Pleione

While I appreciate Naunet posting this, I hear JC talking in this post. And this is where you show us you do not actually understand your own game NQ.
 
I predicted that this "we heard you" would be a clever spin attempt on the unrest and feedback by not really changing anything and by not actually acknowledging NQ is working backwards. This is all about NQ's fear of losing their player base and they think that will happen because we get bored of the existing gameplay. Meanwhile several streamers have dropped DU from their schedules as their content pretty much dries up with these changes which make it impossible for them to build an interesting and fun experience for their viewership. The statistics do not lie and the count of DU streamers is generally low single digits with low triple number viewer counts and declining.
 
You heard nothing really NQ, you just decided that you did not explain yourself clear enough because you are right and everyone else just does not understand so you try again.. 
 
 
The ones playing in full autonomy are actually the ones who are the least impacted by these changes; the big orgs. They have stockpiled materials and mass produced components and elements prior to the0.23 rollout due to prior knowledge of the changes.
 
Big organisator have no need to use the markets. They are entirely self sufficient and inward looking and as such are a major part of why the economy does not start. Amongst other things, we saw that expensive elements were massively bought up as soon as the dev blog dropped (as in almost instantly) and  prior to this there was a sudden high demand for L cores with many bought up as well. We now know why. Small groups and solo players do not have a problem using markets if there is supply which really is not the case for many items. The reason is that the big orgs build their own stuff for themselves and may only drop stuff on the markets if they have surplus. Also if someone would start to sell items, they would generally get bought up en mass and put back on the market at higher prices or surplus would be put on the markets at prices which undercut by so much that the small guy's revenue stream pretty much dries up instantly.
 
Industry at scale is now pretty much the sole domain of the big orgs with deep pockets and the rest is left to pick up the scraps. orgs can and will not determine what is or is not on market and at what price. the changes as they are pretty much lock  out the rest as the initial investment is too much with the very limited resources to pay for them and at the same time resources now are pretty much used to buy stuff, not to build stuff.. Ore has become the actual currency in the game. And these latest changes will not make a difference there as te damage is already done.
 
It just feels like JC/NQ want to build a RL simulator and by pushing that idea, no matter what we bring to the table, problem is that a game first and foremost needs to be _FUN_ .. If I were into what JC wants to achieve I'd study economics and get a job to match. I do not need a second job really.
 
Overall I'd say you may have heard us NQ, but you failed to listen. You just think you are rights and everyone else is wrong. I've said it before, the industry changes are fine in itself but they should be put in after you facilitate the means to achieve building industry. Your attempt  at justification for the changes both misses the point and is quite contradictory to your intent. Here is how I believe this could work and maintain engagement for your player base:
 
Bring in means to make more money and get set up in game. Develop fun ways to go out and enjoy or create content, gaining assets in the process. Seed the _world_ with valuable items for the markets which will allow PLAYERS to trade with PLAYERS and not seed markets using bots. Create a need/desire to co operate by bringing engaging and challenging events to the game on a permanent basis. Create opportunity for the many smart and creative players by exposing data that drives content creation that aids the game.  
And more but these things have been brought up so many times by now it's clear NQ has no intention to consider anything but their own reality bubble vision which entirely originates form what JC wants and not what the players are actually doing, asking for, looking  for, talking about.
 
0.23 spans the cart  before the horse, it's actually a pretty cool cart but without the horse the players are left to pull it themselves which turns the game into a grind of massive proportions. Yes what is suggested above will create wealth for players and would make the existing (pre 0.23) game design not viable but guess what, it would create interest and engagement form the community and player base to the point  where (I absolutely believe) NQ would be able to bring in the 0.23 changes with a wipe as it is clear that it would not be long for us to rebuild with all the fun stuff to do in game.
 
I believe many are against a wipe because of the massive grind it would take to rebuild. I also believe that once the game shows the potential to rebuild quickly and grow into the changes 0.23 offers this becomes more of a challenge than a grind and that is where it becomes interesting. More people wil band together and co-operate, the massive benefits and advantages gained from exploits, loopholes and favors for some is cleared and the large orgs wil l still have a big but fair advantage due to their numbers..
 
Don't "hear" NQ, listen.. It's hard, I know, and it may mean you will have to (further) change your initial and current ideas but you will gain an important thing, a player base which is engaged and active, building tools, setting examples and co-operating in and outside of the game.. Just like I still hope you originally intended the game to be.
 
DU is too great a promise with too much potential to be stifled and eroded by a false sense of missing your vision, it's not doing that and your game now belongs to the players, you should cater to their needs and wants where you can while using your vision as a guide, not a rulebook.

I just love how there are folks that still talk about industry and producing items means end game. What in the world is end game in a sandbox, you make your own gameplay!
 
