Let the community make the ship skins!?

Clawhammer · Jun 22, 2015

What would be if the community makes the shipskins?

Every 2 or 3 months all the collected skins getting into a vote and after that the best skins are getting into the shop.
In Counter-Strike Global Offensive this works really great with the weapon skins.

Maybe we get something more creative then: https://www.frontierstore.net/game-extras/elite-dangerous-game-extras.html?ship_model=140
Make the skin darker and call it tactical

It would be a double win, cash and skins for Frontier and the community can help to make this game.

Yabba Addict · Jun 22, 2015

You're not the first to suggest this admittedly good idea, for some reason FD always say no.

Clawhammer · Jun 22, 2015

Yabba Addict said:
You're not the first to suggest this admittedly good idea, for some reason FD always say no.

CTCParadox · Jun 22, 2015

Seriously crowd-sourced paintjobs and decals are needed.
That and things like the bobble-heads and zero-g furry dice would be the kinds of things people would pay for.

RooksBailey · Jun 22, 2015

I think that would be a great idea. Sort of like how Valve allows people to make skins and hats for CSGO and TF2.

Defect0r · Jun 22, 2015

Yeah right, cue ships with massive cocks painted all over them or advertisements for EVE, etc!

People can't be trusted with that and the resources required to vet each design would be immense.

Ruskodisco · Jun 22, 2015

im pretty sure they didnt say no but more like "not now" and truthfully i dont blame them they have been really busy and adding more responsibility like that at the first year is just asking for it.
im sure later down the line they would be all for this but at the moment i wouldnt count on it

Hellhawk666 · Jun 22, 2015

I don't think it's anything to do with trust - FD would absolutely have to OK any skins or decals anyway. Most likely it's a combination of things including network & rendering issues, and not the least the commitment of art resources in-house to produce the assets based on submitted designs (don't expect modding tools for the community this decade). For the possible return it's probably of marginal financial benefit to them, so for the moment at least is shelved.

CTCParadox · Jun 22, 2015

Defect0r said:
Yeah right, cue ships with massive cocks painted all over them or advertisements for EVE, etc!

People can't be trusted with that and the resources required to vet each design would be immense.

Just have FD choose what they want to put in. The skins would need to be added to the client anyway so no chance of MLP skins or other out of lore skins.

JeffRyan · Jun 22, 2015

Defect0r said:
Yeah right, cue ships with massive cocks painted all over them or advertisements for EVE, etc!

People can't be trusted with that and the resources required to vet each design would be immense.

Agreed. I remember people flying X-ships with images on 'em.

KombattWombatt · Jun 22, 2015

For a game with no subscription, they are really limiting themselves with their cosmetic options. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to the store, wanting to buy something, and closed out the tab because there's nothing to buy...

JeffRyan · Jun 22, 2015

KombattWombatt said:
For a game with no subscription, they are really limiting themselves with their cosmetic options. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to the store, wanting to buy something, and closed out the tab because there's nothing to buy...

Yep, they really should move it up the priority list.

Jaiotu · Jun 22, 2015

Apparently implementing new paint jobs is extremely buggy which is why there are so few of them. Even the decals are problematic... look at all the trouble just to release the gold founders decal.

PavelKCZ · Jun 22, 2015

Most probably the whole problem is technical. The ships are rendered locally at the client side and each texture, opacity, bump etc. map must be present in each computer playing the game. If there is no mechanism for on-line distribution of those textures in networking code, it is not possible to have more than couple of in-house developed textures, distributed via patch.

Also, there is a problem with bandwidth. Let's say that a complete skin for one ship is 2 MB. If each ship will have it's own texture pack (which all other players will download and cache as soon as they will see the ship with this texture), there will be serious bandwidth problems with let's say 10 ships in one instance. One computer must transmit the texture pack to 9 others (18 MB) and receive 9 other skins (18 MB). It is a 36 MB of data which must be transmitted as soon as possible, before the ships can be rendered.

Patrick_68000 · Jun 22, 2015

KombattWombatt said:
For a game with no subscription, they are really limiting themselves with their cosmetic options. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to the store, wanting to buy something, and closed out the tab because there's nothing to buy...

David said recently there will be many more to come in the store soon

JeffRyan · Jun 22, 2015

Patrick_68000 said:
David said recently there will be many more to come in the store soon

By more he should mean many many more. I don't think they quite realise the market for these things. Keep the costs where they're at and they'll do nice business.

gravedodger · Jun 22, 2015

Patrick_68000 said:
David said recently there will be many more to come in the store soon

Is that the same 'soon' as the digital artwork book?

Patrick_68000 · Jun 22, 2015

PavelKCZ said:
Also, there is a problem with bandwidth. Let's say that a complete skin for one ship is 2 MB. If each ship will have it's own texture pack (which all other players will download and cache as soon as they will see the ship with this texture), there will be serious bandwidth problems with let's say 10 ships in one instance. One computer must transmit the texture pack to 9 others (18 MB) and receive 9 other skins (18 MB). It is a 36 MB of data which must be transmitted as soon as possible, before the ships can be rendered.

Interesting point. But how can you be so sure that this is the reason ? If the paint pack (texture) is created on the client, then the transmission and reception could simply be a reference (number) of the paint pack and this one would be created on the client side. Like that there would be no problem of bandwidth. Your computer creating the painting of the ship of another commander that you see on your screen ?

- - - Updated - - -

gravedodger said:
Is that the same 'soon' as the digital artwork book?

Of course. "Soon" is a trademark (TM)

- - - Updated - - -

JeffRyan said:
By more he should mean many many more. I don't think they quite realise the market for these things. Keep the costs where they're at and they'll do nice business.

Yes, the store should be a cave of Ali Baba

Iskariot · Jun 22, 2015

KombattWombatt said:
For a game with no subscription, they are really limiting themselves with their cosmetic options. I can't tell you how many times I've gone to the store, wanting to buy something, and closed out the tab because there's nothing to buy...

That is true. I have a look at least a few times a week.

But perhaps these skin artist are busy designing stuff for the Planetary landing expansion....

PavelKCZ · Jun 22, 2015

Patrick_68000 said:
Interesting point. But how can you be so sure that this is the reason ? If the paint pack (texture) is created on the client, then the transmission and reception could simply be a reference (number) of the paint pack and this one would be created on the client side. Like that there would be no problem of bandwidth. Your computer creating the painting of the ship of another commander that you see on your screen ?

Yes, but when you see a new texture first time, it must be downloaded from somewhere (either server or another client). After the first download, the texture of course can be cached and subsequently the reference (or texture ID) can be used.

Problem is, that textures made by FD can be transferred to clients as a part of regular patch. This is not the case of community created textures.