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Weapon Skins and Killcount Weapons.

centersolacecentersolace Member Posts: 11,178 Arc User
Ever since the new kits came out, I've had this idea kicking around and I think now is the time to share it with you all and see what you guys think.

Weapon skins would work pretty much like you think they would. You equip it in a weapons slot, and then you would slot a weapon in the skin just like you do with abilities and kits. The skin would then gain all the stats and effects of the weapon you slotted while giving it a different appearance.

The great thing about this is that it's not pay to win in the slightest. This means that Cryptic could sell these however they wanted. C-Store, Lockbox, Lobi Store, anything is fare game. Cryptic could even add some of these as special drops if they so desired. It would never upset the balance of power because a skin is useless on it's own, you still need to obtain a compatible weapon through other ingame means in order for it to do anything.

Another great thing about this, is that we could add a lot of canon weaponry without having to come up with stats for them. For example the Bajoran weapons that come with the DS9 set could become skins instead of actual weapons allowing people to use them at endgame level provided they have an endgame weapon to slot. Same for the weapons in the TOS set, and any future sets based on series without having to worry about people crying foul over P2W.

Cryptic could limit this any way they wanted to as well. They could it so some weapons couldn't be slotted. They could make skins only accept certain types of weapons (pistol skins will only accept pistols for example) so on and so forth.

Killcount weapons would work exactly like their name suggests. They're weapon skins that count kills. It would have a little counter that would track the number of bad guys killed with that weapon. Cryptic could also sell little parts that could be slotted into killcount weapons that would track specific enemies killed, or enemies killed under certain circumstances. So for example a killcount weapon description would look something like this:

Killcount Adapted M.A.C.O. Phaser Pulsewave Rifle Mk XII
Very Rare Vice Admiral

Targets Eliminated.............................................3813
Melee kills...........................................................22
Vaporized Targets...............................................212
Borg Eliminated..................................................513
Voth Eliminated...................................................61

What that essentially means is that this puleswave rifle has gotten 3813 overall kills, of those 513 were borg, 61 were Voth, 212 were vaporized, and 22 were killed with the rifle butt. You could have these kind of parts for anything you could imagine. Instant kills, PvP kills, DoT kills, Kills while you were on fire, Kills with the primary attack, Kills with the secondary attack, assist kills with a player, assist kills with one of your bridge officers, anything you could possibly imagine.

The best thing about this is that none of this is pay to win. You still have to get an actual MACO Pulswave from the reputation in order to use the Killcount/Skin variant.



While that's great and all, there are a few problems I see with this.

The first is that killcount/weapon skins/skill tracker parts would have to be tradable. At least the ones that came from lockboxes. If you opened up a lockbox and didn't get the skin/part you wanted or if you didn't want one of those at all, then you should be able to sell/trade it for something you do want.

The second thing is that the little parts that track individual types of kills would have to be treated differently from regular lockbox loot. Weapon skins would be rewards on their own, but getting single part that tracks something you might not even have? Yeah that would kind of suck. The way I would do it is that you would get a big bundle of 5-6 for opening a lockbox or a part in addition to something else, like the Doff Packs or Dil Claims.

The third problem, is that I really don't know how this can be translated to work for space combat. There are a couple ways it could, but since Space Combat is so different from ground they're all rather awkward. If someone could come up with a way this could work for space combat, that would be really cool.


That's it really. It's a rather straightforward idea actually.
Post edited by centersolace on

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    adverberoadverbero Member Posts: 2,045 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    Weapon Skins would be welcomed by many players I think.

    How many among us would like to use a particular canon Phaser rifle skin that we just don't have in game so far? , Or would like to make a Federation issue Plasma Rifle, Federation skin, plasma discharge doesn't in my opinion break canon, The internals should be pretty interchangeable

    And lets be totally honest, the current weapon skins for many of the standard weapons are sub par for the quality of the game as it is now. I'm thinking specifically along the lines of Polaron Weapons that have very odd appearances
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    seriousxenoseriousxeno Member Posts: 473 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    So you want to take the CS:GO route of selling weapon skins for up to 200$ or more?
    Unless its coincidental, thats exactly what Valve is doing with their games.
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    centersolacecentersolace Member Posts: 11,178 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    adverbero wrote: »
    Weapon Skins would be welcomed by many players I think.

    How many among us would like to use a particular canon Phaser rifle skin that we just don't have in game so far? , Or would like to make a Federation issue Plasma Rifle, Federation skin, plasma discharge doesn't in my opinion break canon, The internals should be pretty interchangeable

    And lets be totally honest, the current weapon skins for many of the standard weapons are sub par for the quality of the game as it is now. I'm thinking specifically along the lines of Polaron Weapons that have very odd appearances

    This is what I'm going for really. Some nice Klingon Skins wouldn't go amiss either.
    So you want to take the CS:GO route of selling weapon skins for up to 200$ or more?
    Unless its coincidental, thats exactly what Valve is doing with their games.