First things first, you cannot POOF something out of thin air in industry, aside from oxygen and hydrogen, those people SPENT TIME MINING or BOUGHT THE MATERIALS to build what they want, they don't just pull it out of their asses. Don't act like they have not worked to get what they are building or act like it is easy, flying around and hauling ore solo is no easy task, its tedious and time consuming, WORK WAS ALWAYS PUT IN.
 
Just because you don't have the same amount of efficiency and/or time as them does not mean you should invalidate what they have achieved!
 
Secondly, element destruction should not be in until the server is stable and there are little to no flying bugs because I am sure NQ's support ticket system are exploding just like the ships in game.
 
Lastly, PVP boys try to hold back the salt, otherwise the very people you were harvesting it from the last week will take it all back, we know you're still shafted. But lets be honest the PVP isn't that hot right now till they introduce territory warfare. 
 
 

i would hope that due to the losses people have incurred in non-pvp activities that the 'counters' on existing elements for damaged ships would be reset when this change set is implemented. 
 

This.

Please consider rolling back the 0.23 features or this game is going to die. 
 
1) Economy is completely busted, with megacorps already making warp cells while normal players are still struggling with making scrap.
2) Ships are now glass.  Get damaged most anyway (maneuver tool, lag, mushroom platforms at warp points, or just plain crashing) and you risk losing your core - But you can't afford to replace it.
3) It now cost to make BPs of your own ship?!?!?
4) Massive memory leak - running 2km along the surface of Madis will drive the games memory usage from 6gb to 18gb.  Really?  Nobody tested such basics before release?
5) Broken Customer Service.  Goal should be to answer most tickets within a few hours, and 95% within 24 hours.  Re-enable your Discord GMs to fix things until you reach that goal and staff Discord humanly. 
6) Focus on making the game a pleasant experience, not a game of dodging bugs and grueling grind.  Why don't we have basic queue management capabilities?  You know... really basic things like "move to top"?
7) Set and publish basic goals.  e.g.  It should take about 100 hours of game play to design and build an XS space craft and be able to leave Alioth.  It should take 1000 hours of game play to be able to build a large core space station (half a man year of effort), etc.
8) Stop punishing progress.  If people are reaching your definition of "end game" faster than you like, don't throw up road blocks, add more game experience opportunities.  e.g.  Additional planets, stargates, perhaps schematic research opportunities
9) Realize your "big release" followed by "massive bugs" approach is archaic.  Adopt a modern sprint based approach.  Perhaps add one feature or change every couple of weeks, make sure it works and behaves as you expected, fix if not, then repeat.
10) FIX ANCIENT BUGS.  We don't care if your developers only want to work on new features, your need a full time bug fixing team.  Don't allow developers to create new content until their old content works as expected.
11) Adopt a code development methodology that allows for regression testing - and actually use it. 
12) Specialization is for Insects (Robert Heinlein https://www.elise.com/quotes/heinlein_-_specialization_is_for_insects)  People love a game where "You can do whatever you want".  Nobody has a life goal of playing a game for a 1000 hours to become the galaxies best Advanced LED manufacturer (just to have a megacorp run them out of business by selling Advanced LEDs at below cost until the expert leaves).  Specialization should be along the lines of "I want to be a fighter pilot", "I want to be an industrialist", "I want to be an explorer", or even "I hate knitting, so can I just mine a few hours a week?"
 
You are massively bleeding players right now.  Declare a Mea culpa, rollback most if not all of 0.23, and rethink the whole game balance approach.  Fix all exploits, make the game mechanics less painful (respecting players time), and consider a total wipe (perhaps preserving Talent Points and blueprints) to give everyone a chance again, then roll out a player based economy with ZERO bots and an economy designed to re-establish civilization.

Please consider rolling back the 0.23 features or this game is going to die. 
 
1) Economy is completely busted, with megacorps already making warp cells while normal players are still struggling with making scrap.
2) Ships are now glass.  Get damaged most anyway (maneuver tool, lag, mushroom platforms at warp points, or just plain crashing) and you risk losing your core - But you can't afford to replace it.
3) It now cost to make BPs of your own ship?!?!?
4) Massive memory leak - running 2km along the surface of Madis will drive the games memory usage from 6gb to 18gb.  Really?  Nobody tested such basics before release?
5) Broken Customer Service.  Goal should be to answer most tickets within a few hours, and 95% within 24 hours.  Re-enable your Discord GMs to fix things until you reach that goal and staff Discord humanly. 
6) Focus on making the game a pleasant experience, not a game of dodging bugs and grueling grind.  Why don't we have basic queue management capabilities?  You know... really basic things like "move to top"?
7) Set and publish basic goals.  e.g.  It should take about 100 hours of game play to design and build an XS space craft and be able to leave Alioth.  It should take 1000 hours of game play to be able to build a large core space station (half a man year of effort), etc.
8) Stop punishing progress.  If people are reaching your definition of "end game" faster than you like, don't throw up road blocks, add more game experience opportunities.  e.g.  Additional planets, stargates, perhaps schematic research opportunities
9) Realize your "big release" followed by "massive bugs" approach is archaic.  Adopt a modern sprint based approach.  Perhaps add one feature or change every couple of weeks, make sure it works and behaves as you expected, fix if not, then repeat.
10) FIX ANCIENT BUGS.  We don't care if your developers only want to work on new features, your need a full time bug fixing team.  Don't allow developers to create new content until their old content works as expected.
11) Adopt a code development methodology that allows for regression testing - and actually use it. 
12) Specialization is for Insects (Robert Heinlein https://www.elise.com/quotes/heinlein_-_specialization_is_for_insects)  People love a game where "You can do whatever you want".  Nobody has a life goal of playing a game for a 1000 hours to become the galaxies best Advanced LED manufacturer (just to have a megacorp run them out of business by selling Advanced LEDs at below cost until the expert leaves).  Specialization should be along the lines of "I want to be a fighter pilot", "I want to be an industrialist", "I want to be an explorer", or even "I hate knitting, so can I just mine a few hours a week?"
 
