EVE General Discussion

There have been two main arguments made by CCP devs regarding the 'fixing' of the bug that enables almost any skin to be applied to almost any ship. The first is the most straight forward and logical of the two: it's a computer resources issue. Now this is quite understandable. Even ships that share a common hull design, such as marauders with their T1 variants, have a number of small differences. It is completely possible, indeed quite likely, that a SKIN designed for the Megathron may not work perfectly well even with a ship such as the Kronos that shares 95% of it's model. This tiny conflict could cause a small increase in system resource use, which when multiplied by multiple ships and pilots in an already resource starved game (at least until Brain-in-a-box goes live), could be the tipping point that leads to lag or even crashes. This potential issue is likely to increase exponentially when you apply it to ships not designed for that skin.

However, that being said, as this bug has proved, the graphics of the SKIN system are considerably more robust than CCP has been letting on. The cat is most certainly out of the bag and it's not going back into it. There is no technical reason why any SKIN design cannot be applied to any ship hull. Period. However, each hull does need to be carefully tested before that SKIN goes live to ensure there are no resource issues as stated previously. So basically, assuming that all the SKINs can be tested, there is no reason whatsoever (other than the person-hours required for testing) that SKINs can be made to apply to any ship. It's simply a matter of testing time and fine tuning, not a matter of whether or not it will work. Forcing us to buy SKINs for every ship type, rather than for each model (such as one SKIN for the Mega, Navy Mega and Kronos) when we can see that there is no practical reason other than profiteering, will likely leave a bad taste in player's mouths.

Which brings me to the second and much more contraversial point that CCP are making: that it's a question of 'lore' and they are not willing to compromise on the lore. I'm sorry but this is a fatally-flawed argument at best. How many times have CCP extolled the virtues of 'player-generated' content? How many times have they proclaimed proudly that, that unlike most MMO's, the New Eden 'sandbox' is based around the actions of players? How many times have CCP said that we capsuleers are (in the lore) at odds, in opposition to, or in contravention the wishes of the four Empires (Ghost Sites being a prime example)?

The true empires of New Eden are not found in the lore; they are found in the player base. Eve University, CODE, Brave, The Imperium (formerly CFC), N3 (what's left of it), and all the other major alliances and coalitions have a unique identity that has come from the interaction of human players over a long period of time. While Empire loyalist groups do exist (such as CVA) they are very much the minority of the playerbase. Indeed, each of us chose a race to be when we first rolled up our character... and that choice of race has absolutely no impact on any aspect of our game play once we're out of the rookie systems (and not much while we're in them). It's a piece of background fluff that has no impact in the ships we are able to build, buy and fly.

We are capsuleers. We may have originally come from the Empires, but we are no longer part of the Empires, nor their corporations. Our corporate identity is determined by the corporations that we, as players, have created, not by the NPC corporations we first joined. Every ship that a capsuleer can fly in New Eden has actually been built by capsuleers. By us. Every Tech 2 ship has been researched through a process of invention (T2 BPOs nonwithstanding), reverse engineering and generally through capsuleer innovation. In the lore. There is no reason, within the lore that we have created, that a capsuleer industrialist cannot adapt an existing ship's paint scheme to better reflect what his client (the capsuleer who is going to fly it) wants. If the client wants an Ishtar to have a golden paint job (usually the domain of the Amarr), then the industrialist simply shrugs his shoulders and programs the nanites building the ship accordingly (or sets up the Super Kerr Iduced Nano-coating accordingly).

In short, the true lore of Eve is made by the players. CCP is proud of that. The background lore is there to provide a background for us to work with. A background, not a foreground that limits every decision we want to make with the ships that WE have researched, invented and built.

TL;DR - TigerXtrm actually nut-shelled this very well in the above post:

Has anyone tried to apply the Panther SKIN to a Kronos hull? I'd like to see if possible.

Well, some people (*cough*) have reacted to the way you've released it, rather than to the feature itself. Not sure you wanted that, but the reaction will possibly be projected onto the feature.

EDIT: And onto CCP.

Shrug, who knows what's going on.

