Some quick SKINR calculations... FREE SKINR for the creator?

Communications Center General Discussion
1

So I made 10 designs for the Alligator.
The range goes from 5 to 10.
Translated into Plex it is from 50 plex to 130 Plex
In the Paragon Hub market there are three Alligator designs
The vary from 7 to 8. 8 takes 90 Plex to make.
They ask 900Mil Isk for the 8 o 700Mil, or 90 Plex for the 7.

But this is not the whole story. In order to make a 8 design, or 10,
You have to add the materials that you need and don’t have yet bought
or got as a bonus. The Crimson Harvest final gift is one of those special
design overlays that can cost a lot… other less rare colors can cost 15 or 30 Plex each also…

And I have not yet understood if these are depletable or not…
like there are basic materials that are infinite, and then there are these rare materials…

Ok… So my cost has gone up to something like 150 Plex for one cool design…
translated into Isks this is like 1.5 Bil!!!

Now we have to take into account other costs like the Hub market costs, and the
skills. Each listings supposedly has a cost. It has a limited time of one month I think.
Perhaps three. I still have to make these numbers up.

Ok, After all of these, I should probably try to sell my design for 1.5 Bil + 23% costs,
That would be 1.85Bil just to break even. More realistically I should ask for 2Bil.

My Supposed gain after all of this would be a mere 150Mil Isk, or 23 Plex.

So it seems that one way to sell your design is to ask for little more Plex that you used to make,
20 Plex gain in Iskies seems a lot. But it isnt.
But would I agree on paying close to 2 Bil for a skin of my Alligator?
Perhaps if it was a Golem, I would say yes…

But these SKINR costs do not scale with the ships…

Just thoughts… Should I try and not sell my design at least I could use it???
Or If I make the design and sell it I am not allowed to use it???
This would make a TON of difference on my Creator side…
At least, if nobody buys it, I can still use it, and hope one day someone would buy it…
Like a free copy for personal use of the creator…

What are your thoughts about it???

Or like make the design cost a little higher but you create a sort of BPO, and subsequent copies of the Design come cheaper???
How do we lower the costs???

2

Several people including myself have echoed that Skinr should be a static isk rate not Plex. Plex fluctuates regularly and is not a good currency to use for anything outside of gametime. Secondly all colors and designs should be permanent not limited. Once purchased and activated you should own it permanently.

Also still waiting on corp/alliance wide skin options, as well as options to put the skin in inventory for contract or trade so it’s not only available on the Skinr market exclusively.

3

I have pushed the red button, I am synthesizing my first three designs…
I spent a LOT. Plexes and all…
I still have no idea how to sell these designs…
I’ll try keep the 20% window… see if my designs are liked enough…

So I suppose I won’t be able to use a Skin I designed If I do not Activate it…
So I made three, if I sell all three for a 20% margin, that would be around 500 Mil
or 100 Plex… I had to buy 260 Plex in order to make these three…

So if Everything goes well… I should have gained about 3/4 free SKIN for me…

Damn these Wall street guys… I hate them…

If someone search for me I’m out at the Pub.

4

My first listings is Up!

Here’s my Video doc on my first experience on the Paragon Hub, there’s a lot
of things that I have barely touched, It’s very disorienting to move around,
I hope the UI will get some filters improvements in the future, for hulls, tiers, etc.

Let me know about your experiences here as well, the market is gonna crash
on old school Skins or what? Will old Skins BPO and BPC still be relatable in
the future?? Skinr for thoughts…

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5

I think the second pattern in Revenant will be a game changer, since there are 30+ new patterns (all unlimited), colors and new effects for the patterns (haven’t previewed these) that will make it exceedingly difficult to reproduce some of the new designs (even when inspected visually).

From a purely designer standpoint these are welcome changes.

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6

Ive made a couple designs, but the real issue is that they are all ship specific. If im gifted a skin, it is always for a ship i dont have.

I wish the skins didnt cost Plex. I also wish i could make them for free. As it stands, even if i could figure out how to sell a skin, i wouldn’t. The cost to make them means that they’re not worth it on the open market. I dont think I’d ever get my money’s worth.