You are massively bleeding players right now.  Declare a Mea culpa, rollback most if not all of 0.23, and rethink the whole game balance approach.  Fix all exploits, make the game mechanics less painful (respecting players time), and consider a total wipe (perhaps preserving Talent Points and blueprints) to give everyone a chance again, then roll out a player based economy with ZERO bots and an economy designed to re-establish civilization.

You don't have to have LvL 5 but if you want the freedom to craft what you want when you want without having to rely on others then yes you do. With the introduction of uncommon, advanced and rare versions of most elements, people aren't going to spend millions on lower tier schematics just to craft something that no-one will buy so you will need to go for the top end schematics to stand a chance at making the ridiculous amount of currency needed to buy schematics.
Working back up to crafting everything myself will take time yes but it was already taking a huge amount of time mining ores, waiting for production to finish, working out designs around the limited voxel system.  In the last 3-4 months of Beta, playing the way I have( the way I wanted to)I amassed a grand total of 6 million. This will buy nothing and the only alternative now is to buy everything from the markets.  I started playing the game as a Space sandbox, building ships exploring and alike, now  the driving goal is just to make currency in the game. This is just boring as hell and will dictate anyones playstyle. If you can't afford an item you can't have it, so you grind, eventually make something and try to sell it, if it doesn't sell your screwed. Analzye the market you say? What fun!
As for being 'supposed' to do something, where does it say that? Where does it say that Omni factories don't belong in the game if someone wants them? This just makes it a more linear experience, step 1. Do this, Step 2. Do this etc  and a boring grindfest playing the markets which are going to be completely controlled by larger Orgs either scalping high prices or undercutting smaller crafters because they have a surplus of elements.  So much for the Sandbox idea and 'Dream it, Build it'. 
 

I'm in your same age bracket, and have also put in 1000s of hours (During some 4 day alpha test, over 60 hours in that one test period (followed by a coma sleep period)).  Been doing that whenever it was available for test periods throughout alpha and early beta for close to 3 years now.  Life as a retiree has its advantages!
 
I'm a diehard solo  jack-of-all-trades PVE player that competes well with many organizations due to focus and time invested.  I have my mega factory on a Large space core and was only a few days away from my Warp Beacon starting.  Rather perturbed that schematics were dropped on us with little notice (unless you were ATV).  If I'm understanding correctly, its likely going to cost me a small fortune for a warp beacon schematic, presuming I finally find a marketplace that sells them, after risking PVP gankers since I'll be forced into PVP space to find that schematic.  The 2 days notice means I may well have to spend months before I can now start my Warp Beacon construction.  I'll go check things out, but if this prediction is true, I'll probably leave, perhaps temporarily, perhaps forever - life is simply too short to grind endlessly when the apparent justification for this boils down to NQ needing to reduce load on its infrastructure.  The alternative, optimizing code or rewriting it using a better algorithm apparently is beyond NQs capabilities.
 
Very disappointed JC! 

I would happily spend $15/month, like many other games, if they would bring the fun back.  Hopefully that level of subscription would allow them to fund the required infrastructure to run the game, and let them focus on improving the code for industries instead of slapping on another patch to reduce the usefullness of them (batches were the first attempt at reducing infrastructure cost - that lasted about as long as predicted - it was clearly a short term approach).

Just logged in.  As expected my entire factory is shut down.  Wasn't expecting that I can not even open most industries since I'm missing the talents.  Once I get the talents needed to open the assembler for the warp beacon, apparently I will need to buy an 11.8B (yes, BILLION, not MILLION) schematic in order to crank up what would have started  for free in 2 more days.  So the lucky large orgs that managed to pump out warp beacons (lucky in that the assemblers didn't eat parts or the beacon itself upon completion) will now have a huge exclusive benefit...
 
