Suggestions

[quote name="Churrell" date="2022-05-25 15:35:59" ] Definitely interested in the idea, though I hear what people are saying about cost/availability concerns. My bold suggestion would be to make them just… commonly available on the site (coliseum drops, marketplace items, etc) But I know there’s other issues with THAT solution, including a potentially enormous volume of items, and creators wanting to see the profits from players buying their item from the site. Perhaps why I think Coliseum Drop might be better than Marketplace, even if it would then be rather hard to get the drop you want, because we already have user made skins dropping from the coliseum, and I don’t see any of those artists complaining that they’re not profiting off the skins that drop. But again, there’s also the issue of, potentially way too many of these items to feasibly program into the coliseum :/ Honestly, I think it would be great to have a Marketplace section of these things, it’s really just the worry about creators being unhappy with that that makes me hesitate. But another thing I’m thinking about is, seeing the examples here with existing FR apparel added to an Ancient, it’s definitely possible that people would copy and paste site art onto an Ancient base to make this kind of item, which is fine, lots of us want those items on Ancients, but if these items were getting SOLD for the creator’s profit (particularly if the artist WAS getting a cut of Marketplace sales) then that would feel unfair to every other person who COULD have copy/pasted that apparel piece over a Gaoler. That’s the “creators get paid for site sales” route that I think is so infeasible I didn’t even touch on it, hahaha [/quote] Very true on the copy pasting apparel! Yeah maybe artists really don't need to make money from this, it doesn't seem necessary when put that way. I really like the idea of a marketplace section!! That feels the most sane way to offer these. Maybe some sort of.. randomized box with a bunch of them you could get from the coli too sometimes (but don't let that be the ONLY way). Restrictions will have to be carefully thought through, some questions that might need to be answered: - Should ancients get to wear retired apparel? How would that work? Maybe being able to convert a modern compatible item to the corresponding ancient one? (ex: KS crown for abers drawn -> convert the one I have to the aber one -> modern compatible Crown disappears. And if I want the modern back I just go thru the process backwards) - What about wanting a different version of an ancient apparel that already got approved? If someone doesn't like the placement of the existing item, can they do anything about that? I think allowing "dupes" like this could get impossible to navigate.

No support for any kind of ancient apparel, ever, for any reason.

Tentative support, I think, and agreeing with those that say that it should not be prohivitavely expensive, somewhere around current skin/accents prices. Custom can only be used on ancients due to them not being otherwise able to wear apparel; customs on moderns is just... huge can of worms.

+ Potentially having some in-game ways to get them? But, given that there is no way to get custom skin blueprints in-game I'm a little more iffy on that; should be consistent there I think.

The only way I'd be behind supporting this is if we were given predrawn apparel like the skin templates and the user is the one who colors it in. That way we already have the line work and shading in place. We would still be able to add shading outside of the clothing item too so that it feels organic.

Other than that, there is still the problem of how much it would cost and would it be a hard to access thing.

I think an item like the Mantles would be a good candidate as they are line breaking but also have enough coverage in every pose that the users could be happy.

I could tentatively support this if more skin mods are hired. The current queue can already take 2+ weeks during especially busy periods, and I worry that adding apparel into the mix would make that (and longer) the norm. Tbh, I'm not too concerned about custom apparel not stylistically fitting the site, there's already a huge amount of skins that don't fit stylistically and that's not a problem.

Thank god its not another "We should allow ancients to wear apparel as long as its lore/species specific/basic apparel"
Like Tserin said, there needs to be more skin mods first. Honestly, I really like this idea. It would be a really good gem sink, and could be used in other ways too. Sure, there's custom apparel for ancients which sounds really good, but there's also the possibility of someone making their own tert linebreaker gene out of this (which isn't a bad thing in my opinion).
Also with the style thing, it probably won't be too big of a thing to stay within Flight Rising's style, maybe clean lines at most. And pricing should be around the same as a skin/slightly more expensive, since it basically is just a linebreaker skin. You would also want people to buy this as well, not just the people with 10's of thousands of gems.
Now, it would be cool to have at least a few slots for the custom apparel, but like you said, people will make curse words or other things with it, which sucks.
So overall I support
Edit: Grammar mistake

I wonder if this would be a good sort of thing to have a contest for? I've seen sites do custom apparel and have it work pretty well, and I can say with some certainty that I know at least three artists who can mimic the site style really well (but I don't wanna trip the "no callouts" rule).

