McXerXes

I agree with most people here, so I will just add to some points instead of writing everything in detail...
 
A very important question: What becomes of the thoramine? The Thoramin should not disappear under any circumstances. That there will be other ways to get to it later is okay, but the current one must not be disbanded. (Is that already discussed @NQ-Wanderer?)
 
Talent Points: These should be saved or if necessary reduced by the same percentage for all. It should not be the case that all players start with the same points. That would be more than unfair.
 
The beta was intended as a soft release and only partial wipes should take place if absolutely necessary. That was YOUR PROMISE, so if you break that promise and do a full reset, many will demand refunds. You cannot afford that financially.
 
Including blueprints from Alpha/Beta in the finished game was a promise from the beginning, so this should be fulfilled too.
 
I wonder what happened to my missing blueprints from the PreAlpha? There was the first space station built by players... 
 
So my conclusion: 
A partial wipe is possible. A full wipe is not. (Unless you want to kill DU)
 
Furthermore, I fully agree with Kurock.
 
 

Value NQ Team,
I know that you have put a lot of thought into this and still do. 
On the subject of wipe should be told to you, however, that I, like many others here, so far every month here damn much time and money left to have progress. 
A progress that every creator here whether experienced or not for all players available to have a content. 
If this content is gone, new people also lose the fun of discovering or the drive to be able to work out / afford something, saying we have an empty world. No ships / buildings, no help from experienced players. 
It would also be a slap in the face those who have so far "left the light on for DU" and continued to believe , albeit in the old, JC vision.
Content visionaries of LUA programmers are largely excluded from this.
I would really seriously resent it if my created content and associated time and money is stolen from me. That would hurt me personally also really. What did I pay money for month after month and dig up ores to have construction material ? Sorry but start again from 0 I will definitely not more.
I am aware that a community around a software title is evolving and will never be finished but dear NQ team and community don't throw away what you have created. At least try to grow from the failures and keep the good in the form of already created content of the COMMUNITY.
Since I personally have already partially taken a stand here, I would like to use the forum here to do this further.
Many pros and cons are understandable, but I must disagree in some points:
If WIPE must put in my opinion a 0 tolerance policy on the legs against Exploiting / griffing . Many past advantages of the players who have become so rich are based on this and have taken advantage of it clearly. 
 

Oh boy, I have literally just come back to the game and so far was enjoying setting up MU's and and getting into that game play but this will really hurt the game in my opinion Im a ship builder like many others, our show room is very modest in comparison to some  how ever the outer building alone comprises of 18 cores there are 62 ships on sale ranging from XS to L each ship has plinth that can be mover if we rearrange the show room that's 142 cores just for a small show room, now add to that a factory on another site and 2 smaller show rooms at other major installation's and then the support for that factory comprising of numerus out posts on other planets to collect the ore from the mining farms we have had to set up after you stopped the hand mining then take into account the all the ships we need to run the operation and bring the materials back to Alioth space stations fuel refineries' etc when we are a 15 man org the proposed changes will cripple us the show rooms will have to go the ships on show for sales will have to go then what are we supposed to do as a ship building and selling org ?
I understand where you are coming from on the resources front I do but the proposed method and core count just will not work, I really really hope you listen to the active player base on this one 

First off, I would just like to state up front, regardless of whether the proposed org changes are the right decision or not, I feel that the approach that has been taken, where this change is introduced independent from and after the introduction of mining units, is just flat out wrong. I was not pleased by the loss of traditional mining, but I drank the kool-aid and committed to trying mining. Many benefits to this system were touted by NQ. For example, the adjacency bonus. This system requires cores to use and incentivizes going bigger. The more tiles you mine (and thus cores you use) gives a larger benefit. So instead of a 1 to 1 benefit from each core used, we were encouraged by this system to grow the number of cores used. Only then, after all this work is done, do we get the carrot replaced with the stick.
 
Now that this ugliness is out of the way, my thoughts on the actual change:
In the right ballpark, but missed by a wide margin. This is a game of building and unlimited possibilities. All I see recently is limitations. In this solution, all constructs are treated equally. I don't think that this is the right approach.
 
We have little or no in game reasons to collaborate, outside of the human need for socialization. There is nothing in the game that actually benefits players coming together to work on projects. Where are the social features? Where is the benefit for orgs that add content and culture to the game?
 
I would like to see an influence system added to the game that would allow creators (either individuals or traditional orgs composed of many distinct players) to be incentivized for creating content in the game. If we the players are supposed to create the game content, we should not be punished for doing so, we should be rewarded.
 
There are many large projects in the game that NQ uses to advertise DU. This is the content and is what makes DU special. These projects consume cores and add value to DU. These projects should be rewarded. If we had a system of influence that rewarded content creators and gave a benefit to visit these constructs, this would be a giant step in the right direction.
As it stands now, many multi-core creations that enrich the game are at risk. These constructs are treated the same as a core that has mining units and nothing else on it.
 
