You’re nuts. They absolutely are colluding with null-sec groups. The entire reason the CSM exists today is a big part of this collusion. It’s just that CCP isn’t necessarily pulling the strings or directly profiting from it financially. But it’s been well-documented, including in the way that GMs interact with players (e.g. people bragging about their jump freighters getting restored after ganks).
The game’s environment now hinges upon maintaining existing power structures. Fake conflicts are staged to create hype for line members, who in turn feed CCP with PLEX purchases, while RMT is only “punished” if it gets “caught” (so don’t get caught, wink wink).
They can do it, but they’ll upset a lot of people by doing it, and I’m not talking about random high-sec miners and mission-runners. They’ll have to really shake up the null-sec power structures in order to affect high-sec, and those players are going to squeal like pigs getting slaughtered if they try. Remember the reaction to blackout?
Take a look at this post I made a few weeks ago:
CCP would need to:
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Get rid of war HQs
– It’s a system very few players like. Even null-sec powers don’t benefit from it much, because they rarely seem to go after the HQs of groups that are big/strong, electing to have their members get farmed in perpetuity instead because they con’t want to commit a large force to a fight (people would rather spend that time grinding safe ISK at home). While war HQs exist, the game will never have a vibrant high-sec mercenary community made up of small independent groups that can threaten the logistical chains of large powers, because the existing war cartel power structure will destroy all potential competition in its infancy stage, while giving the blocs a buyout option for hostilities. -
Nerf/re-work Pochven filaments
– It’s absolutely obscene that players in null-sec can load up a disposable clone and a cloaked Tech I hauler, and basically teleport to Caldari high-sec in 15 minutes, where they can use an alt in a more secure ship to finish the final few jumps to Jita to sell their (botted) loot. And then just corpse-jump straight back to their home without taking another gate. -
Increase the cost of war ineligibility and/or remove the potential for high-sec to be one of the game’s most lucrative safe farming zones
– Lots of null-sec members (and other players belonging to ostensibly powerful, major groups) use high-sec as their primary means to generate wealth, whether from mission-running, incursion farming, abyssal deadspace runs, or mass-scale mining ops using holding corp. structures. A lot more of the high-end high-sec content needs to confer the suspect flag for example, like those new event sites, which are a step in the right direction. -
Punish null-sec/Pochven/wormhole players who don’t regularly fight others
– Ground where blood doesn’t spill should become less fertile over time. This would create the literal need to invade space that belongs to others in order to be able to engage in profitable PvE farming.