I tried inspecting the various refiners (normal, uncommon, advanced, rare, exotic) to see what the difference was - still have no clue.  Guessing normal is required for Tier 1 ore, uncommon for Tier 2 ore, etc.
 
Game seems to have turned into an economic experiment simulation - not what I signed up for.
 
On the flip side, suspect enough people will quit playing that all the pending ops and computing messages will disappear - at least until they cut back on the hardware as part of a death spiral.

I'm in your same age bracket, and have also put in 1000s of hours (During some 4 day alpha test, over 60 hours in that one test period (followed by a coma sleep period)).  Been doing that whenever it was available for test periods throughout alpha and early beta for close to 3 years now.  Life as a retiree has its advantages!
 
I'm a diehard solo  jack-of-all-trades PVE player that competes well with many organizations due to focus and time invested.  I have my mega factory on a Large space core and was only a few days away from my Warp Beacon starting.  Rather perturbed that schematics were dropped on us with little notice (unless you were ATV).  If I'm understanding correctly, its likely going to cost me a small fortune for a warp beacon schematic, presuming I finally find a marketplace that sells them, after risking PVP gankers since I'll be forced into PVP space to find that schematic.  The 2 days notice means I may well have to spend months before I can now start my Warp Beacon construction.  I'll go check things out, but if this prediction is true, I'll probably leave, perhaps temporarily, perhaps forever - life is simply too short to grind endlessly when the apparent justification for this boils down to NQ needing to reduce load on its infrastructure.  The alternative, optimizing code or rewriting it using a better algorithm apparently is beyond NQs capabilities.
 
Very disappointed JC! 

It took Eve a decade or more to continuously nerf the game to where everybody was equal and the game became extremely boring.
It took a decade for Goonswarm to control Eve to where they booted out their members for doing a minor mistake, or not taking orders, or did not logon when ordered to play the game.
Much like a dictatorship we DU plebs must be controlled by larger organizations.  They have the money, or will have, and they will have the power.
Now DU wants to do this during Beta, and even before launch.
 
I invested in DU because I had the freedom to travel space, if only on my PC.
 
Why try and perfect the game before launch and anger much of your current base?
Your current base is all you have right now with hundreds of new and similar games being launched annually.
 
Just leave the market/production problems and build more distance and beauty to keep your players excited.
How about new planets? Instead of bettering the old ones (each I have visited) build bright new ones.
Build a new solar system or three so that players can explore and mine your new pretty planets.
With new ways and ideas to travel using warp drive, it will really add to your original and getting mined-out planets in your solar system.
Let players build their markets/factories/organizations in these new worlds.
Hopefully Alioth will become Jita(Eve) and when I played Eve I got in and out of Jita as fast as I could.
 
Numbers of solar systems works well in Elite Dangerous.
Imagine getting through the PVP hordes, warping out and finding and exploring new horizons, where there is nobody else.
Now the explorer has time to build a base, set up defenses and ready for the inevitable PVP that will come. 
Richer ores from these new systems will always have to go through the danger areas to sell their wares.
Let the player have some freedom to use their own innovation to get to market/explore/travel. Not keep the player in a box with the game/organizations telling them what they can and cannot do.
 
I believe that you are beginning to control me the small single player. I don't like that. 
Also I am not your young kill all PVP player. I am 65,  been in the military, I do not enjoy violence anymore and play sci-fi games for exploration and travel. 
I played Eve for several years and made too much money. Played Elite Dangerous for a year and beginning to return.
I have spent thousands of hours since Alpha on DU and beginning to think I need to find something new. I have made my 100 mil fortune on DU and done everything that I find interesting but my interest is waning and my boredom growing.
 
Instead of trying to perfect what you have, try to at least KEEP your current player base by giving them new exciting gameplay and not putting everything into a schematic.
 

Because mega factories, like the one I solo built on a L space core, are consuming too many of their infrastructure dollars.  So instead of figuring out a way to optimize their code, or rewrite the CPU consuming portions with a better algorithm, they are slapping Schematics on us to slow us down and, at least temporarily, shutdown large portions of our factories to relieve the CPU load they are causing.  This is the second time they have done this... their attempt at solving the problem via the large batch sizes was their first effort.  Net result:  I have a transfer unit for a rare item that will engage once every 8 days to move a batch of that product.  A few months after they did that hack, the problem is back again.  As it will be a few months down the road if they manage to keep their player  base once we have paid the schematic cost.

Concerns
If the markets aren't mature enough to support these changes you're going to create dead ends  as parts simply won't be available.  
 
Suggestion:
To avoid this consider "omni schematics" that could be used for a given tier to build a small amount of anything.  These would have a very limited run and would expire on a given date if not used  A small number  could be seeded in players nanopacks.  They could not be sold or transfered.
 
It would avoid people quitting in frustration while waiting for markets to be seeded.   Especially on planets farther from population centers.   Worst case scenario individuals would operate as we currently are for a limited number of item runs.
 
