Emptiness

That is a _very_ good question which NQ seems to not be asking themselves before they start their usual knee jerk premature reaction which really does not solve anything and only disrupts the game's experience _especially_ for new players. I honestly wonder why NQ is thinking this action will solve anything. They did not take their time to actually study the data they I  hope (pretty please NQ, do not tell me you did not) took from the Expo and do a deep dive into the possible differences between that and their district design.

Prior to the many manhours spent on making this change yesterday they claimed to have seen what they changed would improve the performance. It did not. I find it very hard to believe they were able to deduct anything from the Expo data this quick  to plan for and make these drastic changes and it really makes we wonder if there is actually a project manager who puts all the marbles together and makes a call like this. It just feels more like they sit in a room and the first person who says anything remotely feasible gets the go ahead, meeting is over and lets do this..

I can already see some of the fanbois foaming at the mouth for me speaking up like this but anyone with experience in project and process management sees how badly thought through and executed all of this is. And yes, I am certified (Lean Six Sigma green belt, going for black) in this and know what I am talking about. This is another knee jerk action costing resources and not yielding much result, if anything, NQ keeps plugging holes instead of killing the rodents causing them and that only means that one day soon, the rodent infestation will become uncontrollable. Based on what we know NQ has been working on this for (over) two weeks now and frankly, it's a waste of time.

Too many loud voices are way too attached to their riches, many of which were obtained using unbalanced game options and mechanics which in the process destroyed a good portion of the games ability to facilitate it's development. Not saying ppl exploited anything here, but NQ made some bad choices, were told they were bad choices and went ahead anyway and then found they made some bad choices  

Combine this with their focus on revenue and as a result sacrificing their ability to actually balance and restructure as needed (including wipes which are absolutely normal and part of game development at this stage) and you have a recipe for a hollowed out game only a few weeks into it's beta soft launch.
 
A wipe, once important balance passes are in the game,  where we keep our blueprints and see accrued talent points returned to the pool for a respec would be good for the game, it will weed out some of the debris and some of the abandoned structures. It will potentially weed out some who focus more on being able to say they "own all this" and not really partake in the game and at at the same time create an opportunity for NQ to push the game to new players coming in on the subjective idea of an "even playing field" (which is really not a thing but too many think it is so why not make use of that sentiment and gain more revenue through it).

It wil certainly draw some tears form big orgs who invested a lot of time in their infrastructure but those wil bounce back even when they may do a lot of crying about it in the process. NQ setting up a "no wipe unless we really have to" expectation was a mistake but at the same time I really feel that, once the balance passes are done, it very much defendable that they "have to" wipe in order for these passes to take proper effect (which is what I do expect will eventually happen)..
 
 
Regarding Talents, there are a lot of talents now which really do not have any effective use. I'd agree it would be good to have certain items locked behind talents and then consecutive levels increase the effectiveness of those elements..

For instance, for Territory Scanner:
"Scanning Calibration" - will increase the range at which you can detect ore, increasing 20% each level where Level 5 also unlocks;
"Territory Scanner Calibration" - Unlock Territory Scanner and reduce scan time by 15% each level, level 4 will also unlock;
"Multi Scan Operation" -  Allow for one extra scanner to be operated simultaneously and remotely per level within a total of 7 scanners at L5 allowing a player to scan a tile and it's surrounding tiles with one scan action (3,4,5,6,7 respectively)

And for Warp drives:
"Space Engine Calibration" - increase ability to calibrate and optimize space engine speed with 20% per level, ending at 30K for level5 which also unlocks;
"Warp Drive Calibration" -  unlocks Warp Drives and increase ability to calibrate Warp drives before jumping by 15% each level, level 4 will also unlock;
"Warp Cell Efficiency" -  Decrease number of warp cells required to travel by 15% per level
 
NQ pretty much copied the EVE skill system but forgot to understand how that system is really a rather smart chain of skills which provides a logical and sensible progress for players as they get deeper in the game, unlocking abilities as they go and as the player's experience will allow him/her to use such skill effectively. I'd also really like to see NQ introduce skill books like  EVE has as it will remove a lot of clutter when skills for which books are not available can easily be filtered out.

