I’m a new player, so I don’t claim to know all that much, but I wanted to see what other people had to say on this.
A few weeks ago I read about how earlier this year the Gallente-Caldari border was closed to non-capsuleers and that made me think:
What if it was closed to capsuleers too?
As in, what if every single Gallente-Caldari border stargate ceased to function. Either go around or light a cyno. Maybe just for a month or two, but long enough to actually matter.
Lore-wise, this wouldn’t be too problematic. The Gallente and Caldari have hated each other forever, and as shown above it has (some) precedent.
Gameplay-wise, consider this: the most heavily-traversed route in the entire game is through the Caldari Border Zone. If that route were closed, how would trade change? Would we see a rise in jump freighters ferrying goods across the divide? Would people just go around? Or would players abandon Jita entirely in favor of something more central with this new setup, like Ammar? Where would all those gankers in Uedama move to? Would the effects spill over into nullsec? Who would be the winners and losers? What other effects might it have?
After it ended, would the old systems revert, or would some of the changes stick around?
(Honestly, if I were CCP, I’d want to make this change unannounced during a random downtime just to see people’s faces when they wake up to find all their trade networks destroyed. And also to give all those bored econ majors something to talk about. And maybe make a point about trade and open borders. But I digress.)
It would be hideous. It is already a pain in the back to get everything in Jita now that these stupid market citadels popup around Jita. What you describe sounds fun in theory, until you do it in practice and it makes your time investment and effort increase exponentially because of this, which turns this “fun” into a logistical nightmare that os as much fun as waiting for the diagnosis of your cancer check after your doctor send you out with a concerned look on their face.
The empires can be isolated fairly easily by simply reducing the security status of choke point systems to 0.4 - this has been suggested many times. It would have little impact on Nullsec because they are using jump freighters but inter-regional trade in highsec would take a hit. CCP seems happy with the current risk/reward balance so I’m not expecting it to happen.
Awesome idea to shake the high sec entirely is to make Jita + Perimeter on Caldari site and Iyen-Oursta + Faurent on Gallente site factional warfare zones. Together with their entire constalations. Actually, add all border constalations to FW. So you can not cross faction borders without jump or runnig through low sec. Amarr / Caldari + Minmatar/Gallente borders also. Make FW 4-site conflict. I doubt anything will shake high sec and entire EVE universe more…
So many players looking how to bring content to players, who do not want it and there is no better place, than FW, to find unplanned fight quickly and with some sort of match maker.
If you isolated the regions - either by forcing a long way around, or by forcing them into combat to get through - small traders would just limit themselves to their home region, and the bigger traders would be able to take advantage of their wealth to set up expensive (yet extremely lucrative) jump routes between regions.
The people looking to gank traders moving through FW/low-sec systems in the way would quickly run out of targets as the traders realize the danger, and the only people to really profit from this are the big traders already making the most ISK on the markets anyway.
Their is a thing called wormholes. yes you get hs to hs ones or low sec ones to high sec. Their is plenty of us who live in solitude and that is really cut off from all the main high sec.
I have been living in solitude for over a year and tbh if you plan ahead being cut off from jita doesn’t effect you what so ever you just make sure that whatever you need or got to take to jita is ready to go at a whim when their is a wh. We have channels in solitude for sharing intel on whs generally or selling stuff local.
As to bigger traders taking advantage i really dont see that down here if anything i see alot of small traders who build stuff or ship it in and sell it down here. Prices on certain things are really high down here like t2 rigs which generally you have to ship in but most stuff you can get.
This isn’t really about being able to equip yourself. That’s easy enough, regardless of where you are. This is about trading, as a profession. You’d have big players capable of trading between regional hubs controlling the markets, and smaller traders limited to single regional hubs being left to scrape the bottom of the barrel.
I’d say “by all means, shake away, if you’re prepared to deal with the consequences”, but the thing is, CCP will be left to deal with the consequences, and the consequences will look like the whole 2017 here concentrated into a week.
EDIT: To clarify why, it’s because you’re not proposing any meaningful change to gameplay, you’re just proposing that a huge inconvenience be introduced, in a way where “avoiding” the inconvenience isn’t fun for those inconvenienced, nor does it lead to any gains.