Cosmetics- alt Element Skins/Meshes

[wizardoftrash]

In their monetization post, the topic of a premium cosmetic shop was mentioned and it got me thinking...

 

How about some alt skins and meshes for elements?

 

Lets say I bought an alt skin/mesh for a cockpit with a skull sprayed into the glass. Cool right? Now when I go to place a cockpit, I would have that option. Similar to transmogs in Wow or D2, alt skins and meshes are a common cosmetic in other games, but usually for avatar items. Couldn't this also be the case for construct elements?

 

If I bought that alt cockpit, I would still need the materials for a cockpit, it would be functionally identical to an existing cockpit, just cosmetically diffwerent. Then... Would I be able to sell the ship? Would the special cockpit only display if they owned the cosmetic, or would it stick? Would builders have a way to earn extra ingame resources by building ships and structures with premium cosmetics?

 

Discuss

[Velenka]

I would love to see alternate meshes, but I seriously doubt it. Even in final release.

 

As far as custom images, there's been threads before discussing that idea. I don't know if it's possible, one person said bandwidth might be an issue there. NQ have already gone for target lock combat instead of physically based for that very reason. As an alternative, pixel art can be done if the surface is large enough.

[wizardoftrash]

Forgive my ambiguity, but I didn't mean custom images, I was talking an alternate skin for deployable elements that would be purchasable in a premium cosmetic shop as discussed in the Monitization thread. 

[Phroshy]

I don't often say this, but good lord does this feel premature to discuss.

 

I do agree though. It would be a nice addition to the game and an additional stream of revenue for Novaquark. You, know a couple years down the line.

 

You should only be able to apply skins to ships you own, though. Otherwise it would be too easy for people who sell all the cool-skinned ships to completely dominate the market (see "pay-to-win"). The skins would have to revert to vanilla when the ship changes owners.

 

That is, unless those skins had limited uses. Like you could buy a tenpack of a skin for a buck or two and when you've run through it, they're gone. Then it would make sense to make skinned ships fully transferable between players.

 

 

Mmmh, so many interesting possibilities to milk the common folk!

[wizardoftrash]

I don't consider this to be a premature discussion, because they brought up the premium cosmetic shop within the context of Alpha and Beta players. They mentioned that as an outlet for those players to continue to support the game, without charging Alpha and Beta players a subscription. It is their intent to make cosmetics available at a very early stage, hence my bringing it up.

[Phroshy]

I don't consider this to be a premature discussion, because they brought up the premium cosmetic shop within the context of Alpha and Beta players. They mentioned that as an outlet for those players to continue to support the game, without charging Alpha and Beta players a subscription. It is their intent to make cosmetics available at a very early stage, hence my bringing it up.

 

Oh, I must have missed that. Exciting!

[Velenka]

It seems like a lot of work for a small team. Keep in mind that the majority of constructs will be made of voxels. There's no prebuilt ships that can be "skinned." Only the mesh elements would get skins.

 

Also, if you back the Kickstarter high enough, you get an ingame pet. So a cash-shop might go down that road instead of alternate element skins.

[Phroshy]

It seems like a lot of work for a small team. Keep in mind that the majority of constructs will be made of voxels. There's no prebuilt ships that can be "skinned." Only the mesh elements would get skins.

 

Also, if you back the Kickstarter high enough, you get an ingame pet. So a cash-shop might go down that road instead of alternate element skins.

 

Yes, but what if the elements just don't match the colourtheme of my favourite ship? Maybe I can buy element skins that match the rest of it.

 

Or, let's put it the other way around: I can always just manually match my voxels with the element-skin.

 

The argument "it's a small team" doesn't hold in this instance: The game is largely voxel-based and player-built. If anything, NQ needs to come up with ways to keep their artists busy in the long run, when all the game-defining elements are in place. Putting their artists to work on useless bling for the cash shop just makes sense.

[Velenka]

They should hire more artists if they intend to do a lot of extra modeling. I do want to see extra models, it will liven up the gameplay.

[wizardoftrash]

They should hire more artists if they intend to do a lot of extra modeling. I do want to see extra models, it will liven up the gameplay.

I think what Phroshy meant was that the modelers can stay busy making alt-textures and meshes and other bling while other aspects of game dev continue. It is hard to say what their pipeline is, but if the main elements end up meshed and textured, and numbers are still being balance tested in beta, the artists could work on bling.