Skill books also actually create roles within organizations where you'd have players tasked with keeping org books in stock and distributed as needed.

Someone walked in and told you that there's something wrong with your price tags, picking up a few packs of gum and leaving after going through self-checkout. You notice that they got it for free because you fucked up and gum's price was set to $0.00. You ban them from your convenience store. They get understandably frustrated and go public with the news. You double down despite the "damages" being completely negligible and make it apparent to everyone that your policy is "the customer is always wrong unless proven otherwise".
Would anyone go to a convenience store with such publicity? Sure, but not because it's good and they would ditch it the moment something better came up.

Welcome to DULAG. There won't be any clarifications because that would mean limiting their ability to ban people at will. Please understand ?

Literally all they had to do was make TCUs collect ore from the tiles you own and produce passive income. This will make territory control crucial instead of a "hmmmm I guess I will cap some tiles to build a factory" afterthought.

Weak. Scapegoating. Poor leadership. No accountability. Bad communication. Terrible decision.
 
I'm out.
 
Next time you fck up, man up, take responsibility, have a laugh because It's a game, and keep people who are so engaged in the game that they're curious and exploring every possible aspect of it. These people finding bugs are the ones you want. You're going to be left with some boring ass vanilla gamers who want to stay in their bubble and not touch anything, and this whole game is going to be bugged to shit and will become unpopulated.

Reverse the decision and show you've actually learned from YOUR mistakes, and I'll be renewing. Otherwise, I'm not putting another dime into a game with immature devs who blame their users rather than take responsibility.

Excuse me? Are you saying no blueprints were made of those markets? 'Fixing' it should be as simple as deleting the old construct and replacing it. A task that would take a couple minutes, maximum, with the blueprints.
 
This is a reaction I would expect from children in a sandbox, not mature adults.
 
edit: Apparently the 'quick fix' is a reference to the market orders.
 
To which I have exactly one reply: What?

Market orders should be stored in the database and no removal of market constructs should EVER affect those.

Excuse me? Are you saying no blueprints were made of those markets? 'Fixing' it should be as simple as deleting the old construct and replacing it. A task that would take a couple minutes, maximum, with the blueprints.
 
This is a reaction I would expect from children in a sandbox, not mature adults.
 
edit: Apparently the 'quick fix' is a reference to the market orders.
 
To which I have exactly one reply: What?

Market orders should be stored in the database and no removal of market constructs should EVER affect those.

Excuse me? Are you saying no blueprints were made of those markets? 'Fixing' it should be as simple as deleting the old construct and replacing it. A task that would take a couple minutes, maximum, with the blueprints.
 
This is a reaction I would expect from children in a sandbox, not mature adults.
 
edit: Apparently the 'quick fix' is a reference to the market orders.
 
To which I have exactly one reply: What?

Market orders should be stored in the database and no removal of market constructs should EVER affect those.

I heard a rumor about how people can set any construct to public.
 
Basically, either have a laggy connection or be really fast, approach a random construct, and before the client loads the rights, r-click the construct and share it with all.
 
Any truth to this?

Again you are wrong. You cannot seem to comprehend that real life and video games are not the same thing. This actually worries me. 
 
They the developers should be held to a higher standard than players, so when they drop the ball and screw up they should brush it off and act like adults. They didn't. In fact:
As for it being against the EULA, which is the claim of NQ. Let me quote the EULA for you:
"We can not get involved with permission based theft, whether as an individual or an organization."
 
It seems that they, as an organization have gotten involved. They have violated their own EULA  while quoting their EULA as reason to ban.  
That is the textbook definition of trying to throw a mods=gods hissyfit and you are enabling them. 
 
