I have a love/hate relationship with paintjobs. You see, most of them are pure garbage, basic recoloring of the entire ship, no personality, no cool visuals, nothing that would make me shell out money at my computer screen, but on the other hand there are a few that rock some different patterns, with striking personality, that catches my attention and unfortunately they are only a few. My biggest gripe is that basically in the store you have 15 pretty uninteresting patterns being sold separetly for each ship (virtually no one spends money with these), some 10 different paintjobs sold also separetly for each ship in a said class ( example being transport liners, some bigger combat ships, etc), very few very cool paintjobs packs tailored for some very popular ships, extremely few awesome paintjobs made for an specific ship (Razorback for the viper mkIII, Onion Head for cobra mkIII and Crypsis for the Vulture) and the rest are ship specific that no one would ever be interested in. I know that the game tries to strong arm you to spend 3 euros multiple times for the same paintjob across various ships and I would be cool with that if the paintjobs had more quality behind them, if they weren't just gross repeats for every ship and I wasn't just stuck to 6 different collors that I may or may not like, and because of that I just don't buy them. I would make the case that this is the same for the rest of the playerbase execpt for the "whales", and that is my point, Frontier already have and always will have the "whales" money's, so in order to increase the amount of players that are inclined to buy from the store you have to make your product more interesting and seem like it isn't just a waste of money, thus the net income which will enable growth to the company and consequently the game will increase.
My suggestion for such changes are as follows:
1º- To begin with it would be necessary to create a new method of applying paintjos. Currently you have an individual paintjob for each color and you have to select it from the livery menu, the new system would be one based on paintjobs packs/patterns that you would have to select with each paintjob having a layering on the coloring which you would be able to change independently from one another (much like Warframe's customization) and for each layer a color wheel, much like this https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https://i.stack.imgur.com/Akobq.png&f=1 (but with basic black and white avaible too).
That in itself would spike the interest in the most basic of paintjobs solely due to the fact that it opens up customization to a personal level, where the commanders would now really feel that the ship they pilots is truly unique and they were the ones responsible to making it that way, commanders alone could be identified for their unique put together paintjobs. Using again Warframe's customization as an example, where in a lootershooter fast paece, third person game has hundreds of thousands of people throwing money at the game in order to look awesome while you shoot AI enemies, and in that last sentence it is not so different from Elite, plus Elite has the so called "immersion" and personal narrative.
2º- Having dealt with the first item, it would be necessary to revise various products from the store to make them even more appealing. To start off, the vibrant, tactical, military are by far the least purchased paintjobs in the game, but there is a way to massively improve their purchase rates or get almost every player to buy them. My first solution is to merge the vibrant, tactical and military paintjobs into a Basic Coloring Paintjob Pattern (BCPP), as they don't have any different pattern nor require any layering and with the afore mentioned color wheel you would be able to achieve the current colors and much more in these packs with only one of them, making the rest irrelevant. The BCPP would be a one time purchase for all ships in the game, therefore it would have a higher price, something like 10 euros, not really sure which price would be best. Beware that trying to compensate in the pricing for the global purchase and the "merging" of 3 different packs will only push away potential buyers, that is why having a low price is essential for it to work. I know that Frontier may be against something like the BCPP because in their eyes if you charge 3 euros for 3 different packs for all ships (41 currently) you would have 369 euros per player, and all you have to do is just hope that players would give in and buy them, thus making more money, but in reality all, execpt from the "whales", won't even consider these packs as an option, giving Frontier an income of 0 euros per player when it comes to them. You can think of the BCPP as an entry door for all the other cosmetics, a pack that can be applied to every ship with any collor you want would fly off the shelfs and once the player base is happier with the products they are buying, it will be much easier to give out more cash for more cosmetics.
3º- As for the rest of the paint jobs, get rid of the very limiting 6 colors options for the pack by applying the new system I mentioned in the first suggestion. A very simple example would be the pirate faction paintjobs, you could have a layer for the skull, one for the paint splash and another one for the black part on the rest of the ship each one being able to chose from any colors in the color wheel. This change in itself would catch the attention of many more players, but we can go even further than that and the make some packs that were made for ship classes avaiable to all of them, an example would be the ember pack for transport liners or the the federal gun/assult/dropship. Moving away from the single ship buy the store is has it's foundations in to attract more buyers.
4º- You might be thinking that this changes would never be considered because if you look at it, the gross numbers for each commander to be able to expend on the store is being dropped consideratly, but talking realistically Frontier in general at best only make 15% of the numbers they expect players to give out on the store, but by making these changes you can expect a much higher percentage per commander only just because they get more bang for their bucks. And here is how you can start to raise the gross numbers again, remember there are color wheels? They are very basic in nature, so you can start to sell colorwheels with different colors for each type of pack, maybe you can sell one with metallics onlys, or one that have a deeper range of reds or purples, maybe sell individual tinting that also change the surface texture and what not, the borders of the Milky Way are the limits.
5º- Once the system starts to bring in more money than Frontier could ever have hopped for, start making ship specific paintjobs with crazy patterns and with lots of personality, much like the Onion Head for the Cobra mkIII (I can't stress enough how good of an paintjob that is, probrably the best so far in the store)
My point with all these changes is to stop the monetization on trying to strong arm players to buy various low quality/effort paintjob packs for various ship if they want to really personalize their ships and feel like a badass, only to realize latter that there isn't really any personalization because everyone is basicaly rocking the same looks and move the monetization on higer quality paintjobs and different textures and colorwheels that can be applied on top of their previously bought paintjobs.
