The Admins are currently voting on Blodo's proposal. I appreciate the feedback that many of you gave concerning it. Those that expressed reasons why this new ID revision didn't work for them, or how it might effect factions are helpful to us. Looking back, we should have talked to some of those faction leaders that were most effected by this change ahead of time. Lesson learned, I guess.
The reason behind the changes was the fact that House Govt's have too strong an influence over quasi-lawful factions. Corporate piracy is essentially stopped in its tracks, because all a corporation has to do is report the offender to the House Government and the quasi lawful faction faces 500 million credit fines, demands for access to their POB's, and even in extreme cases, FR5's. The House Governments effectively stop quasi lawful factions from being quasi lawful. The faction is forced into lawfulness because they can't afford to get caught doing illegal activities. Inside house space, this might be reasonable. Strict enforcement of house laws outside house space is too much power for House military and police factions to wield. This is not balanced, and it has to stop. This was the reasoning behind the change, and although it would have proved effective, admittedly there are less extreme ways to go about it. We are voting on that now.
Blodo's proposal seems promising as it addresses some of our concerns while being far less disruptive than the ID revision set forth in the OP. The Community may expect an announcement in 6 days or so.
On a personal note, I have been extremely disappointed in some of the posts here. The idea for the ID changes did not originate from the Admins. It was brought forth in a Player Request by a member of the Community itself, who is a faction leader. Not surprisingly, this faction leader didn't bother defending the Admins when people accused us of having a "disconnect with the players". If I were him, I wouldn't want to face the mob mentality so prevalent in this thread either.
Additionally, I have been accused of a couple things that have been quite hurtful and totally false. I did not shoot the Congress POB while on my Admin ship the other day, when Liberty Lawfuls destroyed it. I was in PR to make sure all players were abiding by the rules. Getting accused of that was bad enough, but then to have the ignorant accusation of rushing out a set of rules to prevent Congress from having to face RP consequences would have been hilarious if it weren't believed so strongly by some. To get accused of hurting Congress and then trying to help them within two days time is laughable. And the day I have to PM players Skype chats or Admin discussions and dates to prove my innocence is the day I hang up my Green jacket and go home. You can forget that right now.
With regards the accusation that Admins don't give a...whatever, about player's RP, that is an unfair statement. We look at things with a broader view than most members of the Community. Where one player is concerned with his self interests, maybe covering the factions that they are personally involved with, we look at the bigger picture and consider the health of all factions as a whole. If we make a decision, it is with the overall view that the server as a whole will benefit as a result. That is not saying that we are always right. We are not. We do try with the best of intentions, and if it's discovered that a decision has proved harmful to the server, we reverse or change it. I will say that a player's RP is not greater than the server. RP is not greater than the rules. You say that players have spent hours upon hours of effort on your RP. So what. POB owners have spent countless hours of RP on their bases, but that doesn't stop many of you from wiping it out the moment it becomes vulnerable. Remember all the bases that we dropped to Core one in a recent sanction? Not one of them survived the day. Where was your love and respect for those player's RP then? Why should the Admins view your RP any differently? We do what we feel is in the best interest of the server, and as painful as it might be for you to hear, your RP takes a backseat to that.
Bottom line, I learned a lot from this incident. I learned to not listen to just one or two players that come forward with what appears to be a sensible request, but to communicate further with as many faction leaders as possible who might be affected by potential changes to the server and at least get their feedback. I learned that there are some members of the Community here that are not worth communicating with at all. And lastly, I learned who has my back when times are tough, and which people are nowhere to be seen during those times. As far as I'm concerned, this thread is over for me. The Admins will consider Blodo's revision idea and we will notify you in a future announcement.