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[nostra]

I hate to come down on the mods, I prefer to be as supportive as possible with this game, because truth be told I'm loving it so far and can't wait for every patch that comes.

That said, I'm really disappointed so far with the Camo Specs function. I'm not a premium player, and due to money issues I haven't been able to purchase MC as of yet; and therefore I am very glad the game is free to play. Don't get me wrong, I will totally pay for MC in the near future once I can afford it, and I look forward to that. But for those players who want to enjoy the FTP experience without paying real-world money, I feel like the aesthetic customization for 'mechs is severely limited. I can absolutely understand and support hero 'mechs, cockpit items, custom camo schemes, and personalized graphics.

For the free-to-play players, the customization seems so limited that I can say it honestly seems purely phoned in compared to the profit-making MC purchases. You can paint your 'mech all of five "exciting" colors....but to paint your 'mech entirely will cost you the better part of a million C-bills. That's right, even for a Commando, you're going to double your costs on the thing just to paint it solid blue (or purple, or red, or whatever you dig- anything aside from the standard military green)...and that's it.

For one thing, the costs need to be cut considerably, I mean....even canonically, there's no way in hell that techs charge a mechwarrior some odd 900,000 C-bills just to paint the thing one color.

For another, what's up with the arrangement of "color areas" on a 'mech? My Centurion, for example, I select the first of the three swatches to choose a color, pick, say, orange...and my 'mech gets a weird, patchwork orange over almost half of the machine in no particular order. I select the second swatch, make that orange as well, and 90% of the 'mech is now orange as well....except for the head crest, a single shoulder and arm panel on the right arm, and a panel on each hip. So...who decides how that works? I mean, it seems different for each 'mech, with no real logic behind the layout of the colors.

I don't want to gripe about it, the game is still in Beta and there's a long way to go before it's finished, so I'm just offering my input. Make the entire FTP Camo Specs portion way cheaper, open up all of the colors (seriously, why the hell is one color of dark navy blue C-bill and one only slightly darker navy blue MC cost?), keep the MC cost on Camo Specs only for decals, camo schemes other than the basic (dazzle, urban block, etc.), and unique patterns like Phranken, and make the layout for painting a 'mech make sense. I mean...if it stays the same patterning that we have now, then we'll never be able to mimic unit paint schemes or cool custom ones like blackjack_bbc-by-ironhawk.jpg that.

Just my input. I have high hopes for this game, and I definitely want to see it profit and be successful, and will contribute to that myself (by paying for MC and so on) in the future; but we can't forget that the core audience of a Free-to-Play game is those who don't want to spend huge amounts of money for monthly accounts and such....but that doesn't mean paying players should get all of the aesthetic customization fun.