If a 5 year old is crying and whining for a cookie, starts sulking when he doesn’t get one and tries to use all kinds of obviously flawed reasoning and logic why he should get that cookie (and the reasoning is “because i want one”) then you have several options:
Indulge in their feet stamping. This is how the current generation happened, they were never told “no”.
Say “no” and let them tire out from their temper tantrum.
So: “no”.
I couldnt see any when Iast looked.
You raise a number of interesting thoughts and counter-arguments. I guess I’m guilty of planting seeds for multiple discussion threads in one post at the same time 
And perhaps of some confusion too, the number of words not being related to the quality of my replies, and some of the points I made apparently need some clarification or finetuning - which again may entirely be due to my personal experience which may very well differ from your experiences. Not sure how to continue this collection of related subtopics without writing wall to wall.
I tried to pick one subtopic, on replacements, or perhaps on shiny nullsec ships, or maybe get side-tracked on the “remove goons from the game for once and for all” story that I hid in there in full sight, or the grind factor (btw, the only people in the game that do not seem to have to grind ever are traders). It didn’t work to my satisfaction …
So I’ll just build a new portal redirecting the nullsec/dbs discussion and make a challenging remark instead:
If anyone is drawn to sov nullsec only for the ISK, he/she is not going to last very long.(at least not with any of the real nullsec blocs). Nullsec loves to blow stuff up, we don’t come here to hide and get rich, but to build and destroy sand castles, and we fund most of it ourselves (via taxes hence via SRP, and out of pocket). Sure, we use the most expensive toys in the game. Thank Bob for that, or the devs would have wasted their time developing them. ISK is a means, not an end. The rest is a function of that simple fact of nullsec reality.
Exactly and what happened? Yup, they left.
You keep butting in like you had some element to add to a discussion. So far you’ve only shouted “booh nullsec”. Keep going.
The September and earlier MER’s don’t show broad Null activity levels dropping that much (mining, ratting, etc.). Zkillboard says PVP is still active in Null.
Other than the general “CCP pushed 30% of active players out the door with boneheaded nerfs” it doesn’t appear Null has suffered a significantly greater loss than any other area.
I’m sure a few players got fed up and decided to try their luck elsewhere but none of the numbers are showing me any substantial exodus from Null. If anything it looks like most nullers have simply stopped fighting the big fights (because who can afford to, now?) and gone back to building up some reserves.
Hopefully recent changes will stimulate a little more activity.
Nah, you just don’t like how your :words: don’t really work and what you said is used against you. I have no problems with null, I have problems with grind bears and “numbers go up” people. As stated somewhere else: people who care for numbers and money can’t ever be trusted because the second it’s financially beneficial to them they will sell you out.
The second that whole “more = better” is somewhat interrupted all these people just magically vanish, partly because they can’t maintain their “more = better” accounts and ships anymore which thus affects their rampant income. Which in this situation means they will just leave and stop bothering. If they CARED about null, the sandbox, pvp or their chosen group of people they’d still BE there but they’re not, they fcked off (playing alts) just like how many ppl have characters in different groups that oppose each other and they simply log in the char that gives them the most content and/or drama.
People, for the most part, join null because of the easy access to low effort iskies where their safety is largely taken care of by the organization of the hivemind. Almost infinite scaling through number of accounts and ship sizes which of course the alliances love because it means more tax, numbers and bodies in fleets. A portion of the people who join are in it for the massive fleet fights, most just want to grind and be left alone.
As a Hauler who buys either off distant markets and contracts or direct from growers and manufacturers I hadnt thought about it like that, but yeah no grind as far as Im concerned.
Which is why Ill never understand choosing the slowest, most expensive, dullest and hardest to get into way of doing it in the entire game vOv.
And while Id never seek to claim your reason for being there as anything but what youve said, many others whose words Ive read are what have convinced me many do be there simply for wealth.
Well, that may be your genuine opinion and assessment. Thanks for sharing that. There is no telling which side of the coin is the correct one, is there. Your as well as my view are in all likelihood limited in scope, for whatever reason, experience, bias, etc.
The fact of the matter is however quite simple: if customers walk out because they no longer like the product something needs to be done. It wasn’t a matter of the last couple of months, it was a constant erosion that started with scarcity and gradually became worse over many months. Most of the grievances came from nullsec. That does not make nullsec players wrong, or uncaring, or not enough of a hive drone. They simply stopped liking the product.
You seem under the impression that most nullsec players are some kind of religious followers. That couldn’t be further from the truth. The content creators in nullsec are cat herders, bless them, not pied pipers.
Perhaps we’re addicted to complexity and meta gaming. Good point.
I think what’s actually disappointing is the clear bias it shows.
