On The Able Commander And This Weekend

No, let's keep the feedback here. I think we can all maneuver around it. I'd rather this thread be constructive anyway.

To your question: We can definitely track if someone buys a Commander.

1) It's not. I'm working on getting an ETA for it.
2) I don't think there's any restrictions.

You misunderstand, I'm referring to if you are able to track someone who doesn't purchase make purchases and/or have some other means to gauge the community's thoughts in regards to things like prices or designs.

Mike

So I think here is the real issue. I am looking at this from the point of view of a person who does not care all that much about graphics. I'd play the game with icons only really. From my view a few changed textures (no matter how much work you put in) are not that "much". Like if I only put a quick look at the commander I won't notice real differences. Ingame I probably will scroll around so fast, I won't notice any difference at all, unless you make one completely pink and the other completely black. So while you put in a lot of work to texture it differently I think there are just many people who don't even look that closely. I would have figured such people, like myself, also don't really care all that much about commander exclusivity and see them only as a way to throw money at you. But it seems there are people who don't look very closely at their commanders and at the same time care about the exclusivity. So to please these people you probably want to really change the model. I am not an expert on the field, but in a full week you should be able to change some basic things. Like swap the arms around with other guns, etc. Whatever change is quick and makes it look different, even through the eyes of a person who only gives a quick look and then enables icons on all zoom levels.

Erhm, huh? Well, only by inference comparing to our total community size. You can't really track something that never happened. We know what our community size is (people who've purchased the game), and we know how many of each commander was purchased. You can't track something that never happened.. though you can infer if you have full funnel instrumentation (User made it to step D in the chain, but never completed step E).. But usually free to play games focus more on that level of instrumentation. We could probably put something in, but it's a bit of effort for an area we don't really need to focus on currently.

Long term, I'd like a lot more instrumentation, but I'm more focused on gameplay decisions, rather than if someone made a cosmetic decision that only affects our revenue. Though both are ultimately interesting to analyze.

Little off topic, but the question struck me as odd, so wanted to drill down and understand your intent.

What I want to see, on topic of making commanders more look more unique, is decals on their chests, shoulders.

With that I mean logos, names, icons,... that are displayed on the model, as an overlapping texture. The delta would for example have triangle on his chest, the alpha would have a big A, the able could have 'Able' written somewhere and so every commander has a something like that, and it would be different for each commander.

It's a detail that would make commanders more unique. Maybe those decals could be also displayed on your structures?

!?

What do you mean they are not?

The game is still in early access, and it's still more expensive than the final game.

That's a good point; there's always been that icon of the Alpha's concept art with the A and I think it would go a long way towards more commander differentiation or at least more unique texturing.

That being said, is it possible to make commander skin packs right now? I don't have any experience texturing, but at least proofs of concept would be really cool.

Oh man, have you seen one of those texture files for the commanders? That's one hell of a uvmap... GL texturing that... The texturerers at Uber must be slaves...

I too have little experience with texturing, but at least my uvmaps are a bit more ... organized

UVs are completely irrelevant these days.

ie. http://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/mari/

Doesn't stop Uber from using them.

The word you're looking for is obsolete BTW.

It's the second time you are saying that.

I don't want to undermine your artist, but he was also working on something else during that time right?

If not, I'm eager to know what is your pipeline in this case and if it also apply to the actual development, because one week of work for a quick paint job is worrying.

Or maybe you are just saying one week to not look bad for the charity? (you can't say it took you 2 hours). But in that case we will never know I guess

They are not obsolete at all. They are still used and no tech will replace them for the next year at least.
But painting on a model is UV-independent now. They are irrelevant when you are doing the texture. I've said it right.

In that case I'm being a derp. Ignore me.

*hides in corner*

I want to see more use of lights. Let's get a quad commander with a rotating spotlight on the top of it's head!

Haha, don't worry Stuart, textures aren't our strong suit... (Stupid Hover tank </3 )

My intent was to clarify because it was recommended that if with dislike a practice that "Voting With our Wallet" would potentially have an effect on future decisions of a similar nature......but if you don't have the means to track/measure that then one would wonder why it was being recommended in the first place.

Mike

Ah, ok. That's what I thought, and why I answered the way I did. We can still infer a lot from what gets bought vs. what doesn't. So while we don't track the lack of a purchase, but say, one custom commander has been bought 5000 times, and another 25, we can make some pretty well informed decisions based on that.

With regard to making the com more unique.

Remove the loin cloth thingamajig.

Change/remove the stuff in the center of its chest.

Make the head be a bit more above the body rather than sunk into it like it is on the Progenitor.

Give the com a missile launcher instead of a laser cannon?

Another idea is to make the textures on its left and right legs different from each other. Asymetrical textures would be pretty unique.

Hovering commander anyone? To be able to hover over water as bonus and maybe take a little longer to accelerate and decelerate before building to balance?