Assembly Hall

Because I got a lot of views on one of my particular blog posts, I figure that I should bring it here for further consideration.

(Original Post: http://2ndanomalyfromtheleft.wordpress.com/2012/02/27/let-me-see-ship-skins-as-veteran-rewards/)

There are a lot of things Eve players want.

But there are some things that, ya know, we are rather surprised that Eve doesn’t have. Today though, I want to talk about Ship Skins and Ship logos.

I am personally surprised that customizable ship skins haven’t made their way into Eve yet. In fact, it kinda seems rather silly that a game totally about making your own decisions.. doesn’t allow you any choice in ship colors. The funny thing is, the more I ponder this.. the more I think that this is a serious issue. It may not be as serious as overabundance of supercapitals in 0.0 fleets, but it is something that individually we desire because we all have that individual spark.

Eve really doesn’t have a way of showing that and it is a downer to see that your particular ship looks like everyone else’s particular ship. This should not be! Look at how beautiful the art department rendered the universe we fly in! Surely, it really isn’t that hard to have a simple palette of color to which we can beautify our ship?

Ah, but how about we do one better? How about we tie those options to longevity and exploration of the game? Perhaps this is a way we could see this:

All ships will have four color attributes:

•Main Color (256 colors)
•Secondary Color (256 colors)
•Window Color (Red, Green, Blue, Yellow)
•Logo (Corporate or Alliance)

For New Players inside their trial period, these choices aren’t available. Once you reach a certain number of skillpoints, say for example, 3 million skillpoints (or approximately three months worth) the palette opens up for you to design your own personal color scheme, but you can only keep one. And once you select it, you cannot change it unless you pay a very high isk price (100 to 200 mil isk). If you are in a NPC corporation, the Logo automatically defaults to that of the NPC Corp that you are in. After a year, and every year thereafter, you get to have another color scheme. Each year, CCP will present a single pattern that can be applied to any ship.. but it will only be available as a redeemable gift to active accounts from CCP.. never to be repeated. The gift will be given only to those who had been active the entire year prior.

Corporations and Alliances will have an additional two choices available to them as well, however, those designs are set up on a permissions basis, and may be restricted to certain members. If you are part of an Alliance or a player Corporation, you will have the option of choosing either the Corporate logo or the Alliance logo.

So, whaddya all think?

I fully support skins for ships, but not by player selecting their own colours.

If there is one thing I know about Eve (and other MMO players) its that there will be a number of people who think it's funny to make the most obnoxious horrible coloured ships to fly around in. Simply to make the game look ugly for other players.

I can see it now.... giant Pink Thoraxes, named P3N15 and things like that.


Get the art team to churn out a bunch of options for each ship, and the players can buy their choice of those.

So long as the skins are restricted to dark eve-like colours, then I support that idea. I dont, however, support the idea of n00bs getting penalized for having not played long. Eve already penalizes people based on "time paying for an account". Im not saying the way it is now is bad, just that we don't need more of it. You could give rewards to "proactive" players (as opposed to just old ones) by making the main color free to change, but any other colour customization could cost ISK (Scaling up depending on how many colours you change and the size of your ship)

Skins, supported. Customization depending on account age, not supported.

This

Someone used to play Ultima Online, Leather Dye Tub baby!