FYI: A Player’s Notes Vol. 3 - Coloring and Texturing - Suppressing our Artists and Economy!

Stefan 008 Bond

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Stefan 008 Bond
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To me, the coloring and texturing professions are in need of serious overhaul. The whole process is completely out of reach for the average player in terms of both cost and time. The result is that the entire profession lines of tailoring, texturing and coloring are essentially dead weight. We have very little demand or mu% for any stackables in any of these professions. This in turn frustrates and drives away our artists and designers. As a result the TT digests a lot more exotic skins, textures, texture extractors, cans of paint, wools and hides than it should.

The Positive:

According to Entropedia, we have 34 colors of paint and 240 textures
34 x 240 = 8,160 possible combinations! In one field!
We already have an extremely wide assortment of options available to us, and some of the textures are truly beautiful.

Why then is the entire system completely inaccessible? It’s truly a shame. And it is one of the many things suppressing our economy.

The Main Problem:

Put lightly, the entire system in it’s current form is obtuse and cryptic:
In order to color a simple shirt orange, a player would have to research the forums and find out that you need 323 (cryptic amount) of paint cans in order to reach 100% application. Furthermore, you would need to research even deeper to find that in order to really get 100% success rate for sure, you actually need to color all 3 fields. In One Go. That is 323 x3 = 969 paint cans. You also need to find and locate someone with appropriate skills to do the job (this part is fine actually). Additionally, if you don’t like the result, you must bleach the entire product losing all fields.

I am not sure i need to extrapolate on the costs and sheer ridiculousness of what it would entail to make a shirt made of areanatrox skin. Anyone who has even looked into what it would take to color or texture a simple shirt a simple color or texture has probably had that “Are You Kidding Me?” moment. This needs to change. It is not helping the players, economy or MA.

Proposed Solutions:

The Mechanics:

Coloring and Texturing can be “Worked on Incrementally” -
Player’s should be able to slowly apply their chosen color or texture to any of the fields incrementally over time. All skills and results currently in place can still apply. For those who do not know, it is possible to apply any color/texture you want, regardless of skill, albeit with obvious poor results. This would matter a lot less if we could still apply more afterwards. In this way, skills are still valuable, but the average player can still start a “project” to color some pants brown etc. Looted 15 brown cans on that last run? Sweet! Apply them to those pants you have been working on maybe you will get some good % today.... These are powerful and rewarding results. Bonus for it creating a fast ped cycle as now player gets back 90% tt on coloring to cycle again instead of stacking it in storage for months.

Fields need to be able to reach 100% application independently of the other fields -
Yes you can work on just 1 field at a time, and later start working on another field. No more having to save up for the entire process on all fields at once.

Fields Need to be Independently Bleachable -
Going hand in hand with the new complete control process of each individual field, this one is a no brainer.

The Cost:

While adding the functionality above would help alot as far as accessibility, and ease the burden of saving for such monumental applications, it does not ease up the overall cost.

Short of a complete overhaul of the entire system which would take a lot of work for MA, I have a couple of out of box ideas that might actually work and be much easier to implement.


Do you know what happens if you place a midastree board into a refiner? It will “break down” that one board into 21 pieces of midastree veneer. This is contrary to how a refiner is normally used to refine a higher number into a lower number. But that refiner is a magical tool! It has the ability to break down into more pieces as well!

It is possible then that we could mitigate the insane costs of coloring/texturing in one of 2 ways:

Introducing another refining step after refining skins to hides:
Thus creating more skins for the same tt value. This way is a bit presumptuous, and would work much better for skins than textures using ores, but it’s possible, the way EU is coded, the blueprints could “auto adjust” to the new much lower tt recipes for textures. But again it’s only a thought to throw out on the table, it could work in some cases IF the game has the ability to auto adjust tt returns on lowered recipe costs. It’s probably not the best way, but worth mentioning

Option 2: Introducing a new refining step after textures are crafted
This option is a lot cleaner and straight-forward. Take your textures and refine them into more textures for the same tt value. The problem is there is still a lot of costs with clicking these texture bps, so the first option, although much stickier, has the potential to cut costs more.