Moving on to decals, name plates and ship kits:
1º- Decals and name plates shouldn't be stuck to pre chosen positions to be placed, these should be change something more similar to War Thunder, deepening even more the personal feel for each ship for the commanders. Also crazier and more varied decals with option to have their colors changed at will too, that would create even more options for monetization that layers would be willing to pay for.
2º- Ship kits are okay thought, they really give a different feeling for the ships and I feel are one of the few purchases you can make that doesn't feel like a waste of money.
And with that I finish the pretty long post, I know I can only hope for FDEVs to see these changes and pass them forward to the highers up in Frontier, but if we can at least make the little of changes on how paintjobs are currently sold I would be happy. I would be happy to know everyones opinions on the subjects.
Commander Cryvern signing off.
My suggestion for such changes are as follows:
1º- To begin with it would be necessary to create a new method of applying paintjos. Currently you have an individual paintjob for each color and you have to select it from the livery menu, the new system would be one based on paintjobs packs/patterns that you would have to select with each paintjob having a layering on the coloring which you would be able to change independently from one another (much like Warframe's customization) and for each layer a color wheel, much like this https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https://i.stack.imgur.com/Akobq.png&f=1 (but with basic black and white avaible too).
That in itself would spike the interest in the most basic of paintjobs solely due to the fact that it opens up customization to a personal level, where the commanders would now really feel that the ship they pilots is truly unique and they were the ones responsible to making it that way, commanders alone could be identified for their unique put together paintjobs. Using again Warframe's customization as an example, where in a lootershooter fast paece, third person game has hundreds of thousands of people throwing money at the game in order to look awesome while you shoot AI enemies, and in that last sentence it is not so different from Elite, plus Elite has the so called "immersion" and personal narrative.
2º- Having dealt with the first item, it would be necessary to revise various products from the store to make them even more appealing. To start off, the vibrant, tactical, military are by far the least purchased paintjobs in the game, but there is a way to massively improve their purchase rates or get almost every player to buy them. My first solution is to merge the vibrant, tactical and military paintjobs into a Basic Coloring Paintjob Pattern (BCPP), as they don't have any different pattern nor require any layering and with the afore mentioned color wheel you would be able to achieve the current colors and much more in these packs with only one of them, making the rest irrelevant. The BCPP would be a one time purchase for all ships in the game, therefore it would have a higher price, something like 10 euros, not really sure which price would be best. Beware that trying to compensate in the pricing for the global purchase and the "merging" of 3 different packs will only push away potential buyers, that is why having a low price is essential for it to work. I know that Frontier may be against something like the BCPP because in their eyes if you charge 3 euros for 3 different packs for all ships (41 currently) you would have 369 euros per player, and all you have to do is just hope that players would give in and buy them, thus making more money, but in reality all, execpt from the "whales", won't even consider these packs as an option, giving Frontier an income of 0 euros per player when it comes to them. You can think of the BCPP as an entry door for all the other cosmetics, a pack that can be applied to every ship with any collor you want would fly off the shelfs and once the player base is happier with the products they are buying, it will be much easier to give out more cash for more cosmetics.
3º- As for the rest of the paint jobs, get rid of the very limiting 6 colors options for the pack by applying the new system I mentioned in the first suggestion. A very simple example would be the pirate faction paintjobs, you could have a layer for the skull, one for the paint splash and another one for the black part on the rest of the ship each one being able to chose from any colors in the color wheel. This change in itself would catch the attention of many more players, but we can go even further than that and the make some packs that were made for ship classes avaiable to all of them, an example would be the ember pack for transport liners or the the federal gun/assult/dropship. Moving away from the single ship buy the store is has it's foundations in to attract more buyers.
4º- You might be thinking that this changes would never be considered because if you look at it, the gross numbers for each commander to be able to expend on the store is being dropped consideratly, but talking realistically Frontier in general at best only make 15% of the numbers they expect players to give out on the store, but by making these changes you can expect a much higher percentage per commander only just because they get more bang for their bucks. And here is how you can start to raise the gross numbers again, remember there are color wheels? They are very basic in nature, so you can start to sell colorwheels with different colors for each type of pack, maybe you can sell one with metallics onlys, or one that have a deeper range of reds or purples, maybe sell individual tinting that also change the surface texture and what not, the borders of the Milky Way are the limits.
5º- Once the system starts to bring in more money than Frontier could ever have hopped for, start making ship specific paintjobs with crazy patterns and with lots of personality, much like the Onion Head for the Cobra mkIII (I can't stress enough how good of an paintjob that is, probrably the best so far in the store)
My point with all these changes is to stop the monetization on trying to strong arm players to buy various low quality/effort paintjob packs for various ship if they want to really personalize their ships and feel like a badass, only to realize latter that there isn't really any personalization because everyone is basicaly rocking the same looks and move the monetization on higer quality paintjobs and different textures and colorwheels that can be applied on top of their previously bought paintjobs.
Moving on to decals, name plates and ship kits:
1º- Decals and name plates shouldn't be stuck to pre chosen positions to be placed, these should be change something more similar to War Thunder, deepening even more the personal feel for each ship for the commanders. Also crazier and more varied decals with option to have their colors changed at will too, that would create even more options for monetization that layers would be willing to pay for.
2º- Ship kits are okay thought, they really give a different feeling for the ships and I feel are one of the few purchases you can make that doesn't feel like a waste of money.
And with that I finish the pretty long post, I know I can only hope for FDEVs to see these changes and pass them forward to the highers up in Frontier, but if we can at least make the little of changes on how paintjobs are currently sold I would be happy. I would be happy to know everyones opinions on the subjects.
Commander Cryvern signing off.
Last edited:
