EVE Online is gearing up for its Equinox expansion this June, and coming with it is a new system to personalize ship skins. Taking the SKINR tool that has been used for structures previously, Equinox expands this to ships, allowing for fully customizable ship SKINs for the first time in the space-faring MMO.
For me, this might mean I never undock again, as I'll be playing around with this tool way too much.
I love cosmetic items in my MMOs, and personalizing the look of my avatars is something I take a lot of joy in, regardless of the game. I typically won't drop real money for cosmetics, preferring to earn them in game, or, in the case of games like Final Fantasy XIV or The Lord of the Rings Online, I like to use armor and clothing pieces and make my own style. I'm such a sucker for this that in LotRO I have matching outfits for my character and the horse I happen to be riding that day.
I'm terrible.
So when EVE Online started talking SKIN customizations, first on structures but eventually on ships, I got pretty excited. I enjoy flicking through the SKINs in the fitting window personalization preview, seeing which ship would look the coolest as I'm fodder for another killmail. If I'm going to be blown up, I wanna look cool doing so.
Yesterday, the CCP Games team pulled the veil back a bit on the SKINR tool and how it'll work with ship SKINs, and, as with anything in EVE, how you can make some ISK using the tool.
In an accompanying blog post, the EVE Online team states that the different ways you can adjust, apply design elements, and truly personalize each ship SKIN will see "capsuleer creativity truly explode." You can apply different coats of paint (in this case, called nanocoatings) to different areas of each ship, and even move pattern design you chose around the hull, allowing for a fair bit of freedom when designing the perfect look for your Astero, Mekubal, or that Vargur you never fly.
Nanocoatings will be available on the Paragon hub, with more being added during events, daily goals, loot and much more in EVE. My only concern is that to create these ship SKINs in order to sell them on the marketplace to earn that ISK, you will need to use PLEX to sequence them into a license. Tying the feature to the real-money currency of EVE Online might make it so many who want to interact with the system unable to, especially if they can't spend the real-life money to acquire the PLEX, or even have the in-game ISK to buy it off the marketplace.
Either way, I can see myself spending hours just tweaking the various color schemes and patterns on my hulls to get the that perfect look - so much so that I'm not sure when I'll actually undock and take part in any of Equinox's other content, such as flying one of the new Upwell ships around. Thankfully, the SKINR tool can be accessed outside of a dock as well - meaning that during your mining downtime you can be making a new SKIN for your budding industrial empire to don, or while scanning relic sites you can also be trying out new color schemes to add to your next frigate PvP Roam with your fleet.
If you're interested in learning more, CCP Games is hosting a live stream tomorrow at 16:00 UTC (that's 9am PT/12pm ET) tomorrow, May 23rd, on the official EVE Twitch channel.