The way I could see this working is, every so often (depending on staff availability), have a no-lines-needed skin contest. The skins created this way- and ONLY this way- can break lines and don't need to account for shadows, and will be sold in the Gem MP's skins tab since that has been empty since what, 2015? Feels like it could work, at least. But... these shouldn't be called Skins, per se. Maybe "Fits" or something? Like, Skins and Accents both already fit in the same slot and that's easy enough to visualize, so these get their own name to make clear they're not quite the same class.

No increase in workload for the staff minus reviewing the contest, since the players are making the items, and like... gives an opportunity for something you don't get otherwise. Seems like something I could tentatively support, at least.

...the only thing is, I'd kinda want this to be a "yea/nay" thing, where ALL Fits that meet the style guide get implemented, and the prize is that you get one free copy of the Fit you designed. I feel like that could mitigate the salt at certain apparel sets not being chosen to be drawn, maybe? That's the main issue that I can see, there.

I would love this. I think it makes sense to allow the skin and accent rules to change a little bit for ancients since they can’t wear apparel, and it would probably be awesome for things like festival skin contests if it could be included there. It’d make sense that it might be at a higher price than a skin or an accent and I’m sure there would need to be some rules and perhaps longer wait times for approval. But as a skin and accent collector, I would love it.

The only problem is then I would want it for moderns as well and I’m sure many others would too. I love skins that really play around with the rules to make dragons look very unique which is probably evidenced by whatever my icon is at the moment you’re reading this, so anything that allows for more variation in terms of line breaking is going to be a big “YES YES YES” from me. I get why the rules are what they are, but I would love alternatives to the current skin/accent categories that would give even more flexibility so I could collect a lot of cool stuff.
Edit: I’m very tired and busy so I mostly skimmed this suggestion, but really any method of implementing this would make me very happy.

No support for creating an entirely new (and quite frankly, convoluted sounding) system for player-made apparel, not for ancients and definitely not for moderns (which will inevitably be asked for if it's created for ancients only).

Skins and accents become permanent parts of FR's site and item database which is why the approval system is so stringent for them and why they need to follow certain style guidelines. Many accents and skins can already mimic the look of apparel already (I mean look at this that's basically apparel) so I really don't see what advantage a so-called "Custom Apparel" system will really add other that mitigates the fact it'd be more work for the Devs that they'd tried to avoid by making ancients unable to wear apparel in the first place, more strain on the customs approval process, and a disgruntled playerbase who "sort of got what they wanted (apparel for ancients) but not really".

At best I would support a special variation of Skin/Accent blueprint for Ancients that allows for designing within their line-breaking terts but nothing else.

[quote name="vihuff" date="2022-05-24 23:04:52" ] No support because apparel should be within the site's art style and done by the artists to match the other art on site and having the artists make apparel for ancients just makes the point of ancients moot so it just goes in a circle. When we got ancients it was clearly laid out exactly what we were getting. The users know that and should accept that that's just what ancients are. I also can't support because I'd rather not see a repeat of skins. The skin system already has several flaws and we don't need to build another feature on top of it. As well as the fact that flight rising has almost entirely phased out retiring apparel and I really don't want to it come back by way of custom apparel. Where only some are created and that's it, or if the user disappears, it'll never be available again. It's one of the things I heavily dislike about the skin system and custom apparel systems on other sites. If custom apparel were ever to become a thing, it would have to become a part of the site and always be around. [/quote] [font=helvetica]I have the same set of concerns. This is a “new feature” that for the average user wouldn’t get to be a feature at all. And if you go the opposite way and all custom apparel is available for everybody, then how is this actually any different from regular apparel? It threatens to take the line that makes Ancients easy to release and blur it out of existence. (Plus, does that make anyone who can afford one of the blueprints functionally part of FR’s art team? That seems like it would get out of hand REAL quick.) Furthermore, while I genuinely love the skins and accents on the site, they work because there are multiple sources for them at different prices (including potentially “free” coli drops) and because there’s no restriction on art style. Conversely, making these pieces be “apparel” introduces the exact requirements that [b]Crowbar[/b] mentioned. Flight Rising takes its style guide seriously, as it should! It is part of the “brand,” so to speak. I also agree with [b]Twizz[/b], above: A lot of what you’re describing both can be and is done already with skins and accents. (Indeed it is… basically identical if we use the version of the suggestion that requires that the art stay within the borders of the dragon.) …Special blueprints for linebreaking terts sound great, though. @Twizz, definitely let me know if you end up making a suggestion thread for exactly that. :v