Now if we had some system of influence, where players and orgs that create content that the community enjoys, we could be rewarded for creating excellent content. The rewards could be a decreased cost in core count because of the benefit to the game, decreased tax, etc. Beyond this, many game systems could be created or enhanced a great deal. We could vie for influence over a region and have some type of governmental control. Territory warfare doesn't need to be the only way we can impact the world and control an area. Just like music, art, and religion can shape our real world, works of art in the game should have an equal impact on the game world.
 
I want to see more wild creations from the mad scientist builders. All I see is that these players in particular are going to be hindered the most, yet these are the very players that provide the most benefit to the game and community. I would gladly pay an additional amount for my subscription to have the sandbox I fell in love with. I was sold a dream of player created cities and empires. The future I see is massive stress from monitoring tile taxes and core counts. Who wants to suddenly lose a project they have been working on for a couple of years, because they are ambitious and then have a real world problem take them away from the game for a bit?
 
My challenge to you NQ: I would like to know who is the creative lead on this game now. Please have this person come introduce themselves and explain what is the overall direction of the game. In spirit, DU does not seem to be heading to the same destination that we set out for at the start of beta, let alone what was pitched in the Kickstarter. I think we all would appreciate a better understanding of what the end goal is.

So we have a city built by our org but it is occupied by multiple players and orgs. We have cores for infrastructure, shops and apartments. That does not include anything to do with the innerworkings of our actual org (mining units platforms, factories, ships, space stations etc..) We are a small/midsized org where a few core players are doing a lot of work to keep what we have built up and running.
 
We were annoyed with the previous core limits but we adapted and reorganized to fit in that limit. The core limits have gone from 1000s to 100s and now 10s of cores. I understand the max core limit is 1600 but that would take 60+ active players with max skills dedicating all of their cores to one org. I like a very broad solution to a very narrow problem. Please just maybe make organization talents more in depth and take time to train? Right now you could spend multiple years training all pvp talents but you can train all org talents in a miniscule fraction of the time. Some people's main way to play the game is org management and city building yet there is no support for it. 
 
This ripples into how RDMS works in shared spaces. With the current RDMS it is almost impossible to have a shared space with constructs not owned by the host org due to how overlapping build zone works. The org that runs the city/compound either has to own the cores or work on an honor system and hope that citizens (non org owners of cores in the city) do not intentionally or unintentionally turn off overlapping build zone. Because of how large the overlapping build zone area is, it is like setting off an EMP in the city where no constructs can be placed anywhere near that core without overlapping build zone. How is it that someone who has a construct on your tile has more power over these rights than the tile owner.
 
It is painfully obvious to me that NQ does not consider city building in their game design yet every trailer and marketing piece sells the game on this concept. NQ-Mojo was in direct dialogue with me about how our city (Freeport, Teoma) works for the NQ Featurette. I was told that NQ they would use us as a resource of how we were using RDMS and cores to make a functioning city in the game yet I have not heard a peep. RDMS is still a nightmare and features like the new Org Core Construct Slots seem to actively work against the most active builders in the game making projects over cumulative 100s or 1000s of hours. 
 
Please consider city building in future design. I know many of these concerns are likely being shelved until TW is on the table but give us the ability to build large projects in shared spaces. I love DU and I respect NQ's hard work (especially lately) but please talk to players. Find out how we actually use the systems you are creating. So many features added to the game seem to be to limit players and not elevate their ability to do cool things. In the mean time if you are making changes to address exploits please consider the collateral damage to what people have done and how we actually play the game.

Here's my feedback in video form, I tried to keep it short. 

This effectively kills my ship shop going forward, had just spent months building it up with Skyexplorer and a couple friends in preperation for new sexy voxel tools to make a new, exciting ships- and have a place to display them. Even if we all committed ALL of our accounts and alts, it'd not be enough. and none of us would have any personal cores to use.

I'm officially in protest of these changes and won't be playing much until this is sorted/finalized. This is the only change since playin at beta start that has elicited this strong of a reaction.

After all the shitstorm (and my quite frustrated post earlier) I wan't to say:
It's nice to see that the "problem" is engaged, but it's from the totally wrong angle.

Some aspects that need to be considered for future planning of this issue:
People who are ship designers need many cores
(even if you create a new and better ship you often dont want to destroy the old one) Especially ship showrooms need many cores Players who reached lategame and find mainly entertainment in building will build larger projects than just 1-2 L-Cores You can be in a large organisation (that needs cores) and in a small team that works more or less independent too (needs cores too). Many larger orgs have main bases and several semi-independent squads. Event areas (Racing Nights, Expo...) need many many cores Nearly every large project needs preparation before the project really starts. Often you will use this project to attract new players to you org. But if you don't have the players before the project starts, you can't start it because less players means not enough cores. And most important: Never make random cores abandon if the limit somehow drops. Just don't allow to place any more new cores, but let the old ones remain. No one want's to loose creations that they worked for weeks or even months just because of a game mechanic.  
Maybe a system where you can achieve some type of rank with your org would be nice (like milestones). So the core amount is more or less stable and does not go up and down with every single player. You will stay at the current core limitation for some time and when the milestone is reached, the limit expands by a huge amount. Then it's stable again until you reach the next milestone.
Issue just is: how to get the milestones. Currently there are not much opportunities for this (ores, specific elements, quanta, player amount). Maybe a combination of all of them.

