Yes, historically the Devs have not taken away shit from people who have stockpiled it via easier methods that are no longer available.

Some examples:

Samoflange
Levi and Queen Drops
Ore
Credits
Other Ships that aren't even sold anymore

Just because they've done that in the history doesn't mean that is the best choice to do here.

You dont want people changing nations to buy elite ships. Well dont let other nations be able to make other nations specific ships their active ship. Then people wont want to change nations unless its from an RP perspective/ Problem solved.

A better solution would be to automatic sell nation exclusive ships from old faction that have been stockpiled between date where faction mutual exclusivity was set and dev favored nation change. Ships stockpiled previous the faction reddux should not be impacted.
Faction change should come at a RP cost at least.

A better solution would be to automatic sell nation exclusive ships from old faction that have been stockpiled between date where faction mutual exclusivity was set and dev favored nation change. Ships stockpiled previous the faction reddux should not be impacted.
Faction change should come at a RP cost at least.

Do you have any idea how much developer time this kind of thing uses? We dump a lot of stuff to the database, but aspects of this are in other (text) log files, that will have to be heavily parsed for some of this information. That means writing scripts, debugging and testing them, and so on. We do this any time there's a serious exploit or major issue, but you're soaking up a lot of our energy for something that seems to mostly be an idealized solution to a rapidly-dying "issue".

We could possibly just force-sell every Nation special ship that the respective character should no longer have access to. Of course, this would include cases where people have just lost standing (people who have fallen out with their home nation).

But, overall, this feels a bit like a tempest in a teacup. People are getting more bent out of shape by the "idea" of fairness than by the actual day-to-day reality of fairness (like people being unwilling to risk ships they can never buy again). All things being equal, I would just as soon keep things fair and even across the board; but things are not equal, I would prefer our development time goes to the issues of greater need.

"[Two] People are getting more bent out of shape by the "idea" of fairness"

aint no thang

Large amount of data: We"re not talking about players who had very low licences and a few belongings and were not sure about their initial choices, but the very few players who had invested a lot of time to raise the licenses to get access all the assets in game. How could you believe they made a mistake on their initial choice?
Hell in the four last months some of them made the mistake TWICE on the same character!

They deliberately fooled you and are still laughing about it, now, they are assured they can get away with it.

Here, we were not talking about fixing a game bug, we're talking about fixing your customer service policy and i am not sure a "We won't do it again" (until next time) answer is either sufficient or appropriate.

You are clearly sending today a message. "It's ok to cheat and we may even help you to do it".

Ethics, Greenwall, Ethics, does the word ring a bell?

well greenwall gave up on ethics a while ago. So you might be falling on deaf ears there.

A coding backend change to simply blacklist certain items from being active when you're a certain faction seems like what you're requiring. No need to cull databases or dive into everyone's inventory and make changes. A little check when equipping or selecting a ship to be active to a blacklist for that player's given faction. This would eliminate the benefit of switching nations so that the act is no longer even desired.

Wow. Is this conversation still going on?

I say hell no to removing items from players. So a handful of people may have made out like bandits because of well meaning generosity on the part of the devs. So long as they hold to Incarnates assertion that he will only allow special cases that he personally approves I'm happy.

If we start taking away people's property over this, where does it stop and where does it go next? Are we going to penalize people for stockpiling rare items like samo or aggregators back when it was possible to solo a levi? Are we going to take away the billions of credits that some players have earned because we used to be able to make hundreds of millions of credits in a couple of tedious grinds? I do not support anything that penalizes players for being long term players and working with the game as it once was. I understand the anger at watching what appears to be other players getting one up on everyone else. I simply don't support actions by the devs that then punishes the rest of the player base.

Fluffly gets it. Cellsafe does not. And Deathspores sounds like he didn't read anything I typed.

Since when did I lose my ethics? Methinks Darth Ender is reading too much Serco tabloids in the grocery checkout.

Here, we were not talking about fixing a game bug, we're talking about fixing your customer service policy and i am not sure a "We won't do it again" (until next time) answer is either sufficient or appropriate.

You are clearly sending today a message. "It's ok to cheat and we may even help you to do it".

Jesus.

Yes, it was a customer service mistake, one I am genuinely sorry occurred (and seems incredibly dense); but one that was a well-intentioned action by Ray, who is a busy programmer and mostly just trying to help people out, without a lot of insight into why people were making the request. No, Ray doesn't really think that kind of thing through.

I resolved the customer service policy issue as soon as I became aware it was a problem. We're already crunching on a deadline that has far greater legal ramifications than anything that could result from this thread. So, basically, I have bigger fish to fry right now, and no developer resources to spare.

No, there is no simple "coding backend change to simply blacklist certain items from being active when you're a certain faction". Not when you're running a production game. There's a lot of testing and Q/A time that goes into every change we make.

I am NOT saying that I support cheating, I may still choose to take action against everyone who exploited Ray's good-natured naivete. After all, I have ticket histories on every player who requested a nation change, as well as log data of all their inventory changes then and since. So, I can take action whenever I want, which is not right now.

We say on the Support Ticket system that if we're going to take administrative action as a result of a player Abuse request, we will not inform the reporting player of what action we have taken. This is specifically to avoid torch-wielding-mob scenarios, and a negative feedback loop that doesn't help in moving on from the problem.

This is no different. I am not happy that people exploited this. But I am not going to implement a game-wide change right this second (and as mentioned, that would open up a lot of questions about other inventory data). I'm more inclined to go after the actual individual offenders, and put that on the TODO as a future task. But I'm not going to share the results of our action with the public userbase at large.

I think this thread has run its course. I have been duly informed, and you have your answer.