Another Look

With the launch of all the new ship skins, CCP has shown what appears to be a circling back around to the customization efforts they began with Incarna.  Now, a lot of folks flipped their lid about Incarna for a variety of reasons, but the general advantage of trying to make the assets we acquire in Eve a little more personal was, in general, a good one.

Things are quite different between when Incarna launched and now.  Players have demonstrated, with their wallets, that they’re willing to pay for customization, and CCP is inching its way along.  Now, while I like the idea of ship skins, I have no personal interest in them.  That could change.  A long while back, I said I’d never buy the glitzy avatar gear CCP offered when they launched aurum.  My opinions have softened on that (as the price fell, coincidentally).

I say “softened” because I really like the way Talvorian looks, and given the way the character customizer works, if I change anything, I don’t have the option of going back.  And that really holds me back.

The way Talvorian looks today is his base look.  I don’t want to lose that.  But there’s a part of me that would buy some prosthetic limbs and eyes and give him a cyberpunk look when I’m looking for a fight.  Or have a cyborg clone.  Or give him a nice suit when he’s playing nice with people.  Or a sneer if he’s burning Jita.

But right now, if I do that, I lose my “base” look.  Because, frankly, I’ll never be able to figure out all those little adjustments I made the first time.  It’d be like when you have to restore all your keyboard shortcuts because of a crash… a pain in the ass.

So here’s a request for CCP to allow us all to save and recall appearances in the character customizer a week, a month, or year later.  A sort of customizable preset list.  I know I’d be more likely to buy some of that snazzy avatar gear if I could easily reset to my normal appearance.

Yeah, I know it’s not a deep game-influencing change, and yeah, CCP has a lot of other things they need to focus on, but this seems like a small change that would be a huge quality of life improvement for players and could net the company a bit more money in the long-term.

So let’s give other looks another look.