Spiral Knights - Cosmetics. Whats OOO's Stance on Re-skins ?

Cosmetics. Whats OOO's Stance on Re-skins ?

11 replies [Last post]

Sun, 03/24/2013 - 10:21

Tin-Foil-Hat

I have been doing alot of thinking lately about this game and i found a couple things that bother me cosmetically. Soo this brought me to think about what could be done to fix what im not enjoying visually.

1) You can Costume your Armor but not your shield.
- I can understand the reason for being unable to costume weapons as they work in a specific and unique way.

(As many people know, im in love with Hallow gear, but the aesthetics of it are ruined by my mismatched Volcanic Shield. Id love to use the Scarlet one as a costume over my regular shield).

I feel like the shield is an acceptable thing to costume because they dont have separate functions like the weapons do.

2) There arent many costume choices.
- Basically there arent enough costume choices, you have (x) amount of sets to choose from, most of which are recolored.

(I dont mind recoloring, but there is only two openly available recolors. Frosty and Hallow, Hunter and Surge were both rare promotions).

I feel like there should be more available costume items. There is only two sets of costume gear openly available throughout the year since the hunter and surge were both promotional costume pieces. I dont mind re-skins but the lack of color choices is bothersome. The costume items in the auction house that are featured such as the Trojan Mask and Puppy Mask should be permanent for the cost, 30 days of use for 145k isnt an appealing money sink.

3) Plasmatech should have more customization.
- While i enjoy my Plasmatech items, i feel like i cant wear them as often as i would like. Why ? The armor color.

(I can understand making it a set color but for the price of the package i feel like the set doesnt live up. Theres no reason the plasmatech shouldnt have interchangeable color choices in my opinion, i mean seriously how sick would it be to have Green or Purple bomber gear ?).

Allowing the Plasmatech armor to have its own interchangeable colors would make more sense and would make the battle pack more appealing. Alot of the bomber heads have no matching gear, this can solve that problem while raking in more sales".

Lastly i wanted to talk about actual re-skins, for weapons, and making events more fun and including new content. Heres my idea...

1) Create weapon model that makes sense with the weapon scheme.
2) Add in a special alchemy machine to create the items, 5* requirement.
3) The item now looks different, but has the exact same functionality.

You may ask "Tin-Foil-Hat, why do it this way" ? Well thats simple, while the game isnt entirely balanced its important to not offset the balance further by adding new weapons and armor as quickly as possible into the game.

Now heres an example. ( For the sake of the example try to follow what im getting at, hopefully it makes sense ).

Its Halloween, oh how i love Halloween. But i dont have a cool looking weapon to match my Hallow costume items... DONT WORRY! There is now a special alchemy machine for 5* weapons with special skins (models if you will) specifically from that event!

Lets say we have a 5* Leviathan Blade. Lets say we use the Special Alchemy Machine to see what we can turn it into, Oh wow look at that cool reskin for the Leviathan Blade! Hallow Great-Sword (Yes i know the name is generic and could be more inventive). You can now change the look of it, but it keeps the uniqueness of the Leviathan Blade (The item looks like it makes sense with how the functions). I can now have an item that matches my armor, without breaking game balance, while looking great and keeping the authenticity of a Leviathan Blade.

Another example is a Blast Bomb. Lets say i have a Nitro i want to re-skin (remodel if you will) during Halloween. Lets head to the alchemy machine and check it out! Oh look, The Pumpkin Bomb! A basic pumpkin look, with a recoloring of the blast to orange. Understand what im getting at now ? :)

I think this would be a great way to get players to keep playing, and to get more money into the game. Prices for the use of these special alchemy machine would be up to you guys.

Soo im curious OOO, whats your stance on such a thing ? Would this be something up for consideration ?

Sun, 03/24/2013 - 11:23

Bugtester

Tending towards +1 but with restrictions

You obviously put some work into the suggestion and I don't see much of a problem here.
Shield costumes have been suggested time and time again, but there is still hoping that one day they'll actually realize it.

I do have some questions, though: The reskin for weapons, I guess, is little more than changing it's colour, right? In case of the Combuster that would be a orange blade and hilt, keeping the red inbetween, or would do you have in mind?
The second one is not really a suggestion, but a wish. An understandable one, but still lacking detail. What new costumes? Also, the puppy helm was perma during valentines day. Yes, the Trojan helm is not worth it's money.

Sun, 03/24/2013 - 13:13

Tin-Foil-Hat

Well depending on the event

Well depending on the event or art style they would have in mind, it would a completely separate model (a Re-Skin), while still making sense with the original theme and specialty of the weapon. Give me a little bit and i can do a little example drawing of what i mean :D It would probably help a bit!

Edit - Alright currently dont have to do a drawing or anything so maybe later on in the thread ill make one if needed :P

Sun, 03/24/2013 - 18:48

Tin-Foil-Hat

Alright ive been busy, all i

Alright ive been busy, all i could find was a box of crayons LOL so the quality is pretty bad and i did it in about 5 minutes soo its not very great. Anyways, lets say this...

We have The Leviathan Blade. Its Halloween and we go to the special alchemy machine, oh look i can reskin it to "The Punkin King's Carver". Same stats but with a new look that matches how the weapon functions.

http://i49.tinypic.com/zvr3ty.jpg

LOL. Uneven, poorly shaded, crayon's y u soo hard to use.

But hey, an example is better than no example :)

Sun, 03/24/2013 - 20:16

Klipik-Forum

And while we're at it...

I feel like I've been linking this thread a lot lately.

Sun, 03/24/2013 - 20:22

Tin-Foil-Hat

@ Noklip - I agree with the

@ Noklip - I agree with the addition of cosmetics however anything thats not OOO or SEGA based will cost them money they dont have, its almost gauranteed that they wont make cosmetics based off other things, and honestly they shouldnt. Alot of that stuff doesnt match the Spiral Knights art or design styles (ex - someone mentioned a Halo Gravity Hammer in that thread).

Things like the Megaman Blaster however, could more than likely be implemented soo long as they have the licensing for it, they have more important things to spend money on like new servers, rather than spending money for licensing. :P

Mon, 03/25/2013 - 10:04

Infernoburner

Derpuraptor strikes back and gives a +1

Nice idea. However, you prolly gotta change your mechanics, since this is how the current costume reskins work:

There is a reskin of let's say, Valkyrie Helm. There is a default texture, the 4-2* versions, and it's other lines. There also is a colourless version without any pre-made textures such as halo, or any certain designs (Heavenly Iron). I'm assuming this looks gray if previewed, and the scheme of the recolor is applied to the gray. This recolor scheme is saved as a simple texture (a 1-coloured pixel block?) and does not need an example of the actual item to apply correctly. By reskin, do you mean a remodel (Scissor Blades) or an actual recolor from the current system?

Mon, 03/25/2013 - 12:28

Tin-Foil-Hat

@Inferno - Yeah let me edit

@Inferno - Yeah let me edit my terms, but i mean both Reskin and Remodel.

But yeah Basically this is what im suggesting for the weapon via new special alchemy machines. You bring (x) weapon to the machine during said event or location and you transmute it into a new model, but with the same effects/stats/UVs/etc. You now have a new looking weapon that functions exactly the same as (x) weapon, thus not breaking any balance components of the game.

By reskins i mean the addition of new color schemes and effects on the armor and such themselves. As said above, there is hardly a choice when it comes to using costume items due to the extreme lack of colors.

Mon, 03/25/2013 - 12:54

Fehzor

This idea would definitely make some awesome promos, especially if the devs let the playerbase model things and submit them rather than shooting down the idea of modding the game/using spiralspy. It's their fault if players find things before they come out, and it's unprofessional of them to knock them down when players happily post on the wiki/other websites about them.

And yes, there are many ways this could work, but here's how I would see it going down:

Player opens box/finds reskin part/whatnot> Gets a "weapon/shield accessory"
Player goes to bechamel> Submits weapon + weapon accessory, gets re-skinned weapon/shield.

All weapons would have some common themes, like hunter, surge, the generic ones, etc. But some would be special to certain weapons, for instance, players could reskin all 2 hit swords with the same reskin of something special (like scissor blades), but it would be silly to have a cutter looking like troika- cutter would get a cutter-line upgrade.

Scissor blades should not be attainable in this fashion, as it is already a thing on the featured auctions, or if it should, should still be bought in the same fashion. Other, newer, items should be available this way.

Tue, 03/26/2013 - 08:13

Tin-Foil-Hat

Hm i see, i see. How about

Hm i see, i see.

How about this...

Parts of a new model/reskin drop from lockboxes and random drops from treasure boxes. Bechamel has a list of weapon reskins/models that you can create via found parts. Once you find all the parts needed for the reskin/model you combine them, then you drop your weapon in and accessorize it.

But what about events then ? Should there be a separate box for parts ? I think adding all those parts would probably screw with the drop rates of items in lockboxes/event boxes a bit which is why i think an alchemy machine would be a better process. Gather (x) materials and use (y) crowns and (z) crystal energy to create the new item model/reskin. This would also make choices more meaningful because you couldnt just change it back via deletion with no fee, they could add in a new vendor to revert it for a CE cost only.

Tue, 03/26/2013 - 19:44

#10

Tin-Foil-Hat

Bumping up for more opinions.

Fri, 03/29/2013 - 14:06

#11

Tin-Foil-Hat

*poke* bump o.o

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Cosmetics. Whats OOO's Stance on Re-skins ?