Back in game after long break and thought the new SkinR system would be great. But the cost seems crazy 50-100-150 PLEX for a specific hull, can easily be 100x the cost of the ship! Thats a big commitment if I’m not 100% sure about the style, would like to try before committing so much isk/plex. And I don’t know how long I’ll use that hull for, maybe just a few weeks or months until until I move onto something else.
Perhaps the full cost skins currently in game could be a bit like BPOs, permanent and unlimited applications (and could be resold?) and from those skin-BPOs players could make Skin equivalent of BPCs (1-10 applications and the application lasts for 1 week to 3 months, research up like BPOs, BPCs to increase applications/durations). Those BPC skins would be fairly cheap to produce, maybe related to typical hull cost, so if you get a hull and want to customise it you know you could put something nice on it for 10-20% of the hull cost and if you find something you really adore you can buy the BPO of it. (maybe a skill/system to turn a Skin-BPC into a Skin-BPO, as figuring out how to remake the design to make the BPO could be tricky).
Custom EvE ship colour/patterns are everywhere in the marketing, but the system seems to want you to be rich and fair static in what ships you use. Surely the reverse would make CCP more money, have everyone encouraged to throw new designs on every new hull they buy!
SKIN-R
it’s just not quite right
it’s almost there, I can feel the potential bubbling
yet it is flawed, certainly - especially as a corp / livery / identity system.
The gangstjóri said they’re working in it.
I’d hold my breath but i need the air.
Did some more play with the SkinR system the last few days, as there is a 50% sale on generating cost (still high but might as well make a few skins now for myself while its less crazy).
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Wanted to pick between colours but the design elements costs in the Collection shop area of the SkinR UI are expensive, so went to Jita and ended up getting 300 different colours/patterns for around 100plex total, most of which were unlimited use.
- Need to cross/connect the skinr ui with global trade of the design elements (like plex is global) so players can easily pick up relevant items from single ui place
- Players shopping should be able to see what colours they have and don’t have and compare easily and buy. You can do this while designing a ship, but not in the actual shops/market, should be there too.
- Some colours have spelling mistakes (extra or missing spaces in their name) so appear in odd places in the marketplace listings
- The special CCP designs for ships should be in same area for comparison/sale, so people can easily compare and pick those up too.
- Basically personalisation stuff like this should be pulled together in a single coherent interface that makes sense for own purpose, not split between 3+ existing game UI systems.
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Designed one design each for 4 of the ships I think I will use regularly, hopefully I’ve picked right.
- Realised I’d actually like many designs for each hull, different colour combinations, some pattern designs are cool, but might get tired of it after a few weeks, either being able to make lots of designs cheaply, or make small modifications to designs often would be good. Sometimes I’ll just want to keep flying my same ship but mix up the design a lot, to make it feel different for myself.
- Some games do personalisation as a system for the whales in the game, a cash cow to squeeze more money from a small number of players. It works a certain amount, certainly an easy to point to line item in quarterly financial reports, but generates a base aura of resentment and distrust with players, who can very clearly see what is happening. The other approach of some games is making personalisation cheap, easy and widespread, it will be a little less obvious on financial reports (but probably still decent), but increases players playtime, engagement, generally happiness and pays off more in the long term.
Also the Kerr, Ferminonic sequencer stuff is just annoying, adds a small cost and buying hurdle at the end of the process.
”Got your 80 Plex design tweaked just right? Well now you have to go to regional hub to buy 1 Plex more worth of random stuff to make it. And the drop rates are low enough that the market might have being bought up and set to a new high price today! Enjoy that new design”