this is just brief idea that came to mind. as of now, most of the skins and apparel in the game are present in the NES. with only a handfull of these things avaliable in PvE events like Crimson Harvest, Abyssal Deadspace or Project Discovery.
this is quite balanced i guess because cosmetics are a good source of income. but i think they could be implemented for yet another source. which is faction standing.
now. this is a PvP game and of course a good part of the population is aligned with player made organizations. but others prefer a more solo approach and align with NPC organizations like the FW Militias or any of the corporations that compose each empire and independent faction.
if you’re running missions for these corporations then you require to achieve certain milestones to unlock the new difficulty lvls. and its fine for now, but outside of gaining reduced broker or reprocessing fees there’s no real incentive to keep going.
thus the idea of giving rewards to the player once they reach certain standing lvls. these rewards cannot be sold, rather, they are 1 time rewards given to the character due to their “loyalty”. this comes in the form of a ship skin or a piece of apparel unique to the corp or faction that provides it. there would be in total 5 rewards consistent with each mission lvl unlock + 1 special for reaching close or full standing.
rank 1 -> standing lvl 1 (1 frigate skin, 1st tier apparel set)
rank 2 -> standing lvl 3 (1 destroyer/cruiser skin, 2nd tier apparel set)
rank 3 -> standing lvl 5 (1 battlecruiser/battleship skin, 3rd tier apparel set)
rank 4 -> standing lvl 7 (1 capital skin, 4th tier apparel set)
rank 5 -> standing lvl 9 or 10 (1 supercapital skin, 5th tier apparel set)
note: the distribution may look weird but i didnt want to leave cap pilots out of this, perhaps there’s not much point to it since almost no one uses caps/supers for mission running. but people may complain
the system would allow to choose which ship (inside the faction that provides the reward) is the one you want the skin for. so for example you unlock rank 3 with Caldari Navy you could choose a special Navy skin for either the Ferox, Drake, Naga, Scorpion, Rokh or Raven (this reward system is for regular T1 ships only).
this system could be expanded to provide certain rewards for T2 or Navy/Pirate faction pilots depending on the organization that provides the standing but its designed to be more like a side reward for those that keep going with an organization until reaching full positive status.
another option would be that each rank could unlock these rewards in the LP store for a certain amount, but i prefer the approach of it being a personal thing for your time investment.