7

I have just sold my first listings! I have made my money back plus a small gain in iskies.
I have also some listings in Plexes.
I am making Skins so if I can sell enough and make a little gain, then I will be able to make
one very good Skin for one of my ships, and get it for free.
Also once you made a Skin, it stays in your collection, and if no-one buys it, you can use it
yourself. I only make skins for ships I own.
I could make a skin for an Avatar or a Ragnarok or a Squall, I explain the point in the video
well…

8

I would still use the market as a reference as much as I could… Just because it’s the only mean we have to check on numbers for sales, even if the two markets are not directly related…

For example a Drake navy Issue Ghostbird skin is ATM sold for 1.5B, and there is just one avail…
on the contrary only four skins had been sold in one entire year… I have one exact copy of the Ghostbird skin in the Paragon Hub listings right now, and it goes for 280K I believe I set its price…

Yeah it’s tuff to decide… If I would put up its price to 1.5B… I don’t know man…
I made only one sale atm and it was very cheap…
Everyone can make them if they want now, the only thing that prevents it is because of Plex mechanism… much easier to just buy a skin with Isk…

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Well, the hull is that of an Alligator, but it’s practically the same…

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Also, I made this table for an overall pricing with the minimal gain as possible.
As a rule of thumb, I have no idea really what can work and what not…

Some patterns and colors can easily DOUBLE the costs
for any given Tier, so even a T1 could have hidden costs of hundreds of millions…
A pattern applied to a Drake can make it 2 Tiers up, the same to a Marauder it’s instantly 5 tiers up…

T1 - 220K
T2 - 355K
T3 - 435K
T4 - 475K
T5 - 695k
T6 - 795K
T7 - 895K
T8 - 995K
T9 - 1.1B
T10 - 1.3B
T11 - 1.5B
T12 - 1.7B
T13 -2.0B Plus

1 Like
10

I’ve sold quite a few skins at this point (though, very few recently, which is either bad luck or symptomatic of a larger drought because plex is up, dunno). The math presented above explaining needing to account for nanos, patterns, sequencing mats, etc. after the fact of the base plex:tier sequence cost is pretty on point – not to mention the “cost” of completing a skin instantly, which is definitely worth considering as well. My typical goal is to arrive at a listing price just shy of 90% of the cost it would take a person completely unskilled in Sequencing to design, provision, sequence, and instantly complete their own SKINr product. Pricey, sure, but (for now) there’s a reasonable basis to explain where that number comes from.

Mine is a bit of a hot take when it comes to suggesting what CCP should do next to promote the market, because, frankly, I’m not sure there’s enough standard demand to create the kind of stability that folks want by way of normalizing pricing, removing PLEX from the equation, etc. CCP doesn’t afford us a monthly economic report (that should change IMO), which would help in determining demand, and so my takeaway from my own experience absent that info is that SKINr is largely a luxury market with few tools to really encourage identifiable branding. The bulk of my sales have been north of 775m, with some exceeding 5b, and their hulls have been hand-picked to appeal to omega pilots that likely catch the listing from the marketplace spotlight as its about to expire while sitting in a ship that takes months to skill into. Ironically, I’ve had a much harder time anticipating listings of 500m or less. Essentially, I think they should lean even further into SKINr as a luxury marketplace and give skilled designers tools to stand out.

On the other hand, I’d love to hear from anyone that’s found success selling cheaper designs for cheaper hulls. In a dream scenario, if this is any different from what folks have already talked about here, I’d love to see CCP allow pilots to sequence much higher tiers and much more complex designs (engine recolors, layered patterning, glow effects, etc.) for much lower costs overall, but only if they have dedicated a SEVERE amount of SP toward Sequencing. It’s a slippery slope, of course, but I feel like that’s the only way forward to getting folks producing in large quantities (is anyone even skilled into the skills that dictate sequencing volume…?) and allowing people that are worried about spending hundreds of millions on skins to purchase something they actually feel good about.

