Image Designer Archive

I'm think master IDs need to be able to build some kind of PC town building like other professions. for example;

I'll leave the question of what to call them to someone else. As far as the benefits of having one goes, here are my thoughts:

• Nonstandard alterations. These should be short-term (maybe a week?) but allow for things that you normally wouldn't be able to do—Manic Panic hair colors. Body-paint skin-tones. Contact-induced iris designs. All things that have been requested, with the bonus that they give us repeat business ("Ahh, my contacts are trashed—have to go see the image designer!")


• Reduced HAM costs. Not a big fan of this one—there are already enough complaints about how easy it is to master ID, let's not add to them.


• Customer UI. Again, not something I'm fond of—as has been pointed out, this would turn us into walking, talking ID vendors. Not my idea of a good time.


• Experimentation. This has potential. Allow for the posibility of beyond-racial-limits changes, but make the customer pay for it in permanent encumberances. You want to be a Bothan that's as tall as a human? Sure, but you'll permanently losescads ofaction to do it. You want china-doll facial features? Fine, but your mind's going to suffer. You want that ghetto booty? Great, but your health's going waaay down.


• Partial color alterations. This is a hair-only thing, hilites, frosted tips, that sort of thing.

Well, that's all I can come up with at the moment…hopefully some other ID with a bit more experience than I has some thoughts on this

Syzgy,

I like your feed back, the short-term Nonstandard alterations would be great, I'm thinking maybe even only 24hrs. to be used as a party thing, giving wild blue hair sytle, red and grean body paint, etc.

on the customer UI, I was think more of a NPC vendor or machine that they use to find out the name/code number of the sytle they wait, so they then can tell you what they wait.

My reasoning on suggesting a week was this: I know of very few players who'd come back every day to have a change made. In that regard this would actually make the ability less useful, since it would be relegated—as you said—to a special-events-only type of thing. My goal was to suggest something that would provide the playerbase a service they seem to want, with a duration that would allow us to charge decent prices, and still count on return business. To that end, one or two weeks doesn't seem too outrageous to me. One day, on the other hand, would make this feature about as oft-used as medical forage.

On the topic of other things we could do, I was talking to a friend and coworker of mine during lunch (a BH/CH) and asked him what he'd like to be able to do to his character that he can't. His first response was "more hairstyles! I want a fade, durnit!" (paraphrased to avoid the language filters.) After that he went through the standard requests—piercings, tattoos, iris designs, et cetera. One thing he suggested which I actually really liked was this: have hair grow. You don't see an ID for a month? You end up looking like Rip Van Winkle. It's realistic, it gives us repeat business, and if timed right it wouldn't be a huge hassle for the playerbase in general. Just a thought that seemed to be worth passing on. (Plus I think it'd be really funny to see him get his fade, then a month later take off his composite helmet and realize he looks like Donovan McNabb…hehehe)