How a preference becomes a restriction is something unclear to me. I admit that English is not my first language, but I checked in the dictionary and preferred doesn't means that the other options are excluded. My proposal is to encourage Powerplay in Open, not to force people.
Your other statements comment themselves. Quoting Sandro is pertinent, he is a developer and he expressed an opinion that someone may share or not. How this becomes a gun pointed to people is also unclear to me.
I don't want to speak for Quantrix, but for me, for new arrivals showing up to a Power's organisation for the first time, a loudly stated preference will feel like a restriction to them. I'm all for encouraging Open play, and as surprising as it is to me, the current ToC 'blockade'/'attack' on Kamadhenu is bringing more Open activity to Kamadhenu, not less. I think this is happening because there are plenty of PvP defensive pilots there and ToC isn't absurdly overpowering with their ships and tactics, in the way some PvP squads can be. Everything ALD Research states as an objective is framed as a suggestion or request. We have no orders for our player base at large, just strategy and research. As such, any request or preference for gameplay mode would be misunderstood as a directive or order from on high.
I refuse to do that to the dozens, if not hundreds of ALD pledges who follow Research's goals. And not just for the reasons that any starport anywhere in the galaxy might just decide to blow them out of the sky because someone new joined the instance. All game modes have their reason and their place in this game. Whenever I describe a situation or system, I will include a warning about possible enemy CMDRs in the region. I do this because I am expecting 90% of our players enjoy playing in Open. And anytime someone in Discord advocates for PG or Solo, if someone doesn't beat me to it, I gently encourage playing in Open, and point them to the possibilities for cooperative play by doing that. I do not jump on those who state they're in PG or Solo, only if they are eager to get others to play there instead of Open.
One of our longtime pilots is a moderator and advocate for Mobius, but over the past week he's played more in Open than I've ever seen him. I don't believe ToC gets the credit here, but our collective pilots' response to ToC. The combat pilots are hanging out at HQ and keeping in touch with everyone they can in case of hostile action. Still, any complaint about being ganked at a CG is sometimes answered with derogatory comments about Open mode, to which the only thing I can do then is direct them to the Imperial CG discord. As a Power, we can't dedicate resources to things like that. It really sucks, because every competitive Imperial CG appears when the Imperial Powers are involved in operations, thus we wind up neglecting the CG storylines, in favour of bolstering our Powers.
Makes me a bit anxious about the storyline at large.
Right, back to the point of this thread: as leader of ALD Research and an ALD player group, I may not advocate for all pilots to play in Open mode, but I do my best to encourage it. Frankly, the best method I've seen for encouraging that is by getting experienced pilots to fly with new ones in Open mode. And while I can't do that often personally, I hope that I can guide those who can to do that more often.
If your goal with this post was to get all 11 Powers' leadership to say something similar to that, well, it's a nice idea, but the OP feels confrontation rather than encouraging.
