It seems as if beetles have opened up a whole new world of ideas for the users of lioden.
Some people want snails, some want slugs and gazelles and birds. But that's all far too much. With all of that coding and art and time being put into pointless creations, it could take away from the development of the actual game!

But people still dislike beetles and still want their pets. So?
A solution would be to somehow create a custom decor maker for pets. It would be different from actual custom decors. Seeing as you could either replace the skins/images of beetles with creatures you drew. Now this does in fact serve no purpose other than vanity, but at least the actual artists of lioden don't have to draw new creatures every time someone wants a new pet.
We'd draw them ourselves. We'd put the work in and we'd create our little pet pets. If we can't do it because we don't draw? Commission someone to do it for you.

Shrike has kindly created a mockup!

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Now. What will this be?

I envision that these custom pet options (or skins, as I will be referring to them in the post), will be somewhat like the cub stages - an unlock-able feature that makes all of your beetles look like this, not a single custom decor that can be applied to one beetle only. It will also be like a custom decor in the sense that you, or another person, will have to draw your custom skin and Xylax or another admin will have to approve of it before it can be added to the game.

How it might look

Let's say you love kudus. Love 'em. You want one as a pet, but it alas it hasn't been implemented as a one. So what do you do? You make a custom skin!

You work for hours on this skin (or you commission someone to draw it for you). You submit it to xylax, and you wait with bated breath for it to either make it into the game or flunk. One day, you get a message - your skin has been approved! Now what?

Depending on what system the skins are going to use, it can be one of two or more things - your skin is now an item, like a custom decor. It is now in your hoard, and you can apply it to your account. You can also get more copies of the skin and sell it to other players.
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Hooray! Your larvae now have the custom skin stage and the adults now have the custom adult stage!
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In order not to confuse people, the "beetle" sign at the top of the page would turn into "pet". However, the species and the color of the beetle will stay the same, as this is a purely cosmetic look.



Alternatively, this could be something that only applies to your account. You would have the option of toggling this on and off in your den settings, so that you don't have to look at other player's custom pet skins.
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If you choose not to turn it off, you can see other people's beetles with skins battle yours!

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These custom skins would of course have to follow existing Lioden rules. No copyrights, no tracing, no art theft, etc. no animals that are too neon or unrealistic (admins will have to define that, hah).

Let me know what you think?

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Suggestions for rules!

1. Make sure the image is of the right size
2. A dropdown of species to describe what you drew, or 'other'
3. It will basically work like a custom decor
4. I don't really know what to do with the problem of having a min giraffe, possibly just exclude it from the list of species? You know, anything that is physically too large, or be able to have a custom size, with restraints of course, so your skin can be a tad bigger like if it was a meerkat or something. Or, just don't do anything, or little about it.
Maybe you could also maybe use a reference size for what species your skin is, so that when battling the other beetle will be adjusted to a smaller size. Like say you have a jerboa skin, and you use a mouse as a size reference.
The other beetle will be shrunk down in battle to a fitting size. This may be tough coding for the admins, but it is much better than adding a new species entirely, of course. -Zypheria

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Suggestion for display!

Also, as for the visuals of how the species says, what about the species is changed to the name you choose for your skin? The color of the beetle will stay the same in text, so it is still believably a skin. -Zypheria

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I think this would work better as a personal reskin (strictly cosmetic) w/o changing the statistical info.

Think of it this way:

Say that you decided to switch out beetles for spiders or something.

So if you switched out an Augosoma Centaurus; [Red Variant] for a specific spider image, all beetles of that specific species and colour (owned by you and other players) would look like whatever image you uploaded, for your account only. Think of it as a 'texture' that you could change to your personal preference without changing what others would see. All at once, you could see them as whatever species you wanted, people who haven't changed their beetles would still see them as beetles, and people who changed theirs to something else would see whatever animals they changed em' too.

Making them like a decor wouldn't be that great. Beetles don't last very long. I think it could be made as an expensive purchase that is permanently on your account. Something like cub stages where you buy a new feature. Once bought, you have the free will to change them and possibly pay to change the files after they've already been switched out for something else? -Xiinos

What do you all think? Feedback? Suggestions?
POSTED FOR SHRIKE 2.0 and BLUE PIGEON