIN system for a decade before, so if it's too expensive for your taste, do what everyone else does regarding features that they could care less about...ignore it and go about your marry.

Something else to consider is that at least you have a way to get them without you yourself having to pay a dime. Most games that have vanity items like Eve's SKIN's are "paid-for-only" and offer no way for the player to get them in game without a credit or debit card. Someone still pays, but it not having to be specifically the one purchasing a SKIN is a pretty nice compromise, I'd say. I assure you your gameplay will likely remain largely unchanged should you choose to dabble in them or choose to carry on without so much as a care in the world that they exist.

My 2 ISK (and, no, you cannot has the rest of my ISK )

So your saying there is two different types of variety of skins, retextured and recolored? Eve went with the recolored option, right?

Example:
Colored texture = Cod weapon skins?
Retextured = HD minecraft mod?




Possible thread derailment:

As long as ccp does not let players use sliders and tones to customize ships, skins should stay in ccp's hands because of the stupid themes players would color their ships with.