 
As for your final paragraph, you are either distorting facts intentionally or are too much of a smoothbrain to understand what you are saying. Your analogy once again does not fit. Instead it would be like placing a sign on or beside the back door saying "this door is open, feel free to come in and see the buffet inside" with the "free buffet" sitting just inside the back door. 
 
To sum up. The developers have it in their EULA themselves that permission based theft is fine. This is like a developer alt getting scammed then banning the person who scammed them because they wield the banhammer. Childish and liable to get them bad press (which they are now getting in spades). They should have said "oh, well its a beta, we screwed up, we will amend the EULA, fix the problem, thank the people for paying to beta test our game (not sure how old you are but when I grew up you got paid to beta test, in cash or a free product or at least got to play for free for the beta duration) and start fixing things from there. That would have been an adult move to make. 
 
However they didn't do that. 
 
 
Also on the fact that the game is filled with beta testers you don't seem to understand that the job of beta testers is to find out things like this. We have real life beta testers for both cyber and real life security. They are called penetration testers. They are literally paid to break into buildings, steal employee data, engage in corporate espionage by the corporation they are stealing from, on the grounds that they (obviously) give what they take back. They are paid generously for their work, they don't get fired for exposing a flaw, unless their employer knows about it and wants to ignore it. 
Novaquirk have been ignoring permission issues for quite some time, so I see this as ingame pen testing by beta testers, kind of like the difference between an IRL pen tester breaking into Joe the Janitor's office, helping himself to Joe's lunch and sitting in his seat, but instead breaking into the CEO's office, using the exact same method and sitting at their desk sipping a glass of $20,000 per bottle wine. 
I would liken it to (but not compare it directly to) fallout 76 and the developer room. I liken it to that as players found a problem. Only difference is they hacked their way into that dev room. It wasn't like the developer room was sitting around for all to see. I'm sure you know the amount of shit Bethesda got for their reaction to the dev room saga and that was legitimate hacking into a room that should have been removed. This is a group of players discovering that an area wasn't under the right protections and under the game rules and EULA they proceeded to help themselves. 
Nowhere in the EULA does it say "developers should be immune to all player acts" so your analogy is wrong and the EULA backs what I'm saying. 

It was only so 'important' because of dev incompetence. Nothing more.
 
In a sanely designed game, destroying a market would've had no effect on the market orders, and replacing it and getting it functional again would take maybe 5 to 10 minutes at most.
 
Instead, the devs decided to tie the market orders to the existence of certain elements in the market, and we have this snafu.

Excuse me? Are you saying no blueprints were made of those markets? 'Fixing' it should be as simple as deleting the old construct and replacing it. A task that would take a couple minutes, maximum, with the blueprints.
 
This is a reaction I would expect from children in a sandbox, not mature adults.
 
edit: Apparently the 'quick fix' is a reference to the market orders.
 
To which I have exactly one reply: What?

Market orders should be stored in the database and no removal of market constructs should EVER affect those.

The cognitive dissonance from certain people in this thread is astounding. Do ya'all hear what you're saying or do you just crap all over the forums and then dance away?

If the people who took down the market didn't use an exploit to do what they did, but just took advantage of badly set RDMS, than this is completely unacceptable behavior.
 
The people who did this should be taken to task for their action and forced to apologize for any grief they caused any players.
 
It is very clearly stated in the exploits section that stealing stuff because RDMS is set wrong is NOT an exploit, and will NOT BE PUNISHED.
 
NQ should apologize and unban the players who got banned. They should apologize to the player base for setting rules and then acting in complete opposition to what they set. It was an unpopular rule in the first place, and now they should realize why themselves, and either change the rule, or at least make the RDMS a lot more friendly, including some warnings after setting them what the consequences of the setting are.
 
As for the players, this is a beta, they found an issue which needs to be addressed, they are doing the job of a beta tester. They should get to keep their loot, as after all that is what the rules set down by NQ state. When player markets are started, they should have a head start, as they already have the terminals.
 