 
 
 

Just read all 5 pages of concerns and gravitated to GaXXor's comments.  Here are mine:
 
1)  REMOVE ALL BOTS, ALL OF THEM!  EVERY LAST ONE.
2)  Add research for schematics and talents to improve research speed.
3)  Once you have researched a schematic you should be able to sell that research, or use the schematic to further your cause.
4)  Makes little since that once I own a schematic I can't use it repeatedly.  None.  What? photocopiers don't exist 10,000 years from now, or cloning devices?
5)  Forcing players to this degree of specialization is just silly for a sandbox game.  End point:  "Guess what Mom!  I'm now a master of making Advanced LED''s... I'm SOOO happy and fulfilled.  I don't know how to make a screw or pipe but man are my LEDs cool!".
6) The degree of specialization is currently excessive.  Example:  Having specializations for Carbon Refining that is separate from Iron Refining.  As laid out, someone smart enough might be able to specialize in making Warp Cells, and ONLY Warp Cells, efficiently after a real year or training time goes by (presuming the rules don't change during that year).  Then what are they suppose to do?  Start over with another specialty or just mine rock to feed their Warp Cell factory and presumably earn money?  Reality is they will reach their goal and likely quit the game, cursing themselves for wasting so much time.  People need to be able to experience different aspects of the game AND get good at them in order to have a sustainable game experience (and desire to continue to pay to play).
7) The markets currently sell products at or below production cost, so many just mine their own material and build up from there.  Making intermediate parts more expensive just forces us to do more of that (yeah, I'm a miner/industrialist).
8) Balancing a game is hard... really REALLY hard.  Please take on the task of admitting things are being tried for a period of time, and potentially backed out if they become exploits, with the end goal of having a wipe before the production release to level set everyone.  
9) Be honest with the player base.  Start engaging us in feature conversations instead of dictating and facing rebellion's.  10,000 heads really can be better than 1.
10) Be fair.  When features change, reset skills and allow us to redeploy our earned points.
11) I have NO problem with it taking a month of gameplay after a wipe to build up skills and equipment sufficiently to leave Ailoth.  I do have a problem with somebody else stumbling across a derelict and gaining that technology on their 2nd day in the game.  e.g.  Remove any feature that gives people that type of advantage post wipe.
12) Post a realistic new timeframe and focus on that, not on special events and other distractions.  The march needs to be getting to Release.
13) For GODS SAKE, please fix Zendesk.  That disaster alone might be justification for a wipe - allowing you to just delete the 10 week backlog of tickets you have.  Please stop all the "Due to unusually high ticket volume" bullshit statements.  They are insulting.  Its not unusual when its been happening since day 1 of pre-Beta week.
14) Make life simple for yourself.  When you wipe, make it a complete one with nothing transferring forward, and therefore no potential issues with such transfers that immediately overwhelm your newly refreshed ZenDesk crew.
15) Fix your debugging protocol.  Make people file tickets real-time, immediately upon finding a bug.  Make it F12 or something similar.  The game should freeze, screen captures be taken, log files pruned, a DxDiag run, and everything pre-loaded into a ticket where the player just needs to describe what happened.  Asking players 10 weeks after the fact to find, and prune (without any supplied tools), the log files might have been fine pre-alpha, but is just poor form now.
16)  This isn't your mothers house... have the game clean up after itself.  I noticed log files are finally being auto-purged (I only see about 10 days worth now).  Make sure all aspects of the game do that.  For example, allow players to specify how much disk space should be used for cache.  Clean up crash reports immediately after sending them.  Same for crashdumps.  Its just polite.
17)  If something like Markets are not being used as designed, ask yourself why and fix it.  Don't force people to use undesirable aspects of the game, instead make them better so people are drawn to them.  (But again, never by adding BOTs!)
18)  Be transparent.  No more ATVs or any other special group with inside knowledge.  Create an open Test server and make everything public.  Or, and here is a thought, declare the current servers Test and subject to radical changes as game balance evolves, with a promised full wipe for Release.

I don't want to say this but after watching a replay of the livestream I almost feel like JC is out of touch with the actual game?  Like does he play it at all and if he does, does he get the same level of support that the masses get?  I get that he is the 'visionary' and is looking forward (like waaaay forward) of game development, but holy crap FIX the stuff that is broken.  If that doesn't get done, every thing you stack on top of it is going to be broken.  First thing to start with is CS.  If you don't think there are problems just hang out in the tech support channel in Discord.  There are people there that are paying for the game and haven't been able to log in for weeks and the ticket system is a running joke.
 
Yet they are going to do a MAJOR balancing change to industry and introduce a MAJOR new mechanic with schematics.  If this doesn't have disaster written all over it, I don't know what does.  How much do you want to bet linked containers gets broken (again) when this is launched.  I mean I still have random lock ups of industry machines that can't be resolved unless I pickup and replace the unit.
 
