Skuzzy,
If you really want my honest opinion, I think that every customer should be able to download as many skins he/she wants in their computer. I would make every possible skin available to download- no limit whatsoever. Take it from a MS Flight Sim perspective. There are hundreds, if not, thousands, of skins and planes to download from the Internet. I think the player should have the choice of downloading any skin they would like. Less pressure on your part, as you don't have to worry about squad COs bickering and whining because their favorite skin got rotated out. In this regard, all skins would be made available from the downloads page of the website.
It really is not fair that many great skinners have beautiful plane profiles submitted, only to hear that their skin submission will take years to be rotated in the game. And that's IF it does.
Yes, you may hear people whine because their game is running like crap because they have every possible skin ever made downloaded in their computer. But seriously, who's fault is that? It's their fault. Not HTC's. They can delete any unused skins that they don't want. It's common sense. It would improve their computer performance that way if they took a little bit of time to carefully select which skins they would like downloaded.
Hey Plaz,
I see what you're saying, and a large part of me does agree with you, however, when I put my "IT" hat on, I have to side with HTC in having limits. Now, how those limits are done are completely up for discussion, but the type of "free reign" you describe could cause some serious negative side effects. Here are some examples :
#1. Technical Support. You mention some computers running slow. Skuzzy already gets quite a few of these performance issues "trouble tickets". By opening up any # of skins, not only will the support needs rise, but the difficulty in troubleshooting the performance issues arrise. You may just think that it's as simple as make one of the trouble shooting steps "delete the skins folder", but in reality, people will sometimes lie about things they do / do not do during a troubleshooting process (especially if they don't see the benefiet to doing so) which increases the complexity greatly. Also, even if you ignore possible performance increase of trouble, you also have the increase of trouble requests due to people improprly installing skins, installing bad skins, etc.
#2. Uneven playing field. Putting this control in the hands of the end users means it's garunteed that people will use this to gain unfair competitive advantage. People would be making opponent skins completely bright and neon visible, and possibly even alter the textures themselves with a fully transparent alpha channel allowing them to see through their cockpit, for a "guncam" like view.
#3. Inconsistency in visibility. You explain one reason you want this is so that COs no longer would have to be upset their skins aren't in the game. Well, technically, NO ONE'S skins will be in the game. You'd be able to pick your own aircraft skin, but how would someone else's computer have any idea what skin you're using? Try to match file name? What if two skinners used the same file name accidentally? use some sort of file hash? Introducing added complexity. As it stands right now, if you're flying a P38 of the 475th, EVERYONE that sees skins other than default sees the exact same aircraft.
#4. Image hit to HTC / no quality control. With no "central method" of administering skins, yes, a lot more people would be able to see their stuff in game. But there's also the problem of quality. Lots of low quality (or as above stated, "cheated") skins would make it into circulation, and youtube videos and such would be made with these low quality skins hurting Aces High's reputation.
#5. Development resources. From the way I understand things (and I could be incorrect), the way skins are tied into aircraft right now is a very tight/integrated system, that's far beyond just a database saying skin P51D-#12 = xxxxx skin. Skuzzy has alluded to this in statements describing the difficulty of replacing skins and rotating them through rotation. This would require a complete revamp of their current aircraft and GV texture structure, which I would venture a guess would be a large undertaking for a relatively small team.
Like I said Plaz, I don't completely dissagree with you, but you have to weight the benefits against the detriments (and I've only given quick examples I can think of), and I'm not sure enough benefit would be there.
