Please, let players be CREATIVE.

[LuCypherius]

Hello Frontier Team.

I'm here to talk about Elite Dangerous ship customization suggestions that would lead to more money for you.

Why is the ship customization so tied/unflexible?

Suggestions:
1. Do not sell fix skin colors, instead sell the Skin and let the user choose the colors. If the skin has many layer colors, let the player choose the colors (lets say, 3 at most).
2. Many skins types per ship. This is easy to do, its a simple image, or image layers.
3. More ship kits per ship, why limit to only one type per ship? And not all ships have them. This will not consume more CPU nor Network traffic. Store all possible ship kits on the Client side. Send only the "Ship kit ID" through network, as it is now. The modelling effort for this is simples and need to be done only once and it would be sell to many. Remember the Car games where you can cutomize it (choose front bumper, put a neon light, chosse wheel, wheel color, etc...).
4. HUD color, laser color, jet color. Let the player buy a "Customized laser/hud/jets color" and let him choose the color. Its very simple to code and I know that you know it [big grin].

The main request is very simple.
Let people be creative, this sells a huge more.

If the player is tied to the same modifications as everyone, they won't bother to have the customization anyway.

This is not hard to code, and any Trainee can keep creating content to be sell in the Elit Dangerous store. Let him create and, on a quick meeting, the team (or the lead artist) can approve or not each creation.

If the player can be free to be creative, then he will tend to do and buy the possibilities. And also, in game, you can face up a ship and think "Wow, that looks awesome, I will do some like this on my ship."

PLEASE
Let me know what you think about my suggestions and whats the plan.

 

[Ronzer]

I'd amend number 1 and 4 to say sell fixed colours, but also sell skins that are colour editable. They'd be separate, and probably the editable ones would cost more, but option is there.
The rest I agree with for sure.

But also, just in general, why dont they have more in the store? I like what they have in there, and if there was more, I'd just buy more of it. 1 ship kit? I want 8, etc. And noone has to buy that stuff. All optional.

Enjoy!

 

[NW3]

Here's a snippet from a previous post I made, describing an easy way to accomplish OP's request for customized skin colors.

...my code be could easily be repurposed to recolor other bitmap assets, like ship paintjob colors, flight suit colors, etc. All you'd need to do is make a colored source bitmap (using, for example, red as primary and green as secondary) and pass in 1 or 2 new input hue arguments (to replace uiOrangeHue with primaryHue and secondaryHue) and change the if-statement in the inner loop to...

 

[Fluidman]

The main request is very simple.
Let people be creative, this sells a huge more.

I agree with OP on that, with more customization cosmetic itens, there should be a lot more sell on the store.

 

[Starbucknaked]

Forza racing series I view as the gold standard in customizable skin.

How to monetize this is a separate problem…how about limit people to one customization per account but pay for more?

 

[LuCypherius]

To monetize it could be:

1. Customization number package per ship. E.g.: I buy (rela money) a "3 cuztomization package", then I can do 3 customizations on a single ship. The customization then is bought by ingame cash. Then I can choose to buy a "front bumper", a "side label", a "custom wings", a "skin", a different laser color, a different hud color, etc...

To have the actual "ship kit" it would require a "5 customization package" sou you can change the front, the sides, the rear, the top.


2. Or you can buy each customization separately, but still tied to a single ship.

Always letting you choose the colors any time. You buy only the "layout" and not the finishing of it.


The very important part is to have variety. The actual ship today can be the "base frame", then we can choose a different wing, different nose, different thruster looking, etc...

IT ONLY REQUIRES MODELLING EFFORT and very little coding effort (to let ppl shoose colors ingame).

We could end finding outstanding ship designs in game without sacrificing the game engine (graphic or network sides).