Because of the relative ease of travel to Jita using filaments, the other trade hubs have died. This is unfortunate.
Dodixie seems to have what I need when I need it.
I don’t think filaments are the root cause. Unless I missed something really huge, there’s no “direct to Jita” filament. Only ones that will take you to a random location in highsec.
The real root causes of the decline of the smaller trade hubs as I see it are:
- Overall lower player counts.
- The decentralization of large highsec corporations. (EVE Uni used to have thousands of members right next to Hek, for example).
- The opening and stagnation of nullsec. Nullsec used to be an exclusive and dangerous place overall. A few years ago the major alliances all collectively threw open their doors. This increased access, combined with political stagnation, means that null is the logical place for people who want to carebear or do industry without risk, and nullsec trade hubs like 1DQ1-A and MJ-5F9 are more logical places for those folks to do their business.
- Niarja disappeared. The pipeline from Jita to Amarr no longer seems worth it.
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I’m pretty sure that Jita being 50 jumps through high sec away from Amarr is what killed the other hubs, not that any of them were even close to being as busy as Jita in the first place…
Instead of complaining about it, get together with other groups and start up your own conglomerate in the other trade hubs to compete with Jita…
I wouldn’t say the local trade hubs are dead. But there are so many factors involved, that it’s hard to name the most important.
- People are used to Jita prices and the “Buy all” experience. If anything is 50% more expensive in the local hub, they go to Jita instead.
- The sheer amount of different items is hard to provide. I would estimate that you need around 1000 items in constant supply to cover most basic fittings. Not even to speak of faction or DED modules.
- A lot of materials need to be imported. There is no T2 production without moon materials and Morphite. And why should any Nullsec alliance bother to ship that to a local hub when Jump freighter logistic to Jita is so convenient?
- Distribution of things: Almost everything is distributed between the empires. Datacores, salvage materials, meta modules and so on. Instead of shipping everything from everywhere, it’s natural that all the stuff is shipped to a central hub like Jita first.
- There is no real advantage in building things in a local market. Maybe you save a few ISK from the lower system index, but that’s hardly a factor compared to the effort of shipping the materials around.
- Small markets suffer from market manipulation. For example in Rens there is someone who buys all modules of one kind and relists for an insane price like 189 M ISK. In the end people are frustrated because they have to travel to Jita again just to buy some random T2 module.
I am sure that there are a lot more factors involved…
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Then relist for half what he bought, half what he lists at.
There are the same people in Jita. It’s just that, in Jita people have the wallet to play with them.
This is a very well-done reply. I pretty much feel the exact thing you speak of in Hek. I live there for the duels, the FW experience, and the local LP store. I do try to visit Jita to pick up large or valuable cargoes, like tons of Merlins, T2 rigs, T2 webs and scrams, or Polarized stuff.
Polarized rocket launchers are 14m in Hek, and 4m in Jita (as of two months ago). When transporting them back, I died to smartbombers and had to fit my Polarbill for like 50 million isk, which hurt.
That still irritates me. If they allowed the empires to develop some tech for counter attacking and recovering those systems, that would be a blast. I might even spend real money to team pvp in that fight.
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Ahh a stealth nerf fila thread.
To the OP credit, never seen someone try to use this take before LOL.
I think it’s a pretty good point, but not really as much of a filament problem as it is an invasion problem in general, plus the overall centralization of the trade in the game. Spams and scams in chat are a good push factor though…
It isn’t tho. Filaments have nothing to do with the other trade hubs falling away.
It has everything to do with what people have already posted, also the lower pop etc.
There is no straight filament to Jita, and never has been.
This is just a stealth nerf thread and an attempt to insert misinfo into the conversation around filaments so that when people discuss it, someone will drop “oh yea it’s also led to the other trade hubs fading away”.
Don’t fall for the obvious trolling by the OP 
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