Livery Improvements

Good Whiskey

Good Whiskey
I'm a big fan of customization. I know it costs real money. I'm fine with that. I like my ships to look unique. I enjoy the kits and the paint jobs and the decals. I even enjoy customizing the look of my pilot. These things mean nothing to some players, and I respect that, but I'm not one of them. That said, I have a couple of gripes with the current offering, and I would like to suggest some improvments. I'm not sure if others will agree with these, but I think that Frontier could really benefit financially (from me anyway) if these steps were taken.

Note: I am not suggesting that these improvements take precedence over bug fixes, the deployment of new ship types, or the introduction of new hard content.
  1. Improve the current paint jobs. I'm sorry, but quite a few of them are objectively sloppy. Lines aren't sharp, the text on the racing paint jobs has issues, paint bleeds from one panel into another on quite a few ships, and this isn't work that is terribly difficult to do. I mean, we're talking about textures here. Keeping them neat and tidy while expanding variety is something that takes comparatively little time to do, and if you're going to have a shop full of cosmetics, at least make its offering as large as possible.
  2. No more exclusivity. I understand the argument that some paint jobs should have an air of exclusivity, but I disagree with it. During the recent year end celebrations, I purchased several golden and chrome paint jobs for 5200 ARX a pop. While it's nice to have them, I don't really see why they aren't always available for purchase. By removing them and only releasing them once a year, all you're doing is reducing the total number sold. Just sell them. Make them available, and sell them. If you want to do something exclusive, release one skin for special events for all ships and charge a premium, but make it good. The Christmas paint jobs were terrible imo. They look like wrapping paper, and they suffer from the same low-effort look as many others.
  3. Expand offerings. Allow us to play with the color and intensity of interior lighting, improve the variety of lights available to us, and let us purchase alternative interior packages that include a variety of options, the same way other kits and packages work. We spend all of our time in there, and many commanders have complaints about the way their favorite ships are lit up inside. Allow us to toy with this and really customize the interiors of our ships. Variety is the spice of life.
TLDR; If you're going to do it, do it right. I don't mind spending money to customize and fund development, but the current shop suffers from sloppy paint jobs, a lack of variety for many ships, a lack of interior customization options for ships, and an odd obsession with removing paint jobs for the sake of exclusivity in a way that shrinks a potential revenue stream.
 

bitstorm

bitstorm
ON (1).

I think ED uses these things : https://blog.demofox.org/2014/06/30/distance-field-textures/ distance field textures.

It's why you ask for this :

moustachealphatest.png


and end up looking at something like this :

moustachealphatest_16x16.png


That looks like it was drawn by a 3 year old child.

I think they increased the definition not too long ago so they are better than they used to be, but they still seem to be using this method.

I am not a graphics expert.

I'm gonna guess they had their original use case as "fast and doesn't need to look good close up because we have no external cam". (Frontier refused to add an external cam for a long time)

But then they added a cam, and we now all get to zoom in to the ships and see stuff in detail that probably wasn't originally intended to be.

It does need sorting though, it's currently their main source of income, I have refunded a few skins due to issues.
 
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elginn

E
Better resolution, larger variety and the ability to create custom decals (maybe paint jobs??) is paramount! We should be able to fly our squad/player group colors!

Tie it to in game achievements/rank/etc... plus continue to charge real life money if you need to, but as it is, the entire livery system feels like its still an afterthought put there for kids as opposed to a more Sim-like and adult system.

If we are moving to Space legs as all indications foretell, this will be 2000% more important.
 
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