Player Features and Ideas Discussion

With the emergence of the bug with skins allowing any ship to be skinned with any skin, we should stop and look at how it would effect sales of skins.

Redo skin licenses to be hull size based rather than specific ships. It might break lore a bit but paying 20USD for a single skin for a single ship is a bit of stretch, paying the same or slightly more for a skin that applied to anyship in the class would probably drive sales through the roof.

With this change LP based skins for corporations could be introduced; Have tons of LP but nothing of note to spend it on? Spend millions of LP for a corporation or faction based skin exclusive to this acquisition method. Various sizes for ships and not limited to specific hulls; SOE Rohk, Thukker Ishtar, ect

Giving flexibility would let CCP get really creative with themes that dont have to apply to specific ships. Solid gold Nyx anyone?

I'd go one further and have SKINs be race-specific, ie: apply to any T1, T2, T3 or Faction ship within a specific race, ie: Amarr, Caldari, Galente, Minmatar or Pirate.

No, this would require them to raise prices to compensate, and require them to create a specific skin for every hull in a size class rather than the current system which lets them release Skins as they're created for a given hull.

Release a couple as a test. Use the 30d model, so if it is deemed a failure, then 30days after the declaration, the problem is gone. As for the bug letting us put any skin on any ship, if it can happen as a bug which makes most ships look cool, then why not make it into an ascended bug which people might be willing to pay for?

Skins should be able to be applied to any ship. There's no technical reason they can't as is apparent from the bug. Personally I think CCP would actually sell more skins this way. Which means they would not have to be more expensive. I'd totally buy a few skins if they could be applied to any ship. I'm never going to buy skins for ships I don't fly and I'm very unlikely to buy a skin that applies to one ship unless it is both awesome and cheap. Anyway, I'm off to fly my Police Pursuit Hyperion before CCP takes it away.

Having seen some of the awesome combinations of SKIN and hull that people are making with the current bugfeature, I'd be all for them having a median price point that will allow me to apply that skin to any ship I own in that class.

Edit: e.g. A Quafe Cruiser (T1) skin, a Sarum Destroyer (T2) skin, etc.

If they want to get fancy with the system, they can tie it in with LP, as mentioned above. For example, you could get the 3rd Party and Pirate skins (Quafe, Blood Raiders, Police etc) only via the NES, but have things like the Sarum skin tied to your standing with the Amarr. Then, you have to use your LP (+ISK) to buy a skin that you can either use yourself, or put on the market. That way people will grind standings with the relevant faction to get the skin so they can use it or sell it and make good ISK.

Lore-wise it would add up:

- You pay vast amounts of cash to secure a less-than-legal SKIN as you're officially an independent capsuleer (NES store/Market)

- Your service to that faction has given you certain privileges, including flying a non-standard ship (e.g. a Svipul) liveried in the colours of your chosen faction (e.g. Caldari Navy), but they demand tribute for the SKIN code (LP +ISK)

But, that's just my thoughts.

Tim

P.S. Would pay good money to get a Quafe Stratios as it currently looks with the system!

so 'Sarum frigate' to 'sarum supercapital' skins with different prices? Makes sense; we can already fly ships from different races than we start out with. We should be able to unlock any skin for any ship as it is currently.

I don't even want to talk about how much money I would pay to be able to create a skin accessible only to members of my alliance that includes our alliance logo.

Like ridiculous money. Hell you could charge me like 10k arum to design it and than charge individual alliance members 500 each to redeem their copy. Hell make putting a logo on it a non-default option and charge an extra 1500 while I'm putting the skin together.

Boom big one time payment from the alliance making the skin and a steady stream of smaller payments from members.

Also adds value to being an alliance member.

In my eyes there should be 2 classes os skins.

First 2 color "heraldic" skins like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_heraldry so an color + 1 metal highlight. You would buy them for all ships. The ships would have no logos on them (to dismiss the QA problem with random manufactur logos showing up).
So you could fly your "corps" colors or your own private "Red Baron" without needing to buy every "redish" skin and missing half the ships.

Then thwere should be the 3+ color skins, special designed skins for an ship .. think of an Designed By Karl Lagerfeld Skin with an pinup of Claudia Schiffer as an Manufacturers logo. I mean just some colors are nice but I want to see some really cool tribal minmatar skins etc. If I should pay 30+ Bucks on ONE SHIP / ONE SKIN then hell give us the rainbows ;) Or at least stuff looking very special. I saw the chinese skins for the birthdays .. they are sweet.

Just my 2 cents ..
TL;DR: 2 clases of skins: Basic colors + highlight with one buy for all ships and special expensive designed ones

After the MayBug and evaluation of the current implementation I would suggest the following:

The basic idea is to make indestructible SKINs for AUR, all the others -- for ISKs+LP.

1. Skins type 1: per ship. Not class of the ship -- but single specific ship. The skin license and the skin itself will be lost when the ship re-packed or destroyed. You can buy them for ISKs and LP from NPCs.

2. Skins type 2: per ship class, same as type 1, but you can apply them to any type of ship within same class, no faction restrictions. You can buy them for ISKs and LP. Lost when the specific ship is re-packaged or destroyed.

3. Skins type 3: permanent or time-limited per faction (as it is now). Indestructible. Only for AUR.

4. Skins type 4: permanent or time-limited per ship class. Combination of 2 and 3. Indistructable. Only for AUR.

5. Skins type 5: designers made ones for premium price of different type: per-ship, per-class, per-faction, unlimited. Indestructible. Only for AUR.

In the ideal world I would love to see the skin mixer to mix existing SKINs of the same type into the new one (take color 1 from the first skin, color 2 from the second skin, logo from third etc). This operation will destroy the original SKINs and create a new one. This will truly open the way for creativity in the game, which currently does not exists at all in any shape or form.

From the technical point of view it will require to send to the client app an extended packet describing the applied skin as following: [color1: skin_id1, color2: skin_id2, color3: skin_id3, logo: skin_id4], where skin_id# can be the same in case of pre-built skin; or different, if skin was created using skin mixer.

Thanks.