Paint cans suffer a bit less from the extraordinary costs because cans aren’t subject to the “destructive” crafting process. Even still, it is worth mentioning, if needed, paint cans could also be run through the refiner to make more for same tt as mentioned above.

There might be some other creative solutions out there as well that would not take a mountain of dev time from MA, let’s hear them!

Expanding the Profession:

There are a number of areas where we can expand on what we can apply colors and textures to.

Using the concept of the makeup masks we have in game, we can create other masks too!

Weapon Skins and Armor plating Skins
These 2 jump right out to me. The idea of the skins/masks works well here because it’s not permanent, and you don’t lose the colors/textures on the mask when the weapon or plate (if L) breaks. Similarly, UL gear isn’t permanently changed for future owners. Players will have their own skins they have worked on or purchased that they like to use.

One interesting thing about this idea is that MA’s propensity to recycle game assets actually becomes an advantage here! Just about all the armor platings in game have the same exact default graphic and size.. Mindark would only to create one “Mask” or “Skin” that would work on all of them, One simple makeup mask to be applied and removed from armor platings would work on over 90% of the plates in game! Obviously there are a lot more weapon assets but similarly they are recycled so it wouldn’t be nearly as many masks to create as one would think.

Created in combination with the ideas outlined above, this would be yet another project for players to work on creating cool skins for their weapons and platings. More demand, better economy.

Expanding Even Further:

Let’s bring another woeful profession into the mix: Carpentry
Carpentry suffers because of both coloring/texturing issues and estate issues (low demand).
Again we are crimping our artists and alot of already made wonderful game assets go to waste.

I figured not to make a separate post concerning player housing. The reason being that aside from enjoyment factor, the big reason it is important is because it can drive an economy.

I do feel, MA should seriously consider offering players that finish a mission chain (insert ideas here) access to simple instanced housing. These can be very simple cube rooms or preferrably a 2 room setup (bedroom etc and main room) that can offer a chance to kick start these professions.
Additionally, it would be most beneficial if each planet had its own housing instance.

These instanced housing need not be able to be seen by any other players. Bonus points if your friends can come visit, but only when you are there via a temporary invite. I don’t believe this will negatively affect existing estates and functionalities. If you want to sweeten the pot for existing in game estates, we can explore some “social buff” ideas as far as meeting in game estates.

By giving all dedicated players access to something they can call home, it enhances the gameplay.
It also, most importantly has the potential to seriously impact these mentioned professions and kickstart a new area of economy.

Just some rapid fire additional ideas:

“Masks” for apartment walls and floors, again there are a lot of recycled assets, this is a good thing! I don’t believe there is even more than 50 difft apartment designs to consider. Savvy coding could even make these masks universal through efficient tiling. These should also be usable in the instanced housing.

MA could consider lowering the painting tax from 10% to a lower %, the increased activity will more than make up the difference.

Pets need clothing and gear, all should be customizable

Tattoos and additional jewelry also,

What if we applied the “mask” idea to all clothing? Then the base garments could somehow break (if L)and yet you do not lose the colors textures on the “mask”? Simply buy another plain shirt etc to apply the mask on.

Welp, that’s all I got on this topic for now! Feel free to rebuke, debunk, add, twist and pinch :) I am not a colorer or texturer so I'm sure some of the sesoned pros would have additional thoughts and comments! As always, the player's notes series is designed from the perspective of the average end-user, not from expertise!

Thanks for reading!

~008 :cool:
 
Nice work.

You obviously put a lot of thought into this and I like your solutions.

Now you made me very interested in the rest of your thoughts and ideas.
 
