Just a few ideas on how the SKINR system could improve:
Sorting by name in “Saved Designs” is wonky;
The ability to sort designs by SKIN Line Name;
Add a category to the Paragon Hub window: “Sold by me;”
Add the ability to edit the SKIN Name and SKIN Line Name on Unactivated SKINs;
Add the ability to search for (or sort by) on the 'Made by" and “Listed by” values;
Add some kind of market statistics: Most Popular Ship, Most Popular Designer; ISK / PLEX sales numbers, etc. (something that SKINR designers could use to target their audience);
Provide some way of letting us see the SKIN on a kitted-out ship (to gauge the effect on external modules);
Add a ‘cinematic reveal’ to the SKIN’s context menu in the Paragon Hub;
Add a ‘total cost’ to the SKIN finalize view (or better yet, to the ‘Sell’ dialog);
They need to be made much cheaper. Most of them require PLEX to buy and all require PLEX to make. It’s purely cosmetic, but it costs more than a lot of my ships do. A paint job shouldn’t cost more than a combat ship that flies through space.
I’ve made a lot of Skins for my ship. I paint most of them. But it’s not worth the cost for most people.
I agree with this - but the price of some of the cosmetics (looking at you Deathless) also needs to come down. As much as I like that new metallic orange, 1b+ for a single-use color is excessive.
I think they need to slash the rendering price by at least 50% - if not more.
Along with Arthur’s suggestion that the PLEX cost needs to come down ASAP, this other one came to mind as I tried out the SKINr for the first time making use of the 25% Christmas discount:
I was pleasantly surprised to discover that along with the colors covering my ship, the turrets in the slots are also painted as well. I liked that little detail quite a lot.
I imagine most wouldn’t care given how one is admittedly zoomed out when playing out in space, but I for one would like the option to add turrets, launchers, miners, salvagers, etc. in the SKINr studio to also preview what the colors will apply on said modules, especially since at the moment of this writing, I am not sure which of the 4 slots applies its colors to the modules. At the moment, I suspect the Secondary and Technology slots, but not sure if it only applies to Gallente ships, or to every other ship out there. And I am not terribly inclined to waste PLEX on test SKIN’s just to find out what color slots apply.
Just a little suggestion that comes to mind. Especially how those colors would be a bit more noticeable on battleships and capitals, and I do like my ships looking nice with my signature blue, white, and silver grey colors.
I agree with point 5 wholeheartedly, it would be awesome to be able to search for SKINs made by a specific designer. Right now the Paragon Hub is much like when you go to a museum to look at paintings from your favorite artists, but all paintings are just randomly hung around the halls. A good designer search could fix that.
There are a lot of complaints about SKINR being too expensive, but I think prices right now are quite alright. SKINR is a premium service to create and trade bespoke SKINs, it wouldn’t make sense for it to cost as much as the average Exoplanets Hunter SKIN. First, the market would be flooded even more by designs with little artistic merit, and second, it wouldn’t make sense for there to be only a small penalty for putting up a SKIN for sale that nobody wants to buy. That is how art in real life works as well, and I think that is a good model to follow. Make something great, and it will sell for billions to the people who can afford it. Make ugliness, and fail. And then you get better at it, or you realize your calling might just be something other than spending your time painting ships.
On the plus side, since SKINs are actually used by players and not really bought as an investment (like real art), the chance of people duct-taping a banana to a wall and selling it for millions is quite low already. Though there’s surely no shortage of people trying (I’m looking at you, skull pattern).
The turrets definitely don’t map to the tech slot (4), so I’m leaning towards (3). I’ll ask in the Discord channel if they know offhand (will post any update here).
. . .
With the addition of the second pattern, the PLEX cost has increased quite a bit if you utilize every design aspect - so I still think a 50% reduction in the PLEX cost is warranted going forward.
There are missing features that I’d probably want prioritized over new, smarter ways of sorting skin collections, but it would be good to have them all the same.
I definitely agree with wanting some kind of sales register. My practice now is pricing unique designs distinctly (eg. 275m vs. 475m) so that I can more easily figure out what’s sold when my wallet goes up. I shouldn’t have to do that, and I’d hope that implementing something like that is an easy(ish) fix, but who knows.
Also agree about market reports being useful. I’ve mentioned it a few times already with early responses to the monthly reports, that having some kind of SKINr information would help steer design decisions to avoid waste and get customers spending on things that they’re actually interested in. The guesswork can be fun, but some kind of aid would be welcome.
That said, hard disagree about listing best-selling designers in that kind of report. It would risk creating a rich-get-richer feedback loop where a handful of designers essentially receive free monthly endorsements that only snowball because of the CCP exposure. Spotlighting an interesting design could be a nice community feature, but broadcasting the successes of a few whales isn’t the right way forward IMO.
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Also, slightly unrelated to the OP but re: lower sequencing costs mentioned above – I’ve talked about this a lot here; it’s a slippery slope. I 100% agree that the cost of individual elements needs to come down and/or the availability of them needs to be a little less scarce (1b for a limited run of anything is unsustainable), but blanketly lowering the cost of doing business via sequencing or skills themselves risks oversaturating the market. More people have access from the start. More hulls are sold out to a finite playerbase that already seems pretty stretched thin in terms of demand. How many Osprey Navys can the community sell? How many Paladins? Lower the costs, and we find out that number rather quickly, I’d think…
There’s also plenty you can do with zero skills and free materials. I use “Fade-In” as at least one pattern in maybe 90% of the designs I put together. It’s free, it’s efficient, and there’s plenty of ways you can make it seem more complex design than it actually is.
Why is there no option to browse SKINR SKINs by the name of the creator?
If I see a skin for a specific ship that I like, why is there no way to browse what other skins that creator has listed, or a history of listings (to include expired/sold) so that I could potentially reach out to them and request they create and list another run of a skin I would like?
I’d love designer storefronts. I have a few posts on the forums here to that effect. I feel like it’s just a logical next step for the way they’ve built out the system already. I’d even bet that people have begun to recognize the branding of specific players, so it would just end up being a great situation.