Other quick thoughts: allow SKINr pilots to design/apply their own logo/branding to their designs, allow for skins to be listed at sale prices (vs. MSRP), and don’t get rid of unlimited nanos/patterns. I understand that people don’t like paying large amounts for unlimited stuff, but it’s truly one of the more sensible metrics to determine if someone is a committed designer or a passing enthusiast.

Anyway, just my 2c.

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11

The problem with cheap SKINs is that anyone can create them. Going forward, I think the 2-pattern designs are going to be a game changer in terms of offerings having more appeal (since they will be very, very difficult to replicate).

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12

I completely agree. I also think there’s an inherent flaw to thinking that there will ever be demand for cheap skins sold at volume just above cost. Even if there was a single designer allowed to make and sell all-black Kiki skins just above what it costs to make them, they’d experience drought more often than not.

Promoting SKINr as a luxury market is the way to go, IMO. Want cheap skins? Kindly, skill into Sequencing on your own.

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13

One month in and my takes are about similar to yours.
My sells total about 4B, exactly like you, highly specialized ships makes the bulk.
My listings still have a bunch of lesser designs, around 500M each, that sits there.
So after a month I’m barely scraping the barrel, and breathing some fresh air.

Lesson learned, those cheap skins will sit there undefinetely untill I will likely activate
them on my char and move on with the more successfull hulls. Few exceptions nonetheless
I have registered in selling one or two. Too few to recover from initial investment.
At one point I’d like to be able to choose to reprocess these failures in a way to recover
partially from the plex investment. It would be nice to be able to trash your designs,
with maybe a high SP skill, to reprocess them, and recover some Plex from them.

2 Likes
14

I’ve had a tiny amount of luck selling smaller hulls at points, but it’s been really random compared to larger ticket items and more luxurious ship options. Though, I admit, it’s hard to judge anything nowadays because it seems like there’s a market slump across all hulls – anyone else experiencing this? Having a SKINr-specific economic breakdown from CCP every month would be a welcome change…

Agreed for sure. I actually have a post going elsewhere in the forums about this exact idea. The refund doesn’t need to spendable elsewhere, but being able to reprocess skins into a resource that allows us some kind of credit on future designs would also be welcome…

15

While I really like the idea, I know what the bean counters will say: Wait, why would we refund them?

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I know it. The likelihood of something like that happening relies on the math being there to represent value for them. Essentially (and sorry if this is hijacking this thread a little), it’s a matter of how often designers choose to sequence new skins to offset inventory overstock currently versus how often they might cut bait in the same way if the cost and risk of new sequence jobs could be offset with refunded credit. Thankfully, the economics of store credit are not a complete mystery, so maybe there’s hope.

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“Why would I provide store credit when I already have their money…?”

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Definitely a fair question! The way I could see them finding a benefit would be this:

  • If they don’t offer a refund structure, it’s possible that designers (myself included, I’m projecting a little here…) keep trying to sell the same skin for weeks or months at full price as opposed to cutting bait, selling it for dirt cheap in a day or two, and then sequencing a new design at full PLEX cost. Let’s hypothetically say this is like 5-6 weeks on average from the point of an original sequence to the point of a totally new instance of something being sequenced because the initial one hadn’t worked. That’s a long time.

  • If they did offer a refund structure (let’s say a ~65% refund at skill level V), it’s possible that designers are more likely to cut bait earlier (let’s say 1-2 weeks on average), receive the 65% refund, and, assuming they purchase a similarly-priced sequence, pay 35% more plex after the fact of that initial investment in a smaller time frame. It also theoretically represents more value over that 5-6 window, assuming that everyone is more likely to cut bait in that way.

The added benefit for the player (and CCP) is that these refund transactions happen outside of the marketplace, so you don’t have a situation where prices drop in a way that misleads future buyers to think that skins should always be that cheap. Does that make sense?

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19

Anybody been able to login in the Studio today?
I’m having a hard time, it’s since 12:00 that the situation is
like this… dit dot dot

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I’ve been getting “busy” messages on and off, yeah.