So, sometimes you write a useful post, and sometimes you write stupid stuff like this. That’s ok, it’s not a reflection of ‘you’ as a person, but on your lack of understanding of a game as an ecosystem.
The average EVE gamer isn’t looking to be a space bully or pirate. The average EVE gamer also isn’t looking to be a victim of same. When you institutionalize bullying and extortion rackets in your game, the very few will target the very many. As the process becomes more mainstream and less ‘fringe’, a few more people will shift from the “I don’t victimize and extort weak targets” to the “hey look, piracy is fine, it’s better to shoot than get shot at, right?”.
And a comparatively large number of players will say “Yeah, screw this I’m out. Game’s not worth it.”. And either quit, or not undock, or move to a bigger protection racket in Null.
The productive, economy-oriented PvE player (who get called ‘weak’ because they’re not in a PvP fit) will not “grow teeth”. It’s idiocy to expect them to do so since you can’t do what they’re doing (mine, haul, PvE) and have comparable teeth to even a 2-man gang of pirates.
That’s the whole point of high-sec piracy and wardecs, is selecting targets that can’t win. Case in point - from 2010:
Untrue. They were always there, and they’ve always left due to EVE game mechanics. The difference now is, every gamer alive has 8,000 more options to do with their leisure time than they did back then, and EVE is steadily losing out as a source of ‘entertainment’.
Any time you design a game to have 20,000 sheep and 3,000 wolves with little to no restrictions on the wolves, you can confidently predict the sheep will start disappearing.