Hey guys, I just had an interesting thought. Since Custom Loadouts are being removed, the cool feeling of being able to personalise your weapon with skins will be a thing of the past if 343i also end up removing them. Maybe 343i could bring a certain level of weapon customisation into Halo 5 by introducing (or, reintroducing) weapon skins for all of the guns? If they were to do this, you could go into a menu and select a cool skin design for each of the weapons in the game. In a match, you’d obviously start the game using the skin that you chose to put on whatever the starting weapon is going to be.
Everyones’ skin will be different. Once you pick up a Battle Rifle on the map, the skin you selected as your BR skin will be there. I imagine a really cool visual effect where the skin slowly paints itself across the gun, or maybe it slowly fades from being a digital silhouette into a fully coloured design after you pick it up. If you get killed and drop the gun, however, someone else may go to pick it up, and when they do their own personal skin will appear. This would apply to all guns in the game, but based on playing Halo 4 I’d like to say that it would only apply to standard weapons, and not power weapons, as locating a power weapon is important and the colour scheme of the gun should never change, simply so a dropped power weapon doesn’t get lost among a clutter of coloured BRs and magnums for example.
In terms of having them be unique, I’d suggest that 343i adds in a “Livery Designer”. Anyone can access it through the customisation menu, and you can begin using all manner of shapes, colours and emblems to decorate your gun. You can even change the “Weapon Canvas” to see what your design ends up looking like across a wide variety of weapons. And if you really end up liking your design, you can submit it to the “Livery Trade Centre” and select a (reasonable) asking price for your design. Other players can then use their hard earned Credits to purchase your design, and no, I do not mean Microtransactions, I mean in-game currency that is earned. I certainly imagine a bustling community of awesome artists doing some really cool things with this feature. Maybe 343i could even release some Free designs every now and then, keeping the community interested outside of what would already be available.
As for earning Credits to buy Skins, here’s my idea. The “Credits” system does not have any affiliation with XP earned in Multiplayer. Challenges would return, in the same way they were featured in Reach and Halo 4. But instead of giving you XP that would increase the rank of your Spartan in Multiplayer, you get given Credits to buy Weapon Skins on the “Livery Trade Centre”. So if you want a cool weapon skin that looks really awesome, but you don’t have enough Credits to buy it, then jump into Firefight and kill 25 Elites or hop into Campaign and finish a LASO mission.
I just suddenly thought of this while watching TV, so I had to vent. Sorry if this post is a bit too long. What do you guys think about this? Do you like the idea of having a Skins marketplace system and the ability to make your custom designs? I personally think that it would add a really cool aspect to multiplayer in terms of always seeing something new and exciting, and would add a cool splash of flair and personality to multiplayer.
Thoughts?
