[UI] Tournament Ship Skins

​

So this is something that I've been thinking of for a while, so much so that I thought I would try and make something special of it; Tournament Ship Skins.
I have done my best to try and organise the idea, since it's a bit of a mix of a few ideas all stuck together.







A couple months ago the Turkey-based DarkOrbit development team hosted a 5v5 tournament for TR servers, there were a bunch of group staged and then a LAN final set up in Istanbul for the final 8 teams.
We were told it was done as a test run to see how it went. In this idea the "tournament" is literally just the 5v5 one that was held for TR servers but in this instance it would be for all or almost all servers.

There was a prize-pool of 25,000 TL for the TR tournament, that is roughly around 8,700 euro. If DarkOrbit is considering doing another one of these tournament I think the prize pool is one of the things that can be improved the easiest ... which brings us onto the chest system!

If DarkOrbit were to host one of these tournaments every 1 or 2 years they could really make something special out of it.






This will be very familiar to anyone who has played the likes of CS:GO or Dota2 (I'm sure other games have it as well since it's incredibly successful).
If we use CS:GO as the example, a user will buy a "crate" and inside that crate will be various weapon skins with varying rarity. The crate will then give the user 1 of the skins and then disappear, if the user wants to try for another skin they must buy another crate.

So if this system were to be implemented into DarkOrbit then a player would buy a chest and when they open it they would receive a 'Ship Skin'.

My idea for this is that there are 5 base skins that would follow a particular colour scheme or follow the theme of the tournament if there was one. If a player bought a chest they would be guaranteed to receive 1 of these skins.

However it would not stop there. For the system to be really appealing for some players to buy lots of chests then there would need to be rare items. In this case a skin for the player's P.E.T (thanks to res for that one) would do nicely seeing as it is something that does not exist in the game yet.
I think if the odds of getting a P.E.T skin were something like 1/200 then it would make it something that remained special and not something that eventually everyone would have.
These P.E.T skins would be purely cosmetic.


What do the chests have to do with the tournament?
Let's say each chest was being sold for 5 euros each. For every chest told a percentage of it would be added to the tournament prize pool. If we say 50% was added to the prize pool and only 5,000 chest were ever sold then that would be a bonus 12,500 Euros on top of whatever the base pool was, lets imagine it was 10,000.
Then that leaves us with 22,500 prizepool, which sounds much more interesting and important than just 10,000.

What happens with the other 50%? Goes into BP pockets to do as they please, I don't know how much it would cost them to run an event but if they sold enough chests they could use all the sales of the chests to run the event for 'free'.

It of course doesn't just stop at simply being more money for some players to win, it generates more interest from the players as it gets bigger and bigger.







So how do we made something that a lot of players will see worth spending 5 Euros on? Three things is all that's needed.

• Make it purchasable for a limited time only, as in it goes on sale for 2 months then never again.
• Have it be something players can actually use every day without having to sacrifice not having something else that is better.
• Make it look good (much easier said than done, I know xD)

Why purchasable for limited time only?
It needs to be special, something that not every player is going to have in the game. If something is only available for a limited time only it tends to sell much quicker as well - which brings us back to the tournament prizepool getting bigger and making the whole thing much more appealing for players to be interested in.


How will it actually be useful?
It is overall accepted that the skill designs are as good as it comes in turns of ships in DarkOrbit. If I had the coolest looking basic Goliath in the world it would always be in the back of my mind - "I could be using Sentinel here and be much stronger".
So as you have probably guessed by the title images, skins for skill designs would be the way to fix this in my mind.

Just like the P.E.T they would be purely cosmetic and not enhance the already existing skill design in anyway and a user much already own the skill design to use the appropriate skin.


Making it look good
Eh, not much to say about this since everyone has their own tastes and when I showed a few early pieces to friends they all had different opinions on which one they liked the best and which one they thought was the worst.
However I'm no professional and I'm sure the BP artists could come up with some much cooler stuff.








I'm in the very slloooowwww process of uploading a video (0.4 upload speed is not fun) about this, just basically explaining whatever is written in the post along side some video of the designs in the 3D client so people can have an idea of what it could look like.

I'm the mean time feel free the view some of the images I made in preparation for the video

• 'Rare' P.E.T
• Diminisher
• Sentinel
• Solace
• Venom
• Spectrum

It's important to note: It does not matter whether you like the designs I have made (but I hope you do ^^).
They were made just to give people a clear idea of the concept.