I also get the 'bug' where the game just freezes for a couple min. then goes back to being usable.  The 'fix' for this is to reboot my computer.  Sounds reasonable but holy crap there are some nights I have to reboot 2-3 times, and that is just not normal.
 
And don't even get started on the hot mess that is the anti-cheat software.  I had it go off once when I started watching Netflix.

Just read all 5 pages of concerns and gravitated to GaXXor's comments.  Here are mine:
 
1)  REMOVE ALL BOTS, ALL OF THEM!  EVERY LAST ONE.
2)  Add research for schematics and talents to improve research speed.
3)  Once you have researched a schematic you should be able to sell that research, or use the schematic to further your cause.
4)  Makes little since that once I own a schematic I can't use it repeatedly.  None.  What? photocopiers don't exist 10,000 years from now, or cloning devices?
5)  Forcing players to this degree of specialization is just silly for a sandbox game.  End point:  "Guess what Mom!  I'm now a master of making Advanced LED''s... I'm SOOO happy and fulfilled.  I don't know how to make a screw or pipe but man are my LEDs cool!".
6) The degree of specialization is currently excessive.  Example:  Having specializations for Carbon Refining that is separate from Iron Refining.  As laid out, someone smart enough might be able to specialize in making Warp Cells, and ONLY Warp Cells, efficiently after a real year or training time goes by (presuming the rules don't change during that year).  Then what are they suppose to do?  Start over with another specialty or just mine rock to feed their Warp Cell factory and presumably earn money?  Reality is they will reach their goal and likely quit the game, cursing themselves for wasting so much time.  People need to be able to experience different aspects of the game AND get good at them in order to have a sustainable game experience (and desire to continue to pay to play).
7) The markets currently sell products at or below production cost, so many just mine their own material and build up from there.  Making intermediate parts more expensive just forces us to do more of that (yeah, I'm a miner/industrialist).
8) Balancing a game is hard... really REALLY hard.  Please take on the task of admitting things are being tried for a period of time, and potentially backed out if they become exploits, with the end goal of having a wipe before the production release to level set everyone.  
9) Be honest with the player base.  Start engaging us in feature conversations instead of dictating and facing rebellion's.  10,000 heads really can be better than 1.
10) Be fair.  When features change, reset skills and allow us to redeploy our earned points.
11) I have NO problem with it taking a month of gameplay after a wipe to build up skills and equipment sufficiently to leave Ailoth.  I do have a problem with somebody else stumbling across a derelict and gaining that technology on their 2nd day in the game.  e.g.  Remove any feature that gives people that type of advantage post wipe.
12) Post a realistic new timeframe and focus on that, not on special events and other distractions.  The march needs to be getting to Release.
13) For GODS SAKE, please fix Zendesk.  That disaster alone might be justification for a wipe - allowing you to just delete the 10 week backlog of tickets you have.  Please stop all the "Due to unusually high ticket volume" bullshit statements.  They are insulting.  Its not unusual when its been happening since day 1 of pre-Beta week.
14) Make life simple for yourself.  When you wipe, make it a complete one with nothing transferring forward, and therefore no potential issues with such transfers that immediately overwhelm your newly refreshed ZenDesk crew.
15) Fix your debugging protocol.  Make people file tickets real-time, immediately upon finding a bug.  Make it F12 or something similar.  The game should freeze, screen captures be taken, log files pruned, a DxDiag run, and everything pre-loaded into a ticket where the player just needs to describe what happened.  Asking players 10 weeks after the fact to find, and prune (without any supplied tools), the log files might have been fine pre-alpha, but is just poor form now.
16)  This isn't your mothers house... have the game clean up after itself.  I noticed log files are finally being auto-purged (I only see about 10 days worth now).  Make sure all aspects of the game do that.  For example, allow players to specify how much disk space should be used for cache.  Clean up crash reports immediately after sending them.  Same for crashdumps.  Its just polite.
17)  If something like Markets are not being used as designed, ask yourself why and fix it.  Don't force people to use undesirable aspects of the game, instead make them better so people are drawn to them.  (But again, never by adding BOTs!)
18)  Be transparent.  No more ATVs or any other special group with inside knowledge.  Create an open Test server and make everything public.  Or, and here is a thought, declare the current servers Test and subject to radical changes as game balance evolves, with a promised full wipe for Release.

Maybe JC is just really an environmentalist:  Make creating parts REALLY hard so that people spend all their time searching for wrecks to recover parts from?
 
Lore would need to be dammed though.  We just got here after 10,000 years of travel in civilizations most advance ships.  Where did the ancient wrecks come from?

