Posted 19 December 2012 - 07:44 AM
At the moment, the pricing and lack of permanency is what its preventing me from painting my Mechs. I would love to 'rock some bitchin' camo', as I'm sure the cool kids will be saying some time soon, but there is no way I'm spending large amounts of Cbills - let alone real world money - on something that has a purely cosmetic effect and will have to be repurchased if I ever want to change it. Not to mention the fact that camo on my Mechs is something I have to pay for, without having a decent way of properly appreciating it for myself.
Without wanting to wave the competition in your face, go and look at how World of Tanks does paint schemes and the Tank Hanger *cough* Mech bay *cough*. It's not perfect, but at the moment it works better than the MWO approach. It still makes you pay for every change, and it costs you real money if you want the scheme to last for ever rather than rent it for a month - but it also gives you a bonus (small, not enough to be P2W) to your concealment rating so I consider it worth paying for on Tanks I'm going to keep for ever. And you can 360 degree rotate your tank to view from any angle - you really do need to get this feature working in the mech lab, the lack of it really stands out.
Obviously, I can only speak for myself, but if the basic operation of the camo system is going to stay as-is then the pricing structure needs a drastic revision downwards. I'm not going to blow MC350 on an essentially pointless camo scheme when I could have a whole new Mech bay for less. As for the paint colours? I can understand the rational behind making all the useful ones MC only, but at MC125 for a single use all I'm going to do is laugh at your misguided business acumen and move on.
Once again, my own opinion, but I would redesign the system so you can pay a high amount of cbills for a single use license on any camo pattern or colour. That means its locked to a specific mech, rather than a chassis type. If you change the paint scheme or sell the mech you have essentially thrown away the money, but you didn't have to spend MC either. Next would be the option to spend a small amount of MC instead of a large wedge of cbills. Still a single use license, but for MC25 instead of CB150000. The next tier option would be a larger MC payment to permanently unlock a single camo pattern for an entire chassis type, or a colour palette for use on any mech you own. So a single payment of MC250 would unlock the urban block pattern for use on any Raven chassis you may own now or in the future, no further payment needed. If you want it for the atlas chassis as well then that will be another MC250. A similar one-off payment of MC350 would unlock the mountain palette (or any other one you choose). Once unlocked these colours are available for use on any of your mechs, as many times as you want, for no further payment.
I'd even go one step further, and have a final tier. A single payment of MC4500 (or similar, comparable cost with a medium to heavy class hero mech) would give you open access to the whole paint shop. All colours, all patterns, on any mech, any time, no further payment.
If its about income then think of it this way. You will make far more money from selling paint if its so cheap that everyone buys loads of it on impulse. As soon as it becomes expensive enough that I have to consider the cost before purchasing then I realise that it gives very little return for the investment and I'm out. Right now I can give a nice paint job to 5 or 6 of my existing mechs, or I can buy a new hero mech. Guess which one I'm going to go with.