Not going to lie tho, I pity that Dark Shines guy LOL.
Maybe they drew straws about who was going to post the cry thread and he pulled the short one?
Nullsec makes a long list of demands on their members. They make them share their entire API, they require fleet participation, they require people to participate on voice comms (perhaps the worst concession of all), and they generally subjugate the individual in favor of the interests of their sovereign lord.
The trade-off for this oppression is that the members make a ton of easy money. If the members aren’t interested in money then why would they sign up for sure a horrible deal?
And this is where we differ.
If a part of the customers leave because their overpowered income generation is no longer super viable then to me that seems that they’re not really in it for the sandbox, pvp or interaction: they just want to grind. And to those I say “good riddance, you fcked the game up enough and for too long already”.
Again, just because someone isn’t happy their overpowered ship or playstyle got nerfed (which everyone could see was OP af) and he quits over it doesn’t mean the nerf should be undone. It was nerfed for a reason: it was unbalanced compared to the rest of the game and thus it needed changing. Them crying to have it made OP again is no different from me crying for them to fck off.
The difference is that balance wise one of us is right.
So you are comparing a fairly recent change in the game with a situation (and ensuing play style) that has existed for 17+ years ? And that seems “fair” to you ? A sudden revelation of the Light in the darkness ? Omg, we did it wrong the past 17+ years, let’s nerf the whole thing ? Without consequences for the business itself ?
Nope, balance can be reached via other means. I don’t particularly like (or have to like) the partial quickfix ccp does with the dbs. In fact I wish they have a more permanent solution in the works that is far more entertaining and constructive in terms of gameplay (in nullsec in this case).
In MY opinion it’s still a very poor partial remedy, but let’s hope it finally stops the bleeding. Far better would have been to provide the players with new possibilities to counter the so-called “cap problem” with means to blow them up - as opposed to taking away freedom of choice, ability to replace, ability to build, and whatever else the dev team involved concocted and replacing it with a feeling of “we wasted time, isk and cash”. Sticks only work for a short while. They suppress fun. Introduce tools that let the game run towards a new problem in two decades, if need be, as long as it’s entertaining and good for selling subs … And that is what nullsec has been saying all along.
As a null sec member I don’t see it as bad as you make it sound.
API: who cares, I don’t.
Fleet participation requirement: does not exist in my alliance. I participate in fun fleets when I want to, show up to fleets of strategic importance when I happen to be online and have the time, and try to show up when my alliance needs me in the very rare CTAs, not because it’s required, but because I’ll be fighting for my home, fight with friends and have a chance to use these ships I bought.
Voice comms requirement: does not exist either. At most it’s helpful to be listening on comms to the instructions of the FC but there is no need to be talking at all if you don’t want to. And occasionally people are unable to listen due to headphone malfunctions or other limitations so we’ve had situations where people relay instructions through ingame chat.
Easy money: not there either. At least, I don’t think I can get easy money in my space, it’s mostly full of fights and other content, which is why I like it there. Okay, I like the semi-stability of structures that haven’t moved for months now so I can run my PI setup without too much resetting, but previous year I had to do my setup 3 times due to our alliance moving homes three times. Now that is a lot of clicking, I tell you! Not really easy money. 
The reason I signed up for the deal is not the money, it’s the content.
Being part of my alliance means I have access to a whole lot of content. Fights are on at all times, so I can fly logistics (one of my favourite roles) in fleets whenever I see the opportunity, or fly blops with a bunch of others from the alliance that enjoy that playstyle.
I really wouldn’t want to play this game solo, playing with others is a lot more fun, but to each their own.
Listening to some kid boss me around on comms is not how I will ever choose to spend my free time. And the API thing is a symbolic “kiss my ring” that is a total non-starter for me.
If the FC would be bossing me around without being respectful, I wouldn’t join their fleets. Apart from that, everyone has their own role in fleets and while I do like going on fleets and enjoy flying a lot of different roles, the last role I’d want to play is to be a FC myself. Way too much stress for me, so I’m happy that others are willing to take that role.
If giving someone insight in some of your stats through the API is too much for you, then you’re free to not do that. Like I said, I really don’t mind that they can see some stuff about me that I’d share with people anyway if they were interested.
Lets say you play an FPS and it has 5 weapons. 4 of those are decently balanced, to a degree at least, but one is completely overpowered and it only works for one class/role. A few questions:
we’re (at least I’m) not talking about a few weapons that got nerfed. I’m talking about a whole way of playing the nullsec game that got under too much pressure. That’s an order of magnitude difference.
The fact is that small changes (the “adjust and adapt”) have always been absorbed, and with the mandatory moaning and groaning. The drastic changes were not, and for good enough reason. They had gone too far.
It’s an analogy, nothing more.