Viajero
Volunteer Moderator
I think in this case it means “The Over Powered T.j” of course.
I think in this case it means “The Over Powered T.j” of course.
Just remember that we should expect 86 prices along with 86 quality. My only complaint with the game's cosmetics is the lack of variety. As you said, most paint jobs are just recoloured variations of something else, offered in a pack. Here's what I would do, if I were a developer.
Have you ever played Forza? One of my favourite things about it is the designer, where you can repaint your car and apply decals to make your own racing liveries, and it's a very powerful tool with which some people have done some incredible stuff, like full on movie-poster wraps with photorealistic presentation, all done with really simple shapes for the most part. What it doesn't allow is importing images you've made yourself, say my own squadron logo, which is odd considering that you don't pay for cosmetic customisation in Forza at all, either with in-game currency or microtransactions.
For Elite, I would take that system as is, and transpose it for designing ships in Elite. There would be a base cost for gloss paint (with a small premium for metallics, pearlescents, etc), something really cheap (like, measured in cents, not dollars), and then charge a flat fee per gloss vinyl layer, again with premiums for certain textures you change that vinyl layer to, such as metallic, pearlescent, matte, etc. You can make all the designs you want, at will, and save them to file, but in order to apply them to a ship, you have to pay the cost that they come to (which is the total of the base paint + each vinyl layer + premiums for textures). For really fancy designs, the cost goes up by default. For simple ones, the cost is kept low. All saved designs, whether you've purchased them or not, can be edited. In order to apply an edited design to a ship that has the old one on it, you only pay the difference if you've added stuff (no refunds) or altered colours (including premiums for textures, and again, no refunds), and if you haven't added anything (only moved stuff around, or removed stuff), no charge to the edit.
Then, if FDEV is feeling really brave, let players share their creations on a 'store', where FDEV can promote particularly good ones, and allow players to make a bit of money back with their designs (while taking their own cut, of course). Alternatively, instead of FDEV sending you a cheque, which could get incredibly complicated, you could sell your designs for 'store credit' toward future cosmetic purchases you want to make. And of course, FDEV can continue to offer their own items, but now they would be competing with the player base, which might encourage them to get more creative themselves. Such a store is entirely optional for me, and I'd just be happy with a livery designer. Knowing that FDEV need an income, and their cosmetics store provides that, I'm more than happy to spend money on my own self-designed liveries for my ships.
And therein lies the problem.
FDev have supplied cosmetics that are reasonable quality for a given price but they also offer things like the DBX, T6 and Keelback kits for the same price despite being abysmal quality with zero effort spent on them.
To borrow your analogy, if Toyota sell the GT86 for £27k and then they try and charge the same for a clapped-out Yaris, they shouldn't be surprised when people are critical of their sales strategy.
Also, in that case, it would be absurd to suggest that it'd be reasonable for Toyota to improve the standard of the Yaris and then incease the prices of both cars to, say, £40k.
If they can sell a GT86 for £27k, customers should be entitled to expect that standard of vehicle for £27k or pay proportionally less for a car of a lower standard.
So...ahem, like.....ship kits?
There was an analogy in play.
To summarise; I think that if the best ship-kits cost £8, the Keelback kit should go for, say, around a quid.
I can't see your posts either...
Sorry, I was replying to the general thread that seems to be attacking people and not you (you must have posted before mine).
I think we already are paying 86 prices.
I have no played Forza. On my list of stuff to play.
I recall a similar discussion for ED a long time ago, IIRC, the feeling around that was because Frontier are very conscientious of the demographics of their playerbase and don't want to have naughty words/images (notice how extreme this forum is when it comes to swear words? Even innocent words in-game are censored because they contain another certain word.
I remember in Battlefield, we had something similar to Forza; and people made the most amazing designs out of shapes and colours.
Wow; that's pretty cool actually.
One step further: Frontier releases an "Asset Development Tool", along with a "Rules/Guidelines" document.
What this thing does is allow players to create their own ships, decals, paintjobs and so on; all must be created within the Rules and Guidelines document. Players would then submit these to Frontier.
Every couple of months, Frontier would go through the submissions, and pick out say 24 different submissions. These would then get play-tested and implemented into the game.
For PC, players would have to buy the cosmetic items through Steam (to avoid Frontier having to send out cheques and the like).