    It's partially inspired by that. STO will never reach levels of that ridiculousness because of how the exchange works. It would give the player economy a boost though.
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    inkrunnerinkrunner Member Posts: 407 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    That would be cool! This idea has my support :).
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    talonxvtalonxv Member Posts: 4,257 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    While for the KDF many would see it as badges of honor, for the feds side, I gotta scratch my head and sigh. Went from peaceful exploration to showing kill counts on our weapons?

    I weep for the future of Star fleet.
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    kalvorax#3775 kalvorax Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    talonxv wrote: »
    While for the KDF many would see it as badges of honor, for the feds side, I gotta scratch my head and sigh. Went from peaceful exploration to showing kill counts on our weapons?

    I weep for the future of Star fleet.

    its sto...there is no peaceful exploration...heck, there wont even BE exploration soon lol
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
    I find this line of replies sadly hilarious. We put a lot of work into the massive list of fixes/changes above, and ya'll are hung up on the ability to skip our content. =p
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    seriousdaveseriousdave Member Posts: 2,777 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    I can get behind the whole weapon skin idea, sounds neat.
    But what is the killounter for? Is it really important to know how many npcs you vaped while grinding for gear/marks/dil? Seems kinda pointless to me.
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    shevetshevet Member Posts: 1,667 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    Every weapon in the game gets its own set of usage statistics? Seems like an awful lot of database work to no very good purpose.
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    centersolacecentersolace Member Posts: 11,178 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    talonxv wrote: »
    While for the KDF many would see it as badges of honor, for the feds side, I gotta scratch my head and sigh. Went from peaceful exploration to showing kill counts on our weapons?

    I weep for the future of Star fleet.
    I can get behind the whole weapon skin idea, sounds neat.
    But what is the killounter for? Is it really important to know how many npcs you vaped while grinding for gear/marks/dil? Seems kinda pointless to me.

    Like I said, this isn't for everyone. A lot of people don't even like ground stuff in the first place.


    The main reasoning behind this idea was more of a bragging rights reward more than anything else. In ye olden days owning a MACO or Honour Guard set was an achievement on it's own. This would be something similar to that, but more accessible.

    Is it necessary? Not hardly. Would it be fun? Yes, very.

    shevet wrote: »
    Every weapon in the game gets its own set of usage statistics? Seems like an awful lot of database work to no very good purpose.

    A: No, not every weapon. Only the weapons Cryptic wants to create. Having every single weapon get usage statistics would undermine the entire idea and Cryptic wouldn't make any money on it.

    B: It wouldn't be as hard as you would think. A lot of accolades track similar stats.
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    rattler2rattler2 Member Posts: 58,023 Community Moderator
    edited June 2014
    THe killcount stuff reminds me of Strange weapons in TF2. Eventually someone's gonna get a Server Clearing Elite Fleet Phaser Split Beam Rifle mk XII.
    Or Hale's Own Federation Type 2 Phaser Pistol mk XI.
    db80k0m-89201ed8-eadb-45d3-830f-bb2f0d4c0fe7.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2ExOGQ4ZWM2LTUyZjQtNDdiMS05YTI1LTVlYmZkYmJkOGM3N1wvZGI4MGswbS04OTIwMWVkOC1lYWRiLTQ1ZDMtODMwZi1iYjJmMGQ0YzBmZTcucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.8G-Pg35Qi8qxiKLjAofaKRH6fmNH3qAAEI628gW0eXc
    I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
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    thegalaxy31thegalaxy31 Member Posts: 1,211 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    I would love this. But to quote my trademarked post: Cryptic is unlikely to implement it.™


    We really need BLACK weapons skins. Most of the weapons skins in the game look like something from a 7 year old's dream.
    I would love to visit this star in-game...or maybe this one!
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    centersolacecentersolace Member Posts: 11,178 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    rattler2 wrote: »
    THe killcount stuff reminds me of Strange weapons in TF2. Eventually someone's gonna get a Server Clearing Elite Fleet Phaser Split Beam Rifle mk XII.
    Or Hale's Own Federation Type 2 Phaser Pistol mk XI.

    Kind of. Just imagine everything is MvM.
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    mirrorchaosmirrorchaos Member Posts: 9,844 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    That's it really. It's a rather straightforward idea actually.

    reads like its straightforward and putting these ideas into action are completely different. the weapon skins i would imagine would take a while to get right, time and resources that should be used on other things of far more importance then a small pattern on the phaser that will hardly get noticed.

    as for the killcounter, its a waste of effort and it adds nothing to the game other then requiring some complicated coding.
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    iconiansiconians Member Posts: 6,987 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    I support the idea of cosmetic weapon skins and killcounters.
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    thay8472thay8472 Member Posts: 6,101 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    Do we really need a kill count? We're all mass murderers. :D
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    Typhoon Class please!
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    iconiansiconians Member Posts: 6,987 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    thay8472 wrote: »
    Do we really need a kill count? We're all mass murderers. :D

    The death of one is a tragedy, the death of many is a statistic.