The fact that it broke a lot of links and market orders etc were lost, good; player markets are planned, and NQ now realize if they continue to do the linking that way, a lot of people are going to be very upset when they breakdown their market to move it somewhere it breaks so many things. NQ are now very aware of it thanks to these idiots, and hopefully will save a lot of grief when player markets show up as NQ have now got time to reconsider the approach to markets, orders, linking etc.
 
but what would I know, I'm just a beta tester wondering if I do my job and find a problem will I be rewarded or banned!
 
NB:. not associated with the people who did this, didn't recognize the username as anybody I play with.
 
 

Excuse me? Are you saying no blueprints were made of those markets? 'Fixing' it should be as simple as deleting the old construct and replacing it. A task that would take a couple minutes, maximum, with the blueprints.
 
This is a reaction I would expect from children in a sandbox, not mature adults.
 
edit: Apparently the 'quick fix' is a reference to the market orders.
 
To which I have exactly one reply: What?

Market orders should be stored in the database and no removal of market constructs should EVER affect those.

It was only so 'important' because of dev incompetence. Nothing more.
 
In a sanely designed game, destroying a market would've had no effect on the market orders, and replacing it and getting it functional again would take maybe 5 to 10 minutes at most.
 
Instead, the devs decided to tie the market orders to the existence of certain elements in the market, and we have this snafu.

To be fair, nobody in their right mind would have imagined that picking up the terminals would have actually crippled the DB....
 
It's also fair to say that nobody in the right mind would have thought that picking up the terminals was a good idea.
 
Yes it absolutely shitty that if NQ does try to fix the orders it will be hours of wasted time.
 
I totally agree that what happened is regrettable. Where I do not agree is where the blame goes.
 
NQ just pointed it at the player. 
 
Like if it's totally not their fault that the player COULD edit the market in the first place.
 
My stance is that while yes this all hurts us as the community, NQ is largely to blame for this. 
 
It was their negligence that allowed for the marketplace to be editable in the first place. Everything that happened after was frankly inevitable.

If a gate is left open and the goats get into the vegetable garden, do you blame the goats or the negligence which led to the gate being left open?

Excuse me? Are you saying no blueprints were made of those markets? 'Fixing' it should be as simple as deleting the old construct and replacing it. A task that would take a couple minutes, maximum, with the blueprints.
 
This is a reaction I would expect from children in a sandbox, not mature adults.
 
edit: Apparently the 'quick fix' is a reference to the market orders.
 
To which I have exactly one reply: What?

Market orders should be stored in the database and no removal of market constructs should EVER affect those.

Agreed. To quote from EULA, "You must refrain from behavior that ... could harm one or more users or have a negative impact on their gaming experience ..." 
Now, if I say that getting attacked or in any way engaged in PVP has a negative impact on my gaming experience because I'm a PVE player (trader, crafter, builder), will NQ punish whoever attacked me? 
Mind you, I'm not saying that I want them to do that - but the vague wording really leads to that.

It was only so 'important' because of dev incompetence. Nothing more.
 
In a sanely designed game, destroying a market would've had no effect on the market orders, and replacing it and getting it functional again would take maybe 5 to 10 minutes at most.
 
Instead, the devs decided to tie the market orders to the existence of certain elements in the market, and we have this snafu.

Players lose bases? NQ is like .. eh, who cares, not our problem right now.
 
NQ's Aphelia loses a market? PANIC! PERMABAN EVERYONE!

Excuse me? Are you saying no blueprints were made of those markets? 'Fixing' it should be as simple as deleting the old construct and replacing it. A task that would take a couple minutes, maximum, with the blueprints.
 
This is a reaction I would expect from children in a sandbox, not mature adults.
 
edit: Apparently the 'quick fix' is a reference to the market orders.
 
To which I have exactly one reply: What?

Market orders should be stored in the database and no removal of market constructs should EVER affect those.

The game was ruined because of dev incompetence, not the market defacement.
 
The market data should NEVER have had its existence tied to the market terminals or any ingame element.