Players would receive a generous cut from each sale, with the rest going to Frontier.
I'm not sure how it would work for players who don't play through Steam, or have a Steam account. In Warframe, it's Steam or nothing.
For console, the same would apply just using whatever market system they have in place.
This is an example of how it's done in Warframe, where players are making a living from the content they create (Tens of thousands of Dollars).
Note, these are actual player submissions, accepted by the Warframe developers and implemented into the game. Not re-colours of existing skins, actual designs from scratch.
I know we likely have equally talented people in the ED community, just itching to get make the ships of their dreams.
First off, I would disagree with doing anything through Steam, or any proprietary third-party provider. They start taking a cut, and that's part of the reason that I don't play anything on consoles, and whenever it can be avoided, I don't touch Steam. I don't use the Steam edition of DCS, I don't play Elite through Steam, etc. Retailers are useful and necessary for physical distribution. For digital stuff though? There's absolutely no reason for a middle man to exist.
Secondly, if you think we're paying GT86 prices for what we have, then I can't imagine you've been exposed first-hand to the most predatory microtransactions systems available. Someone brought up War Thunder as a good example of how microtransactions are done earlier, but I can easily demonstrate the exact opposite. I've heard good things about Warframe, but can't speak to experience with it the way I can with War Thunder. I consider the prices for cosmetics in Elite to be incredibly reasonable, if not cheaper than I expected them to be when I first explored the store.
While we're on the subject of making our own paint jobs, though, as an example of some of the things you can do with the Forza system, here is a really old video from my old Youtube channel of the Hatsune Miku Goodsmile BMW Z4 GT3 paintjob I made using nothing but hundreds of layers of very basic shapes on Forza 4. I don't do these videos for Forza 7, but I used to advertise my work. People started stealing it after a while claiming it as their own, so I stopped making it available to share entirely, although I'm thinking about doing it again for Forza 7 because they have much better protection for originals. The only reason this video wasn't deleted was because it was, by far, one of the best works I've ever produced in anything. If I could do this for my own ships in Elite, it would be a perfect game for me.
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Steam takes a cut because developers are using their services,
Developers save on things like server space/bandwidth use etc,
Steam also offers a financial platform so a developer doesn't have to go and do it themselves.
Seems fair they'd charge a fee for it.
So I personally don't have anything against Steam. It's also allowed me to spend hundreds of Dollars on Warframe and give back to the community that spends many many hours creating their gorgeous cosmetic content.
I need examples, otherwise I have no idea. I've seen MTX's that are pricey, I saw the nonsense that came out of SW:BF2; but yeah, probably haven't been exposed.
The prices for Elite aren't bad (though they do add up when you want to buy a lot of stuff, holy crap haha); but some of the quality of some of the products could be better. As Stealthie mentioned, some of the ship kits were awful. Some consistency to the quality would be nice.
Good looking kit. Would really like a similar thing in ED; could really customise one's ship to one's preference.
Developers save on things like server space/bandwidth use etc,
Steam also offers a financial platform so a developer doesn't have to go and do it themselves.
Seems fair they'd charge a fee for it.
So I personally don't have anything against Steam. It's also allowed me to spend hundreds of Dollars on Warframe and give back to the community that spends many many hours creating their gorgeous cosmetic content.
I need examples, otherwise I have no idea. I've seen MTX's that are pricey, I saw the nonsense that came out of SW:BF2; but yeah, probably haven't been exposed.
The prices for Elite aren't bad (though they do add up when you want to buy a lot of stuff, holy crap haha); but some of the quality of some of the products could be better. As Stealthie mentioned, some of the ship kits were awful. Some consistency to the quality would be nice.
Good looking kit. Would really like a similar thing in ED; could really customise one's ship to one's preference.
Sounds like he should be nerfed.
Excuse me??? How dare you madam!!!
I'll have you know my nerf was removed at birth.
That explains so much.
Could be, I've seen it on a couple of notifications now - some were neither OP nor mods.. so maybe it does.
Bit confusing.
Bit confusing.
Since the title of this thread is "Shame on you FDev", surely Elephant Butt Leather is on topic here, right? RIGHT?
Shame on you Frontier!!!! Shame, shame, shame!
Just sayin....
Shame on you Frontier!!!! Shame, shame, shame!
Just sayin....