While I am generally an optimist about the future of the game, this does concern me. Not so much the ‘Grr Goons’ bit, but the failure of CCP to properly balance the economy. First though, numbers like 34% of the bounties sound problematic, but if 34% of the nullsec player activity is going on in Delve, you have just a ‘blue donut’ problem rather than some imbalance in ability to generate resources. We have some player activity metrics included in the MER now, so perhaps a more detailed analysis would shed some light on that, but if many of the people who are actively playing the game are doing so in Delve, then much of the economic activity and resources generation will go on there. No surprise there.
That does point to the fact that CCP has failed to deal with the ‘turtling’ problem common to PvP games by failing to provide sufficient incentives to induce people to attack. Aegis Sov and Upwell structures have combined to create a nullsec where grouping up and being friends is advantageous - something that is arguably intended - but also that attacking others requires more effort/time/resources than the defenders, and really you have nothing at all to gain in a hyper-underutilized nullsec with almost no scarcity. I don’t know who is suppose to be paying attention to top-level game design these days, but it should be completely obvious that making a game where it is both harder to attack than defend, and that lacks any conflict drivers, will completely stagnant in short order into a never-ending cycle of fortification and resource accumulation.
The good news is that these problems are solvable. A developer (or small team of developers) with some vision and courage can shake up the snow globe with only some small changes within the reach of the remaining development resources allocated to Eve Online. The bigger problem is the giant mess CCP has made of the economy. Cranking open the nullsec wealth faucets as CCP has done in the last years been more corrosive to the long term health of the game than any other change. So much wealth has entered the game in an era of anemic destruction, that a core aspect of the game - jocking for control and accumulation of resources - has been almost eroded away completely. Systems and game elements balanced in an era where things had value are rendered meaningless. The industrialist-focused gameplay that was the main game for so many players becomes less relevant every month as more and more stuff floods into the game universe. Thankfully, much of that is being sinked by capital ship production and not touching the real economy yet, but that can only go on for so long - boredom or numerical capital superiority will halt that sometime soon - and if and when it becomes in the interests of those that control the massive stockpiles of wealth to use it to destroy the rest of the economy of Eve, they will.
The sad thing is that there is no fix for this short-sighted move. Cutting off the wealth now will just ensure the dominance of the entrenched powers as no upstart can hope to catch them. While I am sure it was CCP’s idea to stimulate conflict by make losses hurt less by making everyone rich, their play backfired as it also made making things less meaningful. Maybe if Aegis sov had worked as intended and real conflict amongst many competing groups was taking place the plan would have been successful, but instead all it seems to have done is result in most of that wealth being poured into fortification and cap fleets (and PLEXes) for the largest nullsec players.
I believe that vast majority of Dinsdale’s conspiratorial assertions are nonsense, but he is right there was a deliberate and concerted effort by CCP to encourage people to move to nullsec. It is insane that we have arrived at the point that 90%+ of the ISK bounties goes to nullsec groups. It leaves so little room for CCP to tweak things. Nullsec activities can and should pay more than highsec, much more, but just cranking open the nullsec faucets instead of rebalancing things has started a slow-moving economic avalanche that is going to do a lot of damage.
The only hope I see is the opening of some new space with new resources which will give CCP a clean slate to try to rebalance things. This will mean largely devaluing the existing wealth somehow, but the current amount of resources in New Eden are many, many times what could be consumed in any reasonable time frame. In 2016 there were over 3000 T ISK of assets in the game. Given we destroy only 1-2 trillion a day, that is enough for at least 5 years of destruction with zero production. Since 2016 when CCP Quant gave us those numbers, CCP has almost doubled daily production from 2.5T ISK/day to 4-5T ISK/Day meaning that likely we have like added another quadrillion to the total assets numbers. And during this time destruction numbers have moved little, if at all.
Call this economic expansion whatever you want, but from a game design perspective is straight out power/asset creep which devalues the existing strength and and value of previous assets and anyone not living in nullsec and turbo-farming. There are not nearly enough new players/entrants to account for it as some healthy, balanced growth. In practical terms, this probably means CCP has turned Eve into capital/supercapitals Online, which given the restriction of capital power projection in highsec/womholes may not directly impact non-nullsec groups as much as the economic numbers might lead you to believe, but the economic power nullsec now wields means that other markets, including the PLEX market, are much more vulnerable to their whims.
Some new economic equilibrium will be reached eventually, but I am afraid it will be a much less interesting and vibrant one than New Eden enjoyed for over a decade. Perhaps keeping all the balls in the air forever is an impossible task and CCP did well to do it for so long. Or maybe, not enough top-level control was exercised and Devs were allowed too much freedom to pull on levers for short-term goals at the expense of the greater economy. Or perhaps I am completely wrong and all this excess wealth is going to eventually lead to some unforeseen explosion of content rather than the driving industrialists from the game, followed by bored PvPers shortly after that I see coming. Only time will tell I guess.
TL;DR: The economy is ■■■■■■. Invest in PLEX.