A few weeks ago, I had logged into Spiral Knights after a few months of being away for a while to notice that there were quite a few Black Kat versions of Seraphynxs running(floating?) around. Of course, I jumped to the conclusion that this was a brand new version of this particular sprite, but, upon viewing the abilities of this new sprite, I found out that it had the exact same abilities. It was merely an aesthetic change, and boy, was I disappointed. It was pretty cool looking, I must admit, but, I wasn't willing to put in the time or effort to get another Seraphynx. Too much work for something that was mechanically the same.
As such, I figured that I'd make a suggestion concerning the abilities of these reskins. While I wouldn't say "change their abilities completely", as you may as well just develop new sprites by that point (and that would take far too much time, I'd imagine), I would suggest adding slight variations to their abilities. For example, let's say that, hypothetically speaking, OOO decides to develop a blue-skinned, icy-themed Drakon. It'd be rather neat (and appropriate) if this particular Drakon dealt freezing damage instead of fire damage, no?
As of now, it's the only real example of such a variation I could come up with, so, I'd appreciate it if anyone else has any ideas or feedback! :)
I agree, having to level up another sprite every time they make a new lookin one would be a real drag. A few times, maybe...I simply gave my new black kat seraphynx the opposite ults of my first seraphynx. This has worked out okay.
But come oooooon.
This has been suggested before (variable wording, same idea(s)), but, I always +1 it if I see it.
Let us equip things as costumes more often (shields, weapons that have like-behavior, i.e spiral soaker as a "costume" for my already wonderfully heated and UVed blitz). Perhaps earning a sprite skin/augmentation (ice on drakon? the hidden lung! Dragonheart reference) could take some work...just not as much work as leveling up a new sprite from scratch. A "Deluxe Harness Buckle" or "Deluxe Harness Cabochon" item could be introduced...putting this item onto the sprite's loadout changes the sprite's skin, and/or ability status, and so on. Of course, you can only equip on of these...deluxe items... at a time. Or perhaps the buckle could be the skin-changer, and the cabochon could be the ability status changer...aha! then sprites could have their own "trinket slot(s)"...though I would argue that just a skin change isn't worth a trinket slot. But there's your money, OOO/Sega! (We still love you).