What is the point of buying new Jump Ships?

So the game starts you out with a basic Jump Ship to get around the system. There's a vendor in the tower who sells other Jump Ships.

Do these other ships do anything special? Or are they just hats? Expensive, cool looking, warp capable hats?

destiny

Best Answer

I actually wrote a little about this today. I think jumpships are a value add for players that are basic visual customization, but they're a unique tool for Destiny to use to make a player actually like the loading screen experience of the game.

Summary: You get your jumpship early on in Destiny, and that jumpship sticks with you. You acquire a warp drive for it, and suddenly, you’re seeing your jumpship between every stage. Getting to the tower or another planet is a cinematic of your jumpship in travel. What it also is… is a loading screen. What it isn’t is a blanked out screen with a texture or spinning icon that says — LOADING. That’s not necessarily something brilliant, but then Bungie went and added player value to make you actually like the loading screen.

Starting with the original acquisition of your jumpship, you’re investing time and value in to an in-game object that you’ve acquired. Immediately from that point you have some affinity to seeing the jumpship as an achievement of your progress. Then, subsequently, Destiny adds further value by actually allowing the user to spend their in-game currency on more unique and visually detailed jumpships. Essentially — you can customize your loading screen. Of course, this is an in-game object so the motiviation to do so is actually there. No differently than gear… a player sees the opportunity to improve their jumpship and says… “Yes, I will make this ship fucking baller.”

My full post: http://offworlder.com/on-destinys-attention-to-the-loading-experience-aka-jumpships/