Just read all 5 pages of concerns and gravitated to GaXXor's comments.  Here are mine:
 
1)  REMOVE ALL BOTS, ALL OF THEM!  EVERY LAST ONE.
2)  Add research for schematics and talents to improve research speed.
3)  Once you have researched a schematic you should be able to sell that research, or use the schematic to further your cause.
4)  Makes little since that once I own a schematic I can't use it repeatedly.  None.  What? photocopiers don't exist 10,000 years from now, or cloning devices?
5)  Forcing players to this degree of specialization is just silly for a sandbox game.  End point:  "Guess what Mom!  I'm now a master of making Advanced LED''s... I'm SOOO happy and fulfilled.  I don't know how to make a screw or pipe but man are my LEDs cool!".
6) The degree of specialization is currently excessive.  Example:  Having specializations for Carbon Refining that is separate from Iron Refining.  As laid out, someone smart enough might be able to specialize in making Warp Cells, and ONLY Warp Cells, efficiently after a real year or training time goes by (presuming the rules don't change during that year).  Then what are they suppose to do?  Start over with another specialty or just mine rock to feed their Warp Cell factory and presumably earn money?  Reality is they will reach their goal and likely quit the game, cursing themselves for wasting so much time.  People need to be able to experience different aspects of the game AND get good at them in order to have a sustainable game experience (and desire to continue to pay to play).
7) The markets currently sell products at or below production cost, so many just mine their own material and build up from there.  Making intermediate parts more expensive just forces us to do more of that (yeah, I'm a miner/industrialist).
8) Balancing a game is hard... really REALLY hard.  Please take on the task of admitting things are being tried for a period of time, and potentially backed out if they become exploits, with the end goal of having a wipe before the production release to level set everyone.  
9) Be honest with the player base.  Start engaging us in feature conversations instead of dictating and facing rebellion's.  10,000 heads really can be better than 1.
10) Be fair.  When features change, reset skills and allow us to redeploy our earned points.
11) I have NO problem with it taking a month of gameplay after a wipe to build up skills and equipment sufficiently to leave Ailoth.  I do have a problem with somebody else stumbling across a derelict and gaining that technology on their 2nd day in the game.  e.g.  Remove any feature that gives people that type of advantage post wipe.
12) Post a realistic new timeframe and focus on that, not on special events and other distractions.  The march needs to be getting to Release.
13) For GODS SAKE, please fix Zendesk.  That disaster alone might be justification for a wipe - allowing you to just delete the 10 week backlog of tickets you have.  Please stop all the "Due to unusually high ticket volume" bullshit statements.  They are insulting.  Its not unusual when its been happening since day 1 of pre-Beta week.
14) Make life simple for yourself.  When you wipe, make it a complete one with nothing transferring forward, and therefore no potential issues with such transfers that immediately overwhelm your newly refreshed ZenDesk crew.
15) Fix your debugging protocol.  Make people file tickets real-time, immediately upon finding a bug.  Make it F12 or something similar.  The game should freeze, screen captures be taken, log files pruned, a DxDiag run, and everything pre-loaded into a ticket where the player just needs to describe what happened.  Asking players 10 weeks after the fact to find, and prune (without any supplied tools), the log files might have been fine pre-alpha, but is just poor form now.
16)  This isn't your mothers house... have the game clean up after itself.  I noticed log files are finally being auto-purged (I only see about 10 days worth now).  Make sure all aspects of the game do that.  For example, allow players to specify how much disk space should be used for cache.  Clean up crash reports immediately after sending them.  Same for crashdumps.  Its just polite.
17)  If something like Markets are not being used as designed, ask yourself why and fix it.  Don't force people to use undesirable aspects of the game, instead make them better so people are drawn to them.  (But again, never by adding BOTs!)
18)  Be transparent.  No more ATVs or any other special group with inside knowledge.  Create an open Test server and make everything public.  Or, and here is a thought, declare the current servers Test and subject to radical changes as game balance evolves, with a promised full wipe for Release.

Just read all 5 pages of concerns and gravitated to GaXXor's comments.  Here are mine:
 
