It's a good thing I'm a fast typer, because there went my "Powering down engines, standby" preset message I had so that I could avoid being insta-killed by pirates while I'm typing my first response.
I don't have a specific criticism, as honestly, I'm not really effected too much by this decision. I rarely use the presets myself, only in those situations where I seem to often be killed by pirates while I'm typing my first response. "2 mil or die ten seconds!" - situations.
I see the points made here in this thread, and I see that this is to create more dynamic RP instead of the same repetitive messages, and I'm guessing the hope is that this will prevent the reverse side (of what I use the occasional preset for), which is pirates of /l1 /l2 and engage within the first 15 seconds of an encounter.
However: I am noticing a disturbing trend here in the last 6 months or so that is developing where decisions are being made with no middle ground, very little community discussion, and no possibility of reconsideration. And where there IS community discussion, often many of those suggestions are flatly ignored. The suggestions for preset group messages is a helpful one. The idea of putting preset messages in a different color is a good one. Delaying the preset message time is a good one. But were any of these thoughts considered PRIOR to a total shutdown of the functionality of preset messages? Was there no middle ground that could have considered before it became "all or nothing" yet again?
But I would urge the admins and devs to be, as a general statement of policy, less dictatorial and less inconsistent in their decision making process, and to be more inclusive of feedback about decisions (and more open minded about them) PRIOR to "bringing the hammer down" so to speak. I'm not trying to sound hyper-critical, honestly. You guys deal with a lot of issues and you have to make decisions -- I get that -- But my own personal feelings (Which will probably be ignored, but I'm getting used to that, sadly) are that you are making many rash decisions, without preamble or discussion, that are alienating an ever-shrinking player pool. So it is less a criticism and more "a word of caution."
