I guess my argument is that nullsec isn’t now-- and hasn’t at any point in the past-- been a suitable environment for “low-attention play.” Certain people on this forum are constantly crowing about “how safe nullsec is,” because of “perfeact intel channels,” and “FAX on standby,” but the reality is that even in their imagined scenarios, nullsec is fundamentally not a safe place.
What we have is a lot of wannabe PvPers trying to find excuses for their own ineptitude. While many of these types have been posting on EVEO and Reddit for years about how “nullsec is safe” because of things like, “perfect intel channels,” or, “FAX on standby,” actual, competent PvPers have been in Delve stealing billions of ISK worth of excavator drones, hazing deadspace-fit faction BS, and successfully hotdropping carriers, supers, and Rorquals. The actual reality is that even pre-war Delve-- widely regarded as the most developed, “safest” nullsec region-- was serving up fountains of juicy killmails for people who actually had some aptitude for PvP. There was a day where Goonswarm lost 30 Rorquals in a single sitting. Deaths of carriers to bomber gangs were ubiquitous-- several per night at least. Hels tended to die once a week or so. Nullsec has never been “safe.”
I have two issues with this:
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While the MER does indeed show a continued ISK faucet problem, look at the distribution of the ISK: yes, there’s still a ton of ISK flowing from bounties. But the fountains have moved away from actualy, player-inhabited regions and toward backwater regions widely understood to be populated primarily by botters.
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If CCP want to do something to make the game harder or riskier or penalize cowardice, there are better ways to accomplish that goal than implementing this bizarrely-complex and arbitrary ESS concept. For example, why not simply transition from direct-deposit bounty payments to a system where rats instead drop physical token items in their wrecks that are redeemed for ISK? Now, if a ratter prefers to warp to a safe at the first sign of trouble, the roamer can simply roll up on grid, hold the field for a minute, and loot the tokens. Change MTUs so they have an un-anchor time and are publicly accessible so anyone can cruise by and pull the loot out. There are so many infinitely-more-organic ways CCP could pursue their stated goals that would be much more elegant solutions.
Well I wish CCP were as self-aware as Netease: it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that if you give people an easy way to make money and a hard way to make the same amount of money, most people probably aren’t going to choose the hard thing. If you want people to head out into nullsec space and risk nice ships trying to get rich, there has to be a possibility of actually getting rich. That’s not going to happen in a nullsec where each ratting Myrm stands to make ~40m isk an hour on a good day, and 20m/hr if stuff gets stolen.
Again, a few points:
- I personally have never experienced “low-attention” farming in nullsec-- I’ve always had to pay close attention to what I was doing or accept the high likelihood that I’d lose my ship. IDK what nullsec region you’ve spent decades living in that’s free of harassment, but every region I’ve ever lived in has had plenty of roaming PvPers wandering around.
- It’s not “my” income: I haven’t ratted in years with the exception of times I field bait ratting ships to kill PvPers or times I join my friends to periodically grind up ADMs so that we can keep our space defensible and give our new players a way to make isk.
- Obviously I can’t speak for every EVE player, but I’ve spent almost fourteen years truly living in nullsec (IE-- without highsec or lowsec alts for alternative income streams): I’ve played both the hunter and the hunted and gotten pretty good at both roles.
From where I sit, I obviously want to live and play in nullsec. Goonswarm have gone above and beyond in our efforts to create a habitable, productive region by organizing and helping each other to an extent few other organizations have proved capable of. Our prize for our efforts has been for CCP to continuously nerf almost every aspect of our creation. I understand why they had to nerf things-- I was one of the people criticizing the system they created and its absurd output. What I’m saying is that they are going too far with it: I’ll say it again-- I am a player who absolutely would prefer to live in nullsec, but I feel like it’s not going to be practical looking forward. If, hypothetically, Goonswarm were to lose our war in Delve (and all our infrastructure with it), I don’t think I would bother trying to rebuild in nullsec. The costs (in ISK and man-hours-- remember the man-hours required to constantly defend all this stuff also have value) are already pretty suspect relative to the benefits. We already have all the infrastructure, so I’ll continue to use it. But if we have to start over? Even now it’s probably not worth it. Post-nerf, it definitely sounds like a waste of time. I already make more money just looting the wrecks we make in PvP than I would ratting. Ratting is a waste of time right now. Mining is a waste of time right now. There’s no way that this ongoing nerf-schedule is sustainable. I feel for the newer players who are trying to get into this game as people scream at them to show up in 250M-ISK Muninns for big, meat-grinder battles while CCP simultaneously announce that Myrmidon ratting represents an absurd ISK faucet that needs to be shut off. It makes me nervous when my friends who absolutely know what they’re doing and are more capable than most of making the best of things in nullsec are all moving their ISK making out of null. If PvE leaves nullsec, the only thing left to do in 0.0 will be to show up for consensual sov-related fights. Everything else is unassailable: industry and trade all happen by cyno and between adjacent Upwell structures-- there’s literally no way to get kills out of those activities. Travel happens by travelceptor or yacht or nullified T3C: can’t interfere with that. PvE is the only the only activity left that really enables non-consensual PvP.