I welcome the try to scale the org constructs in some way. the core limitation of 275 was really not bearable for larger organisations. We had to split up in several sub-orgs for all our constructs and the managing of this was a nightmare, because of the 5 orgs per player limit.
 
BUT:
If I have with all talents just 25 org construct slots, this is quite an issue.
I mean, you have just a few personal construct slots.
- Most of them are already occupied with the cores for the mining units.
- So if you want to build a fancy building and more than 1 single ship, you already need several of your org construct slots for yourself
- Preparations on a larger scale will be nearly impossible

In my case I currently build a city layout so that other players and I can build a realistic (still small) city later. A project like this needs a layout and a structure before it really starts, or it ends in chaos. Currently I have already ~150 cores placed and filled. But projects like this, that need a massive amount of cores for preparation before others can benefit from it, will be nearly impossible. Because everyone have to be in your org (remember the 5 org limit) and has to give you some of their org construct slots before they get anything in return (and be honest: how many will do this?). And even if I get enough slots from people beforehand and I spend massive ressources and time - it can be all lost if just a few players leave the org/ reassign their slots/ cancel their payment. Then the core limit drops and the already placed cores will be abandoned...
 
This will really kill many larger projects.
With this system, you can only start big projects, if you are already big. Big projects from small groups that form a larger organization later will be nearly impossible. So this may be okay for large orgs, but will make it way more difficult for smaller orgs to rise even if they are really active.
Better invent some milestones.
For example: You start with 50 Cores for your org, and with achieving several goals (spend massive ressources/quanta) you can scale up this limit and it remains permanent. So even a small group can get to a decent amount of org cores with the time if they are active (this idea is absolutely not perfect, it shall show just another direction).
 
A system like the announced one that is so fragile that a few leaving/reassigning/inactive members can destroy your organization with the reduced core limit - that is not really thought to the end.
 
I understand the reason and I appreciate that you are try so solving this.
But this is the wrong way NQ.

I really hope there will be a good solution for data export.
Several projects in the community depend on that.
 
We in our org built in months of work a whole own economy system.
Members can store their ores in our ore deposit, they get "HC" (our own currency) in exchange, and can use these HC in the fully automated shopping center to buy nearly any item for a cheap and steady price (what is important especially for new players). Our players can transfer their HC to other members, or can use them to order something from our industry department (if its not in the shopping center, or a really large order). This system works well and is a great addition and an advanced community creation. (If you are interested, check this video: Hyperion Warehouse and HC-System it's German and not 100% up to date, but you can understand most of the content just with the visuals)
 
And there are many more complex systems like this from other orgs and players, that rely on sync with external databases, because the DBs in the game are too small to handle this.
 
All of these advanced scripted community creations would be lost if there is no proper and easy way to export the data anymore.
If we are restricted to just the ingame DBs, this will kill massive creativity in scripting because of the limitations.

I just want you to know, that the "Legion" isn't something completely new.
 
At the beginning there was the AC (Ascendancy) and some other orgs and alliances that stood against the AC.
Most of the counterparts to the AC vanished with the time, so the AC became the most dominant alliance in the game.
At the end some members and organizations in the AC were uncomfortable with the "government" of the alliance, especially because several of the major orgs became nearly completely inactive. As a result, they founded the "Legion".
 
So in fact the Legion is just something like the more active part of the former AC with just a few new members. It's nothing new.
 
But to be honest, even as a player of one of the Legion orgs I'm not completely happy with the monopolism that established. But thats a general issue of the game and its players, not just of the Legion itself. Several other active PvP-Factions that could've been a real threat to the Legion became more and more inactive, split up or moved to other games. But this game is dynamic. Sure, the playerbase got much smaller in the last months. But there are still more than enough active players who could stand up against the Legion. It's a matter of organisation and effort.
 
If everyone stays in his small 10-man organization, its clear that they don't have a chance to fight Legion. But in fact, most of them would even struggle against a single org of the Legion. If you want to play PvP in DU very active, you have to organize yourself in bigger groups. But yes, NQ could do something about this, so that even smaller groups could be more annoying to large alliances. If there would be some ways for smaller orgs to still get the needed ressources and rise up faster, or something like "hit and run" - so you can attack single ships of large orgs and withdraw fast enough before reinforcements appear - this would give the PvP in the game much more depth (like the pirates or rebels in most sci-fi movies). But currently nearly all this features that would make PvP more balanced are missing.