The creative players

[Pablamo 3]

Hi, I have played this game for years now and whilst I have been very on/off have quite a few hours invested by now and several purchases in the armas marketplace. 
The reason I'm bringing this up is to explain a bit of the background of what I'm about to say:

I have felt for the entirety of my membership of this community and playerbase, that the biggest strength of this game and its most distringuishable feature, was the creative aspects. The AMAZING customization possibilities for your vehicle, clothes and character really make the entire experience great.
However, for this entire time, I have also felt that the players whose greatest joy from the game was from the customization, have been left behind. We cannot change the symbol limits and customize to the full potential extent of the engine, without paying for premium. Why lock away what is possibly the best feature of the game behind an otherwise unneeded monthly subscription? In other games I would find this acceptable since clothes etc are not a core part of the gameplay. But the beauty of the APB customization is that it IS very much a core part of the gameplay. This is reflected in how the loading screen introduces us to the game, how some of the contacts such as SHIFT have amazing designs that are "obtainable/can be copied" by players. The fact is that it seems to me like it would attract alot more people if we had ways of unlocking deeper customization either through gameplay/joker tickets or other ingame methods. I do understand that a lot of items and clothes are on the marketplace and I wanna be clear that I'm only talking about unlocking the the full power of the customization tools, not about making all clothing/gadget items free. 
Another reason for this is that I find the potential in the customization/designer in-game market very interesting. I as a player, do not enjoy the PVP aspects of the game as much as I do the designing and I'm sure many people share my point of view. I can't make my in-game designs into a APB$ market, without paying IRL money for it and this is extremely sad to me.

Please discuss cause I feel like I may have missed some points and I wrote this in a bit of a whim. But I do believe deep in my gut that the game would be more enjoyable for all if the premium sub wasn't the only way to truly customize our gear. 

Best wishes - Pablamo.

 

Merged.

 

Forgot to mention that the creative aspects are further restricted by us having only 2(!) character slots to play with. But that's not really the core of the problem although I feel changes to this could be part of the solution. 

[maldar 7]

A solution might be to allow anyone to buy any clothing item in the store, locked or unlocked, and customize the item. If the item is locked for them, then they cannot use it, but they can sell the item. This locked item can only be bought buy someone that has already unlocked that item. 

[Pablamo 3]

Hmm, I'm not sure I understand exactly what you mean. Just to be clear my issue is not with the unlockability of clothing items, but the lack of unlockability of symbol spaces. I don't remember what the non-premium symbol count is right now, but I remember it being extrmely low and limiting in terms of creativity. Thanks for the response  

[Rehtaelle 18]

At the VERY LEAST bump up the shape limitations to half that of what premium has.

 

And give us more closet space/ outfit slots, for fuck's sake.

 

And let us have vehicle templates so I can transfer the look of a car when I upgrade to a model with more slots. And let me sell the template on the market.

[Pablamo 3]

16 minutes ago, Rehtaelle said:

At the VERY LEAST bump up the shape limitations to half that of what premium has.

 

And give us more closet space/ outfit slots, for fuck's sake.

 

And let us have vehicle templates so I can transfer the look of a car when I upgrade to a model with more slots. And let me sell the template on the market.

A bit agressive there but I agree overall. I think even if we don't have the same as premium by default, half is not too much to ask for. I mean, costumization is such a massive part of the game. Why limit it for new players? Just seems like it would be a deterrent if you ask me. It was for me and I loved the game for several hundred hours. 
The care template idea is brilliant as well. It would allow people to have a trademark car "theme" so to speak without having to struggle to reproduce it on each car. 
The trouble with this is how do you make a theme that fits one car model fit an entirely differently shaped/sized car without messing it up? 
I don't know the answer to that and perhaps the car template idea has its limitations.