11 new skills. That's how many dropped with Equinox in order to maximize your usage of the new SKINR tool set inside of Eve Online. I have all 11 of them training right now. I dropped two large skill injectors to get the basics up to proper levels, which is such a waste for me - I think I got a total of 300k skill points from those two injectors. But whatever. I've now spent almost a week playing around with and exploring the new SKINR tool and here are my thoughts.
First of all, wow this tool is expensive to use. Beyond those initial skills the world of SKINR just opens up into a whole new level of expectations and material usage. The entire thing is based on PLEX, which is neither here nor there, this is after all simply cosmetic changes. There is simply no game play impact here at all. So relax. This is a rich kids tool and not for poors. In fact, it is rather evil when it comes to removing you from your Plex. It is a great remove Plex from the game tool.
Making skins is the easy part. Once you get used to how the tool works, which is pretty damn simple, you will get the general idea. And I've seen a lot of truly great skins shared around the community this week. Lots of them. But then you will be tempted to click the "Create Skin" button and that's when the BIG LIE hits you. Because the "Create Skin" button does not create skins. In fact, you need a lot more stuff to actually create any skins.
And if you plan on adding any thing more than the default materials the price for creating those skins will only go up and up on you. The more materials you use the higher the price goes. And you need a lot of these new "Sequencer" bits to help you create them. Fermionic Sequencers, Kerr Sequencers, Alignment Sequencers - you best be stockpiling these little guys. I asked my Alliance for donations of these and I'm very, very lucky they came through for me. So I have a nice stockpile at hand. You will use a lot of these. And then, you have to wait a day or two for your new skin to cook in the oven. Unless - you want to spend even more Plex to make it happen faster. Yep, more Plex. Genius.
Oh and wait, in my opinion here is the really nasty bit. The default materials are unlimited use, but the ones you can buy for Plex are limited to THREE uses each. And those uses are counted by COPIES, not by skins. So if you use a material on one skin and try to generate 3 copies of that skin - you have used all of it. You'll need more of that material to generate more copies. So creating any copies of the skin you've created demands much more Plex to be spent. Plex is vanishing down a hole left and right here.
In my opinion this is when things start to feel extremely predatory. I would like to have that stop right now. One use on a skin, unlimited copies. We were sold the concept that we could create skins for our Corporation/Alliances to use - but my God - how expensive would it be for me to create 10 copies? Not to mention 100? The idea of that is insane. And unless something else is just around the corner...
Which brings up June 20th, which is when the Paragon Store opens and we can start selling these skins on the open market. Don't know the details about that yet. But I'd be shocked if it didn't involve more Plex.
I love the SKINR tool set. It has a lot of promise. But I also believe it is pure Evil with a capital E. We need to tamp this down just a little more and open it up to more people to use, or in a few months no one but a few weirdoes like me will be using it.
That's my opinion right now.