Null WAS safer than highsec. WAS. After the highsec changes, highsec is almost safesec. Null needed more risk, and now you have it.
EVE didn’t used to be so PVE-focused. It used to be all about fun and engaging pvp, with industry to make that possible. Now it’s all about profit margins and isk per hour for people. The hyperinflation of ISK has also slowly been taking people away from the game. I remember when it was 500mil for a month more of play, and now it is nearly 2 bil. Now that CCP is attempting to mitigate the ‘isk-per-hour’ mentality, less people are able to afford it. I do agree with you that THAT is a weakness, especially when they aren’t seeming to work on something that will increase the value of ISK again.
It’s something I’ve contemplated quite a lot, and like I’ve stated in another thread, EVE is at the ‘end-game’ phase in that everyone has access to everything. There was a time when Titans were the gods of space, and now they are also in the ‘already replaced’ category. In that sense, you can argue that the risk to losing big fights has also drastically decreased. It’s a matter of there not being a pre-existing scarcity of resources in the game. If you made things scarce, the miners/PVE people would lose content, but you’d have value in ISK again.
I think this post explains better and in more depth than I wrote shortly here. I welcome your feedback; I’m trying to be constructive, not destructive. I still maintain that the blackout is positive, however I do not discount other arguments.