1)  REMOVE ALL BOTS, ALL OF THEM!  EVERY LAST ONE.
2)  Add research for schematics and talents to improve research speed.
3)  Once you have researched a schematic you should be able to sell that research, or use the schematic to further your cause.
4)  Makes little since that once I own a schematic I can't use it repeatedly.  None.  What? photocopiers don't exist 10,000 years from now, or cloning devices?
5)  Forcing players to this degree of specialization is just silly for a sandbox game.  End point:  "Guess what Mom!  I'm now a master of making Advanced LED''s... I'm SOOO happy and fulfilled.  I don't know how to make a screw or pipe but man are my LEDs cool!".
6) The degree of specialization is currently excessive.  Example:  Having specializations for Carbon Refining that is separate from Iron Refining.  As laid out, someone smart enough might be able to specialize in making Warp Cells, and ONLY Warp Cells, efficiently after a real year or training time goes by (presuming the rules don't change during that year).  Then what are they suppose to do?  Start over with another specialty or just mine rock to feed their Warp Cell factory and presumably earn money?  Reality is they will reach their goal and likely quit the game, cursing themselves for wasting so much time.  People need to be able to experience different aspects of the game AND get good at them in order to have a sustainable game experience (and desire to continue to pay to play).
7) The markets currently sell products at or below production cost, so many just mine their own material and build up from there.  Making intermediate parts more expensive just forces us to do more of that (yeah, I'm a miner/industrialist).
8) Balancing a game is hard... really REALLY hard.  Please take on the task of admitting things are being tried for a period of time, and potentially backed out if they become exploits, with the end goal of having a wipe before the production release to level set everyone.  
9) Be honest with the player base.  Start engaging us in feature conversations instead of dictating and facing rebellion's.  10,000 heads really can be better than 1.
10) Be fair.  When features change, reset skills and allow us to redeploy our earned points.
11) I have NO problem with it taking a month of gameplay after a wipe to build up skills and equipment sufficiently to leave Ailoth.  I do have a problem with somebody else stumbling across a derelict and gaining that technology on their 2nd day in the game.  e.g.  Remove any feature that gives people that type of advantage post wipe.
12) Post a realistic new timeframe and focus on that, not on special events and other distractions.  The march needs to be getting to Release.
13) For GODS SAKE, please fix Zendesk.  That disaster alone might be justification for a wipe - allowing you to just delete the 10 week backlog of tickets you have.  Please stop all the "Due to unusually high ticket volume" bullshit statements.  They are insulting.  Its not unusual when its been happening since day 1 of pre-Beta week.
14) Make life simple for yourself.  When you wipe, make it a complete one with nothing transferring forward, and therefore no potential issues with such transfers that immediately overwhelm your newly refreshed ZenDesk crew.
15) Fix your debugging protocol.  Make people file tickets real-time, immediately upon finding a bug.  Make it F12 or something similar.  The game should freeze, screen captures be taken, log files pruned, a DxDiag run, and everything pre-loaded into a ticket where the player just needs to describe what happened.  Asking players 10 weeks after the fact to find, and prune (without any supplied tools), the log files might have been fine pre-alpha, but is just poor form now.
16)  This isn't your mothers house... have the game clean up after itself.  I noticed log files are finally being auto-purged (I only see about 10 days worth now).  Make sure all aspects of the game do that.  For example, allow players to specify how much disk space should be used for cache.  Clean up crash reports immediately after sending them.  Same for crashdumps.  Its just polite.
17)  If something like Markets are not being used as designed, ask yourself why and fix it.  Don't force people to use undesirable aspects of the game, instead make them better so people are drawn to them.  (But again, never by adding BOTs!)
18)  Be transparent.  No more ATVs or any other special group with inside knowledge.  Create an open Test server and make everything public.  Or, and here is a thought, declare the current servers Test and subject to radical changes as game balance evolves, with a promised full wipe for Release.

I'd also like to add that from a purely economic standpoint markets are *already* worth our time for most items. I'm sure that I'm not alone in feeling that I avoid markets primarily because of travel time and dealing with the lag at the market. I'd rather spend a few hours setting up my factory to make things than deal with making trips to the market.
 
Currently in real life Amazon is proving that forcing people to travel to brick and morter stores is a failing business model. Surely in the distant future this will remain true..

Ok.  I understand the sentiment \ understand why a need has been perceived but.....
I am a generalist - I dabble in mining, refining, constructing, ship building, scripting, selling....  These recent proposals seem to "Want to force people into a speciality".  It appears that dabbling will not be cost effective or supported. I personally don't want to make make billions.  I would like to make enough so I can decide whether to build something or to buy it.  I may be happy to wait a couple of hours to build an engine, but if I am developing \ testing new scripts and need a specific element to test against I may decide to buy it instead.

To be honest, I think this level of "balancing" is too early - Yes, they are likely needed but there are more important elements to focus on - RDMS, Stability of the server, Working on the feedback from the beta testers who have used the system thus far....
 

For me is actually unclear what is the problem.
If it was/is :
Markets overall were not being used as much as they were intended to
 
This is a sandbox game; come on....
WE the players decided not to use those crappy markets.

You at NQ may try to force us to play the way you want, but we will not. Unless you give up principle this being a sandbox.

Make markets better, analyze what really is wrong there, make markets more appealing, remove all that junk and garbage around them them, ,fix lag there, fix supply, ( now you are limiting supply)

And then WE may start to use them.
 

 

THIS .. many, many times

This is probably one of the worst systems I've ever seen implemented into a game.. Was is designed by a child?

WHY THE HELL are you making Bots the cornerstone of civilization again.. IT GOES AGAINST EVERYTHING you said about a player driven universe.

How about making the schematics researchable with skills then let players sell schematic loaded factories to other players....

NO MORE BOTS, Please... They ruin everything.