I've a theory.

When developing at some point they may have said to themselves;

"This project still needs 12-18 months worth of development before its ready, but rather than wait this long to release it, we'll release it now but with very little market presence to deliberately keep player numbers low.   That way we have 12 months worth of feedback from a live environment"

So, their focus is not to develop with the purpose of trying to retain subscriptions because officially, the game isnt released yet and there is zero pressure on them to attract subscribers.

When we point out that they are failing and sub numbers are dropping, they dont care about that.  They are not interesting in developing features with the sole purpose of attracting or even retaining players.

Its like going to the bank and saying "Im going to open this business in 3 years"... but opening it 2 years early, you have the funds and no demands to perform and can do what you like.

In their eyes, they are not failing even if they only had one player, it doesn't matter.

I've many years of experience in business, and this is the only situation I can come up with that would explain their apparent total lack of interest in player numbers or subscribers.

At the moment, its just an experiment, a test server, a 'not-for-profit' project.

Carefull, if questions such as these are answered here, then there would be no need to include them in a podcast

I never said anything about shareholders. :S

Whenever you pay for anything, you expect something in return, your investing whatever it is that the expected return has cost you.  be it time or money.

If you dont receive what you expect, you either accept it or question it.

I dont think the issue is that they are not on the market, Direct trading of exotic goods is certainly an acceptable and recognized feature of any sandbox game.

But, by excluding them from the market in this game means does mean that information on said items is unavailable which i'm not yet sure how I feel about. 

Having an 'unknown' element certainly does make the world more interesting, but wide-spread ignorance of available content can also have a damaging effect.

At this point I'm apathetic since the games future is questionable, dwarfing this subjects relevance.

Because noone would want to buy them anyway? lol

"ohai guys one of my guns does 0.02 more dps than the other 5! - I'll sell it to you for 30mil! "

You and anyone who has ever played has asked in some form or another ever since release.

You see?   now that wasnt so hard was it?  Did it hurt?.. Did writing this take too much of your time?... no.  You dont need to give us specifics, but generalizations like this which help manage expectation is all we really want.

If you were to make more regular posts like this then maybe we wouldnt need to make wild speculations and then you wouldnt have to spend half your time running around on the forums doing damage control.

Id actually use a different analogy...

Coffee!

For restraunts and most food establishments, Coffee isnt their main product... however, its very cheap to buy where customers are willing to pay a high price.    Its got margin.

Acheivments are like coffee... cheap to produce, and not your main stream product line,  but has a lot of margin in it, a lot of use.. people will consume it in vast quantities and will be satisfied (to an extent)

For me, any game without acheivments is like going to a restraunt that doesnt sell coffee which I like to drink at the end of a good meal.

I like achievements!

It gives you something to do when there is nothing else to do.

In addition,  there should be titles, and badges  for skill related achievements, exploration, distance traveled, market activity.

I love things like these, they give you a sense of progression and purpose, inbetween wars..  and they should be a fairly simple thing to implement.  Well, more simpler and less time consuming than putting in full blown PvE content.

As for rewards... well, I dont really care about the reward.  Just having the achievement and being able to display that achievement is reward enough.

What do you mean by this,  how are they being "pushed back into it" ?

If you mean that they are dying repeatedly, and running back to alpha.. well,.. its not gona help going back to the nest, they need to stay out of the nest and learn to adapt.  There is no experience to be gained in "the nest"