As a bitter vet of 15 years in Eve, having played in Null, Low, High, and most recently Pochven, I say with what I believe is the support of my fellow capsuleers ‘Houston, we have a problem.’
The problem, is content. Eve Online by its very nature is one that forces players into fighting one another for resources, relics, loot, and isk. My brief time in Pochven (which is arguably the hottest bed of PvP in the game right now), reinforces this element and brings me back to what Eve was back in the days 2012-2013, and even during the times of Red Moon Rising.
Null sec has been hit hard with a lack of stuff to do. There’s really no reason for the blocs to fight one another except for vanity wars. There’s massive swaths of null space where not a soul can be found (having done many needle jack roams recently), and the banks are farmed as much by the entities that own the systems as they are by thieves.
Asteroid belts are gone, and the bounty modifier disinclines folks from ‘super ratting’ among other things. (By the way, I actually do concur that the bounty modifier is a good thing, and forces players to move elsewhere to gain bigger rewards, thus increasing risk of hostile contact). This post mainly deals though with the biggest problem eve has. Players are too spread out. Everything else is a symptom of this problem.
CCP saw abundance in the economy and created scarcity. There is now an abundance of systems, and that too requires scarcity. Enter, ‘The Big Crunch.’
A hypothetical concept in which our universe collapses back in on itself (as it blew outward in the big bang), the same element would prevail here. Barely populated systems, barely used systems, barely traversed systems would be folded back into non-existence in a galactic event.
What’s left is a smaller New Eden with new regional boundaries, with too few systems available for the players available. It is the Eve equivalent of a server consolidation, and would occur much for the same reason. Although Eve has one thing that sets it apart from other MMOs and that is permanence of loss. While other MMOs consolidate servers to keep the lights on, Eve’s Big Crunch would re-ignite interest in a player base that can’t get Eve style content anywhere else.
Give people a reason to fight, they’ll come back because the content is there. Right now, it’s a struggle to find that content for many due to the abundance of systems, and it’s boring.
Having been in Pochven a month, I can’t fart without tripping over a hostile. And it is the best time I’ve had in Eve in a long time. (Though I miss my capital ships). All of Eve should be like that again. And it can be. If CCP is willing to take the chance that smaller in this case, is better. Give the players a reason to fight, believe me, they will fight (they always have).