    I wouldn't mind having that statistic displayed on my equipment. :cool:
    ExtxpTp.jpg
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    admrenlarreckadmrenlarreck Member Posts: 2,041 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    Weapon skins YES!

    killcounter? Isn't that what the accolades are for?
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    yellowalertyellowalert Member Posts: 0 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    Sounds good. I don't pick weapons (for ship or ground) based on DPS as much as I pick based on look, style and sounds.
    [SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
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    kestrelliuskestrellius Member Posts: 462 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    +1 on weapons skins.
    Indifferent toward killcounts. It could be fun, but it wouldn't add much. Really, it all depends on how much work it would be -- if it'd be nearly effortless, I'd say go for it.

    But really, this should all be part of a crafting system. You construct a weapon from the ground up, with a chassis (skin) and various parts that determine the energy type, look and sound of the firing effects, and modifiers.

    But just having weapons skins like this would be great. +1 for MOAR TETRYON WEAPON SKINS ON EVERYTHING.
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    rattler2rattler2 Member Posts: 58,023 Community Moderator
    edited June 2014
    Weapon skins YES!

    killcounter? Isn't that what the accolades are for?

    The Accolades stop counting once you hit the lv 3 kill accolade.
    db80k0m-89201ed8-eadb-45d3-830f-bb2f0d4c0fe7.png?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcL2ExOGQ4ZWM2LTUyZjQtNDdiMS05YTI1LTVlYmZkYmJkOGM3N1wvZGI4MGswbS04OTIwMWVkOC1lYWRiLTQ1ZDMtODMwZi1iYjJmMGQ0YzBmZTcucG5nIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.8G-Pg35Qi8qxiKLjAofaKRH6fmNH3qAAEI628gW0eXc
    I can't take it anymore! Could everyone just chill out for two seconds before something CRAZY happens again?!
    The nut who actually ground out many packs. The resident forum voice of reason (I HAZ FORUM REP! YAY!)
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    centersolacecentersolace Member Posts: 11,178 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    +1 on weapons skins.
    Indifferent toward killcounts. It could be fun, but it wouldn't add much. Really, it all depends on how much work it would be -- if it'd be nearly effortless, I'd say go for it.

    But really, this should all be part of a crafting system. You construct a weapon from the ground up, with a chassis (skin) and various parts that determine the energy type, look and sound of the firing effects, and modifiers.

    But just having weapons skins like this would be great. +1 for MOAR TETRYON WEAPON SKINS ON EVERYTHING.

    That's what's great about the idea though, you could have TNG skins from a C-Store TNG bundle, Shiny Latinum skins from the Lobi store, and cool craft skins too. Everyone wins.
    rattler2 wrote: »
    The Accolades stop counting once you hit the lv 3 kill accolade.

    Yes, and most of the recent accolades don't give trophies anymore. :(
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    wbaker256#3172 wbaker256 Member Posts: 282 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    Weapon skins I agree with. As I recall, that was actually something that was promised to us in the days before Perfect World.

    Kill Counters beyond the accolades though... I think Dev resources could be devoted to more important/useful things, IMHO.
    @MGoblin256

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    sumghaisumghai Member Posts: 1,072 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    I'm definitely keen on this idea, centersolace - I'd love to be able to buy TNG movie-era Type II "Dolphin" Pistol and Type III Rifle skins for my FED main.
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    r9xchaosr9xchaos Member Posts: 249
    edited June 2014
    i made a similiar suggestion, but i doubt they wil add this.. atleast not int he next 2 years :(
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    centersolacecentersolace Member Posts: 11,178 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    sumghai wrote: »
    I'm definitely keen on this idea, centersolace - I'd love to be able to buy TNG movie-era Type II "Dolphin" Pistol and Type III Rifle skins for my FED main.

    See, now this guy gets it. :D
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    smokeybacon90smokeybacon90 Member Posts: 2,252 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    Yes, if it comes with a general ground weapons visuals overhaul, along with customization options.
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    tpalelenatpalelena Member Posts: 1 Arc User
    edited June 2014
    Cryptic.... I think is way too lazy to do anything as cosmetic as this.
    Let us wear Swimsuits on Foundry maps or bridges please! I would pay zen for that.
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    centersolacecentersolace Member Posts: 11,178 Arc User
    edited July 2014
    Yes, if it comes with a general ground weapons visuals overhaul, along with customization options.

    Yes please.
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