Feedback is of-course welcome

 

uh yes please 0.0 especially that solace and sentinel

 

I like this idea some new "skill design skins" it should also come for the Vengeance Lightning design maybe giving it a try Okapi32?
Also a pet skin would be really nice I do like how the pet looks right now but having multiple skin sorts can enhance the personality of a pet and player.

I love the idea Okapi32

 

Why must they be made to only be available to ship designs and not just to all ships?

 

Idea is preety good Okapi32 but i would say they have to make for every design (skill and no skill cause why someone would buy 200 chests when he can get all skill designs in just 5 ? It will be good once in 1 year to get new cool skins for ur ship for all skill designs and new designs same as bastion enforcer exalted or veteran. Also it can be implented into JPA aswell and they can do a skin Every JPA and whoever participate in JPA get it after it. It will be only once and will be 1 of skill designs. They can do it also a fee to participate in JPA to increase prize of it. So prize will be according to how many took part. For example if there are 10,000 players they will give 25k euros instead of 10k that is now (Of course minimum will be 10k as it is now)... So with other 25k they can pay developers for new skin that will be exclusive for that JPA and also a bigger JPA server for more players to participate so prize will be higher for winner .... Also i would say if winning prize will be higher they can give 20% to runner-up so it will be fair. Also there can be in game prizes for top 50 (in game like uridium or ammo or packages like premium, rebate, or doubler according to ur position).... I would say you can use jpa or other tournament skill designs ONLY after you have normal skill design otherwise it will be locked until you get it. About rare item i would say it can be also another design working same as saturn as original 1 is not looking cool at all. And for players that cant participate jpa cause of laws they can add it in shop. That will bring in end of jackpot euros cause in my point of view it is not worth to collect all those and its not any profit for game . So prize will be higher and everyone can get his design if he dont win jpa so its not pointless to participate and pay that 5$ fee for it.

 

Ah yeah that's true I forgot about a Lightning example, my bad. However I just made them as a proof of concept to give people an idea of what skins for skill designs could look like - even if this idea was used for a tournament, I don't think these skins would be.

If they made them for all the designs then the chance of somebody getting the a skill-design skin from their chest goes down and they would be frustrated that they got something useless compared to if they just used their regular skill-designs which would make them better at the game.
I also think if they did one for every Goliath / Vengeance / BigBoy / Nostromo design then the idea of it being something "special" and exclusive goes away a bit.

 

Just make them ship skins that carry over to the designs.

 

I don't quite understand what you mean by that?

 

He means a universal skin that can be applied to any ship. Just a generic label. Having a TA Skin option unrestricted to what type of ship you have.

 

Yes and unrestricted to any design as well, making it still possible to apply to any ship or design.

 

He means make it a universal skin. You get one and it goes on any ship, which kinda defeats the purpose of your idea.

 

If this idea is for a few or select number of players than yes it needs defeating.

 

Yeah that's why I had to ask, just seemed so detrimental to the concept of raising money for a tournament prizepool :s

There are plenty of things that are not accessible everyone. Premium for example, if there is a young player who does not have their own money source then they cannot get premium without asking for it from someone else. The same would be in this case, if somebody cannot buy the chests, then they don't without asking someone else to buy them instead.

Not every player is going to be General, not ever player is going to be in the top 9 on their server ranking.
Should we scrap EP / Honor or everyone's rankpoints because not everyone is going to be 1st or a General? No.



In this idea the skins are purely cosmetic. If somebody does not wish to buy one then they simply don't and they are no worse off for not doing so. However those who do want a skin can buy a chest and so on, all whilst seeing their money be put towards a tournament prize pool to make it a bigger occasion.

 

So your position with this idea is to add to the things not accessible to the many huh.......sad.

 

Except it is available to the majority of people. I don't know a single person besides those whos accounts are merely a few weeks old who do not own a single skill design. The vast majority of people also have the option available to buy something for actual money, looping back to what I said in my previous post.

Your argument doesn't make much sense, seems to me you are just trying to put down this idea with some poor arguments to try and promote your own thread.

 

I think this is a brilliant idea, it will add a more personal appeal to a part of the game and the ability to differ definitely gets a go from me and I agree it will help to get more players involved the larger the prize pool becomes.

 

I don't own a single skill design bub, but you're right about not knowing anyone that doesn't.

 

Yup my 3 week old got sentinel from booty.

 

That's would be cool !

 

​

This idea is amazing and i believe it should 100% happen! Good work OP