It is not uncommon for people in Discovery to be able to do and create things that would benefit the general playerbase as a whole but not making use of these abilities. While the reasons for that may differ greatly, I think that one of them is lack of an initiative to do so. I'll take myself as a blunt example here, while I can make ships, often I find myself lacking motivation to do them and they end up in an half finished state and are then binned to never return. I'm sure I'm not alone with this, either. Be it creating Models, Infocards, Systems, Effects, Sounds etc. there are people who, if they wanted to, could easily create them and as such help Discovery grow faster. And while I agree that there is an argument to be made that goes somewhat like "but you're rewarded by having your stuff put ingame!", I don't think it suffices. For some people it may, and to those I bow my head for being so selfless, but not everyone is like that.
I think that is a shame personally, and that is why I'm suggesting the addition of a Contributor Reward System. Reward people for the work they're putting in with items in the game. These are just a few ideas that, though unfinished, would possibly give people the motivation to start contributing:
- Unique FX for Light Hardpoints such as the smoke used on some Event ships, the Nomad tentacles, maybe even completely new things
- Unique set of guns (this doesn't have to be for every player, maybe a unique gun that you can only obtain via contribution or something)
- Ship FX such as the Thunderstorm around the Sirene or the shield around the Peresphone
- Unique engines
- Unique thrusters
- Unique ships
- Contrails, Code weapons, other Scidata rewards
- Ingame Credits
Obviously, an argument can be made for these things to generally take time to create, but the simple solution to that is for the people who contribute to create them. Once they're established, they can be given out to those who're willing to put their freetime into creating things and so on and forth. Basically, the first set of players would be creating these items that could then be given out, and if someone wants something else added, they could just create it themselves.
There is, of course some concerns and worries, one of many being how these rewards are given out. I don't have a point-system or anything in mind for the rewards to be given out based on the size of the contribution, that's why I've decided to make a discussion post.
