I’ll gladly provide a little bit of background and update:
The recent patch deployed on Tuesday 13 April included the following change:
- Removed empty Asteroid Belts that have no asteroids left available.
As part of the greater EVE Ecosystem updates dating back to last year, a number of systems in null-sec contained Asteroid Belts that were completely depleted and barren of resources. These Asteroid Belt beacons were the source of some confusion as players would warp to these locations in hopes of finding asteroids. This patch removed the beacons for those already-barren Asteroid Belts to alleviate some of that confusion. However, this clean-up adversely affected several null-sec regions of space - in some cases leaving them without any venue for Asteroid NPC pirates.
While we are aware of the playstyle surrounding these pirate NPCs, namely Officer and Commander hunting & ADM building, we didn’t fully take into account how some areas of space would be disproportionally affected. We are currently working on having these pirate gangs return to the space they love without relying on asteroid field beacons. Following this, we’ll also be closely monitoring both the spawn rates and drop rates for Officers and Commanders in nullsec and act swiftly where needed to ensure that those playstyles aren’t reduced.
We want to thank both the CSM and the community for their feedback on this important issue and we will be consulting with the CSM as we undertake the upcoming fix. Likewise, we very much appreciate your patience and understanding.