Style vs. Reason - wear & tear on equipment textures, or "Why spawn broken stuff?"

[Raymac]

Originally Posted by Crator

Just doesn't make sense. It's fixed up but still looks damaged? I'll be kicking the weapon term thinking it gave me a broke weapon.

You ever accidentally save over a file with a bad draft? Basically the same idea. Plus, it's not like there is alot of Planetside canon they need to worry about. They can adjust the lore to fit the design.

[Talek Krell]

Originally Posted by basti

This got me.

What if your weapon doesnt just go away if you die, but the weapon itself got stored as data via nanites, and you then get the lastest version of your weapon back, fixed up and everything, but still with all the visual flaws. That would explain why stuff looks used after fresh spawning, but would also allow stuff to age. Let it age slow enough, and you will clearly see the difference between someone that uses a Gauss for the first time, and someone that was born with a Gauss in his hands.
The same could also work for vehicles. Would allow you to see the guy that is driving a mag for the very first time, and the guy that never left his mag for anything else but dying, just to get a new one.

That would be kind of cool. And it fits with how I (think) the nanite systems work. Healing in PS1 was explained as using a medapp to adjust someone back to their normal parameters as recorded in the planet's memory. As far as I could tell though it considered aging normal, so it would replace a lost limb but didn't keep you from getting rougher around the edges as you aged. Which sounds sort of like what you're proposing for the vehicles.