New players who were interested in null-sec (for any reason) went to it, and those who didn’t, stayed in high-sec. It was always this way. Big groups like ASCN, Goons, Lotka Volterra, and RA all had new player divisions and did active recruitment of new players because (surprise!) they needed to grow their manpower. It was only during the first two or so years of the game when “null-sec elitism” was a thing, and the only way you could get into BoB was by knowing someone or into Goonfleet by being a member of the SA forums.
No, it really isn’t. I lived that life, and what I’m saying comes from many years and hundreds if not thousands of instances of direct observation. It’s no more conjecture than your grandpappy talking about shooting krauts in WW2, or maybe Yankees or Commies, if you’re on the wrong side of the fence (which might explain why you’re so bitter all the time).
I can only speak for myself but I don’t like massive impersonal groups and fleets (just as I’ve never done group peer pressure irl). Up till 2009 or so you could get things done in smaller entities in null, at least relatively small, and fleets weren’t ridiculously huge: you knew the people in your fleets on a first name basis, that all went out the window around and past 2009. Not long after that the old “meaningful” feuds were kinda gone and it all had become bland, sameish and turned into a pve grind fest.
People who enjoyed solo or small group content had no business being in null any more other than day tripping. People who didn’t like massive groups and their, now inevitable, carebearish ways had no business being in null anymore.
Exploration and the odd nullsec PVP op with my alliance. Never really got into exploration in the past but with family and work life it’s one of the easier activities to combine.
Some went to WH but doing that well requires a level of commitment most people can’t sustain, some tried low sec but by that time piracy was already dead and LS has been dead since forever. Some moved to wardeccing, mostly solo or small group, can flipping or mission baiting. Some tried to get into the mercenary scene but by that time that was also killed off by CCP.
At that same time CCP decided to make some of those options less easy, at least for solo or small groups. Which, very obviously, resulted in those small groups banding together into massive ones, causing (predictable) massive problems. That or they “radicalised” and became gankers.
These days we have pochven but just like WH doing that with a small group requires a lot of commitment.
As I see it it’s a case of preferring quality over quantity whereas the “main stage” of EVE has become quantity over quality. Most of us misfits just do our best to exist in the middle of it, somehow.
I don’t agree that this was entirely the fault of CCP, the change where major nullsec alliances realised that they had to funnel cannon fodder into the system had profound knock on affects. Include in this buffs to nullsec production and ISK generation by CCP and hisec became populated in the main with the people most unlikely to do the tango with war decs.
Then it turned into a circle of desperation and self destruction by hisec war deckers desperate for a dwindling number of interesting targets. But in nullsec it was pretty similar, small alliances that fought back had queues of large alliances coming into to test their mettle. The best example is Waltreipers in Delve who managed to fight off one group only to be rewarded (?) with a flood of new content.
I know this point of view is unpopular with many war deckers, but there was a movement towards blanket war deckers that happened before any changes were made to war decs. I think targeted small war decs were great content, but it got ruined by all sides.
I kept telling war deckers that they had to think whether the fun they were dishing out was really fun, they seemed to think so, so they went blindly into the night so to speak. Sorry with the poetic language used, but it it is all rather sad.
Null used to be all about sweaty tryhards like BOB, Tri and NC before the dot. The problem is of course that the number of sweaty tryhard players is very limited so it was very difficult to grow or create new groups, beyond that tryhards tend to implode a lot.
Then goons came along and did it differently. They still had tryhard leadership but their concept was about weaponising casuals, creating an environment where said casual doesn’t have to think or even do much, he just has to show up. There are a lot of casuals and if you control your zerg well it’s a winning combination.
So when goons showed how well that works other groups started doing the same. The bitter sweaty tryhards that stuck around remained bitter and kept imploding ever so often, going nowhere.
But it couldn’t have gotten out of control if CCP hadn’t made null “easier” in terms of income and sov/safety.
It’s funny how, to me at least, the time EVE had the most players it was also the shittiest version of EVE. Right now the game is in a far better place than it was when we had record PCU.
I sort of think that it had a momentum of its own, I think the Goons would have won with that approach anyway.
I mentioned nullsec in the context that war decs in hisec needed to have eager new players that wanted to try the game and had not been overly bitten by the experience. But suddenly the most eager were sucked elsewhere. I know that issues were already developing before that in hisec as there was less new players anyway and many were deciding to avoid rather than fight which then created the move to the larger war deckers who blanket war decked.
I seem to recall being in privateers in 2007 at least which was also a mass war dec alliance. MBALM then spawned orphanage after that with many other corps in the fray like priesthood etc. Even smalltimers like myself could form our own corps and wardec anyone we wanted for some isk. No war, stick to NPC corp otherwise fairgame. An actual fair system.
Also shout out to @The_PitBoss for some great times. I would @ Rico Felix too if he was actually on these forums.
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