Gotta Catch 'em All

The Purity of the Throne event has been run for the past seven days. While I missed the first five due to vacation, over the past couple, I’ve been running a few of the sites.

Well, more than a few.

I’m not really a collector of novelty items. Sure, I have a bionic arm on Talvorian, and I injected any freebie skins we received over time. But other than that, I’ve bought exactly one skin, the Police Pursuit Comet Skin. And that one was purchased only because it’s pretty awesome to pull people over in lowsec (ie. kill them) while flying around in a ship painted like a police cruiser.

In fact, generally speaking, I’m offended by CCP’s strategy regarding skins. In my mind, they’re far too expensive for what you receive. I think it’d make more sense (in-game reason) and demonstrate much better customer respect (out-of-game reason) for a skin to be equally applicable to every ship that shares the same hull profile (so, a skin could be useable on Merlins, Hawks, Harpies, and Worms, for instance). I can’t really think of a reason beyond the desire to squeeze every cent out of players for having it the way it is.

Which, of course, is totally viable. I just don’t think it’s good customer service.

Regardless, it’s a moot point, since I’m not really the demographic for skins; I’ll never buy them because they’re far too expensive for me to adopt them regularly. In fact, I rarely even remember to put them on the ships I own them for. I’m just not built that way.

Nonetheless, I’m finding myself intrigued by the Purity of the Throne event. Really, the rewards are more akin to the Operation Frostline rewards – meager and without much inherent value – unlike the Blood Harvest event.

Yet, I’m consumed by this desire for nearly a whole set of Purity skins. As far as I can tell, it’s simply the fact that the white skins look awesome on Amarr ships. With all the other skins I’ve seen (again, with the exception of the Police Pursuit Comet), they’ve really just been variations of color combinations.

But these Purity skins are striking, bold, different. I’m finding myself not only fixated on getting the ones for ships I regularly fly, but even for ships I’ll never sit in. A Providence? Really? Gotta have it! I may even inject the Aeon and Avatar skins, even though I’ll never fly them with Talvorian.

My first reaction was that Purity was a great event to get people interested in skins. But that quickly faded. After all, skins have been released for some time now. If an event like this is required to focus interest on skins, are they really that successful? I can’t imagine players are adopting them at a satisfactory rate if CCP is going to this effort to highlight them so much. Though, I suppose it’s always possible that they’re so successful that CCP is leading with their strength. I might just be the odd player out in regards to skin fever.

But is Purity really going to be the gateway event that draws new players into a skin addiction? I’m not sure.

After all, the players who will never touch skins aren’t going to be swayed, and those who are already addicts are going to continue as they were too. Isn’t it the players in the middle who are meant to be influenced by skin-based rewards? The players who might find some of them cool, but are hesitant to purchase because of the cost?

The players like me?

On that account, I’m not sure how often I’d be willing to do this kind of grind. While I find it interesting once, I’m not so sure I’d be keen on doing it again. Maybe if CCP released “Minmatar Deception” skins that were solid-gold as an Amarr-ship disguise, or a “Caldari Rave” version with flashing strobe lights and neon colors, I might be inclined to do so.

Then again, Purity of the Throne did get me to care about and actively pursue skins, and CCP should be praised for that. That’s a marketing win. The white skins are just so cool, man.

But, maybe I’m being influenced by the sheer fun of ninja-looting skins in high-sec, including my Apostle skin. If you haven’t done that yet, please try it. It really is the most fun I’ve had in high-sec in about half a decade!