The spaceship simulator game genre is so anemic that they're not even making joysticks anymore; Logitech and Microsoft are offering 1 each and that's about it. Been like that for a while now. So CCP has decided to develop Valkyrie for the nanoscopic subset of simulator fans who will have an Oculus Rift.

Topic speaks for itself.

CCP set a target of adding or changing things within a 6 week time scale on a frequent basis moving forward.

No real trial and error evaluation period anymore - let's just roll this **** out mentality ;)

What could go wrong?

Devs Running out of ideas during these cycles?

Let's change the damage control icon is a perfect example.

I hate to think what the future holds.

Skins screams of ccp trying to appease or appeal to the average joe while trying to increase subs being the main focus.

Just need to count down until next develpment cycle and ponder what next will be rolled out without proper quality assessment and feedback.

Clock is ticking

Hilarious CCP logic. Enormously fun, clearly doesn't fit in our game.

Regarding the lore angle, why would capsuleers really care about licensing conditions imposed by corporations? Especially in this instance where the tech was stolen in the first place.

Pirates! In space! Doing what they want! Some capsuleers are pirates too mentally and killboardly and what can you say about their null sec empires? Why would they fly ships with logos of different factions and not strap their own on them, at least colors?

I've probably got a very unpopular opinion, but... I was kinda sad out about this glitch. Just a little. Wish it never happened.

When you guys first announced the ships skins, I was about as hyped as I am for the new structure systems (i.e a hell of a lot). I knew it would take time to implement, but I was okay with waiting.

Then the glitch happened, and at the same time I was exited and I felt really let down. Not by you guys, nor the skin system itself, but... it's really hard to explain. It just felt cheap that we could get these things through a glitch. I felt bad about exploiting the system you guys worked on. As much hype this has generated, it's put you guys in a very unenviable position of taking away one of the most loved features your players have been asking for, because the feature isn't quite done yet. Your reasons for doing it are totally fine; QA is a very required process, and for the sake of lore some of it has to get quashed.

But it's not really fair to you guys, since doing what you need to as a company is going to cause a good portion of your userbase (at least the less mature of them) to resent you for it and start crying doomsday again.

Though I don't quite agree with some of the pricing on the ships, I'd honestly rather pay for them via isk or RL money than I would cheat the system. And that's coming from a woman who pirates probably four or five songs a week, along with movies, and games, and whatever else I feel like.

All that being said, I'm gonna be sad to see my Sukuuvestaa Badger go :(
And my Sukuuvestaa Chimera
And my Sukuuvestaa Armageddon
And my Sukuuvestaa Hookbill
And my Sukuuvestaa Caracal
And my Sukuuvestaa Ferox
And my Sukuuvestaa Naga
And my Sukuuvestaa Stratios
And my Serpentis Corax
And my Serpentis Scorpion
And my Serpentis Chimera
And my...

@ccp

Intentionally calling a mechanic an unintentional bug.

@evecommunity

Naively accepting skins system change without whining.

http://i.imgur.com/Wpcr1Mx.png?1
Blood Raider Machariel.

now thats a thing of beauty, infact the other pirate skins on the machariel show just how terrible the bog standard mach skin looks since the lighting change.


Also as for your vaunted "Lore" excuse it doesn't hold water at all.

So lets say i'm a Guristas loyalist capsuleer but I came from an amarrian or minmatar background and fly those ships, what lore reason would stop me painting my ships to show my allegiance?

or I am a mission runner who flies constantly for the Ishukone Corporation with perfect standings towards them, but i fly a Paladin, who is to say I can't fly ishukone colours to show my allegiance?

I'm a Minmatar sebiestor who was raised in the federation so I fly Gallente ships. I have returned to be an active member of my tribe so I want to show my allegiance by flying sebiestor colours and markings. Who are you to say i'm not good enough because i don't fly minmatar ships?


The same argument can be repeated ad infinitum for every so called Lore excuse and lets not beat about the bush it's an excuse for not allowing cross faction SKINS.

We as capsuleers do not hold to the requirements of normal folk as you keep telling us. so saying we can't fly one ship painted with another factions colours is utter tripe.

Also if Equilibrium of Mankind a non capsuleer bunch of human terrorists can repaint their Amarr ships bright blue and fit railguns and shield tanks to them I think we can have some cross faction SKINS ye? :)