First off all nice thinking here + some rep for it :)

Reading all this putting paint or tex to clothing is a lot cheaper then like 10 years ago since you get 90% TT value back on apply.
That's what a lot of people dont know (mostly the newbies) or dont know how to count, even some dont give that back to the customer or dont even use 323 cans.....
For texturing you see 100% when 323 tex are used, but you dont see it with paints, so here there can be cheated :(

That we have so many colors and for sure so many textures is the reason why I start making caly tex a lot, the problem is the droprate on caly and for sure on RT.
For those 2 planets the TT value to craft is a lot high so yes those are more expensive.
Dont forget that for some caly tex I need between 700-800 leathers (yes leathers so around 2100-2400 skins) to make 1 stack of textures to get it applied 100% cause while crafting you only get 1 tex on succes.

For the coloring part its more difficult now to get a stack of 323, 1 of the reasons I start buying paints so that would help the customer.
Not on the lower colors but for sure on higher colors. Dont forget we got a lot more planets than years ago and paint drops on all planets now and in space, so yes, lots just TT paints

Since I work mostly with designers they know what they are doing and what the outcome will be.
With a customer that wants his coat colored/textured, is something else and yes that system could need a lot of approvement.
First you cant see the outcome or how the end look will be, so I really think it would be best that the interface should be different in a way that we do with beauty. Both players should be able to see it, also the amount of cans/tex used AND the 90% TT value that would be returned to the customers, not the applier.

Yes a lot of approvement can be done here.
For me prior is the interface, amount of tex/paint used and ped return so scammers dont have a chance + the customer needs to be able to see the end result before applying.
(Not the first time some 1 came up to me with a tiarak/jori car when he asked the applier to have it done in black/red.....) so I had to redo it completely and customer had payed 2x
Do 1 field now and another later? Yes, since for some paints/tex it is very hard to get 323 stacks.
With an interface that both players can see/use, it would be a great advantage that the customer doesn't need to give all his clothing/materials to the applier but can drag it into the field or the texturiser/colorator.

I would love to see clothing for pets :)
For jewelry I already asked MA years ago. At 1 time the argo's even dropped nails ^^ but never seen them since. I'll keep hoping for it :)
Tattoos ^^ YES pls :) Please make us a Tattoo pen and link it to the paints we unlocked/maxed
And what about clothing? Put some buffs on it so its worth more wearing them?
Walls/floors in apartment? Why not ask the applier to put some (wood) tex on the ground of your apartment, or paint the walls?

And at least skilling ..... more colors would be very handy cause at some point its almost impossible to skill since there are gaps where no new colors are maxed. I also have the impression that skills coming slower and slower then years ago. For instance, I click a lot on a daily base and that skill gaine is sooooooo slow. I'm at a point I need to click (read loose) for 20 ped in TT value with paints before I get a skill.
 
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Very nice idea. But to be honest am so dissapointed in MA, i doubt that they will improve something. They rather do 100 meetings in their office than they improve something.
 
I don't know why you are bothering to give MA ideas.

I can think of an endless amount of posts with some of the most well thought out shit that any real business would outright steal from you and make bank off of...

But MA makes EA look like a fortune 500 company.

MA doesn't give a fuck, they already discovered how to basically print money with explosive bps. Why would they bother giving a fuck about any of us when they're literally be fed money by people who make more in a year than all the ATHs combined.

These threads are, while insanely unwarranted for a company like MA, are just delusions we take comfort in hoping for change that will never really come.
I was right about pets, I was right about hangers, I was right about space and I have no doubt the new things like rings and gathering will be a barely baked potato of an idea.
 
I would have liked to see skins give different protections.
Eamon 100% gives 1.5 more on impact for example or Tezlapod gives u 1 Electric etc.

Something i nthis direction to make it actually useful AND most important attracktive to hunt for those.
 
I would have liked to see skins give different protections.
Eamon 100% gives 1.5 more on impact for example or Tezlapod gives u 1 Electric etc.

Something i nthis direction to make it actually useful AND most important attracktive to hunt for those.

thats actually a very nice idea. and quite immersive as well
would also be cool if every armor would be customizable. as lots of cloths get unequipped on equipping armor
 
Folks used to warn others about scammers offering armor coloring services, then ma went and made at least some armor actually be colorable...

Would be nice if the textures diid add some bonuses... but don't hold your breathe for that to happen.
 
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