To you personally, what is the purpose of low sec?
nowadays it's where i'm planning to send my tertiary alts off to steal russian r64/32 moon ore in my local low sec.
That and send my mains in occasionally to munch on low sec ice using cloaky vessels.
fun fact: did you know i have a decade's old rorqual gathering dust because she's never been used for anything other than a glorified jump freighter? before citadels she also doubled as a clone service.
in the past, before citadels, i was in despair about mining in low sec as a cost efficient method of mining...oh sure it was fun and exciting...until one realizes how much more rich high sec carebears in their level 4 missions & ice mining were compared.
but, to sum up: what is the PURPOSE of low sec? in the past it's been those transients who have plied the low sec spaceways, including flash in the pan wannabe pirates whose collective IQ drops as they gatecamp highsec entrances...those fools have tried their hand at POS management, and now athanor snoozefests. It's always been home of the marauding dreadnaughts, and hotdroppers. the blops addicts, dropping on corvettes and fledgling n00bs not aware of how ridiculously low reward it is in low sec compared to high.
ccp isn't interested in low sec, never has been. never will. they look at shiny news articles in gaming magazine websites talking about massive battles in null sec (where alot of their player base is playing for free) vs griefers ripping off folks in high sec (where alot of new players start off, and how ccp pads their shareholder briefings with those numbers.)
i'm actually disgusted with lowering myself to cowtow to CCP's politicizing the pandemic and crowing about how their new player numbers are ever rising. it's like trump bragging about ratings, as though it means anything.
To you personally, what is the purpose of FW?
To feed the maw of bored stupid wannabe amateur "pirates"
never actually played it and i thank the gods it never spawned as a mechanic in my neck of the woods *knocks on wood*
it's a place where you notice who's in local. where they've always been folks you could honest to god interact with. well, except for the losers who just camp NPC station 24/7 and roleplay they own the place.
T.E. Lawrence: "There may be honor among thieves, but there's none in politicians"
How should low sec shape player interactions and habits? Should it be lawless? Safe-ish? Home to big alliances? Free of supers?
how SHOULD it be? the same, but where it attracts SMART players instead of the foolish n00bs. why the hell should a smart player venture into low sec to sustain themselves?
i think anyone who seriously wants to know what sustaining themselves in low sec is about should check out "low sec challenge" videos.
i personally haven't seen those videos, myself, knowing first hand how ridiculous the concept is currently.
what is the purpose of low sec in my fevered dreams? nocxium. increasing the demand of it for ship building or something...jeezuz ccp has those bloody metrics, or do they? do they even have - to this very day - the ability to figure out how much minerals of a certain type are use in the most volume in certain ships? sure their economic reports are shiny but they certainly don't tell even a thousandth of what's going on.
Low sec should be a place where miners fear to tread, but where jaspet (nocxium) is valuable enough that mining that is more lucrative per day than sitting fat and happy in a high sec ice field once every 4 hours for a few hours amidst the deaf dumb and blind bots..
it respawns ice every 4 hours like clockwork with the belt full and fresh, whereas an actual old school belt takes 20 FREAKING DAYS to fully recharge...and nothing for the first 3 days.
Regardless, the point is raise the demand for nocxium. here's a fantasy situation where i tweak the price of it to be double that of megacyte currently: 1000 isk/pu
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1p1NTdQnXEDMooJshi1pndcneXHcKY9rOFsr_JzlWlPI/edit?usp=sharing
Obviously one would need to tweak the numbers for nocxium in crokite & pyroxeres...and that would entail being careful not to unbalance the compression/refining ratios so carefully tuned by CCP to be a factor of 27 respectively. (eg. lowering nocxium in crokite by half but raising something else so that compression/refining stay at x27...not good in math, so maybe one could just do that easily enough and not worry about it)
