This is a stupid question because noone in this thread said 'highsec was awful', but I'll answer it anyway.
Lack of industrial capacity in nullsec and w-space. Small scale miners and industrialists are pointless liabilities in an environment where locally produced goods cannot hope to meet demand. It's more effective to put them in an area where they can't kill each other and instead have them endlessly undercut each other due to an anemic and impotent conflict resolution system.

If hi-sec is so awful, why is it, by some considerable distance, the most popular play area in Eve?

This is something the hi-sec haters need to answer.

I have no strong personal views on what should or should not be done to 'improve' hi-sec. Whatever is done, I will simply adapt to as well as I can.

But given that much of null and lo-sec seems to be largely bereft of players, I am not convinced that turning hi-sec into null and lo-sec is the way to go.

When it comes to the mining buffs, it is simply harder, not impossible to gank them. This is no different in principle than my Dominix being harder to gank than a Destroyer.

I have long argued that the way to go is to make null lo-sec more attractive to players.

The proposed 'Stakeholder' idea may well be a step in the right direction.

Constant whinging about how safe hi-sec is not going to achieve this.

Dear Pipa Porto, I have never used the comparison between ganking a Domininx and ganking a Destroyer before.

Just so you know.

Kind regards, Josef.

When it comes to the mining buffs, it is simply harder, not impossible to gank them.

Perhaps what is needed is for CCP to give up 'tinkering' with the whole hi-sec, lo-sec, null-sec balancing act and completely rethink the whole concept of Eve space.

Back to the drawing board, with as much input from players as possible.

This is against the game-rules --one thing that CCP explicitly names as griefing, in fact-- and can get you banned if you do it.

Ergo, idiot-switch not needed, at least here, unless CCP has stopped enforcing that rule?

And yet people still do it, or were up until very recently, I'll run the tutorials again on a trial this week and see how many yellow cans are in tutorial specific areas, especially the scanning tutorials. I sincerely hope I'm wrong but some people just get off on killing nubs.

The flip side of the new idiot switch is that CCP are trying to appeal to a wider demographic, hopefully drawing them in from other MMOs where molly coddling and hand holding are the norm. Some of the current mechanics are arcane and convoluted to say the least and it's very easy to trick the uneducated into doing something unwise. Personally I hope they succeed in bringing in new players so that we can introduce them to a proper game that doesn't involve cartoon pets and proper PvP where if you die you actually lose stuff.

However if they go too far with the idjit proofing they risk alienating their current players, and the current players are the ones that have created Eves reputation as the pinnacle of what a game can be.

TL;DR Gaining new players is good, losing old players is not.

There's too much hi-sec in the game, it shouldn't be possible to fly from one empire to another without going through low at least, hi-sec is just a waste of eve imho.

There's too much hi-sec in the game, it shouldn't be possible to fly from one empire to another without going through low at least, hi-sec is just a waste of eve imho.

I would not be surprised to see some change in 2013 that greatly limits the effectiveness of freighter ganking.

If certain segments of the player population begin to notice that the water is warming, then redirect the hell out of these potentially damaging conversations with "one day we'd like players to take over for CONCORD." And the rising complaints are mollified as those players forget about the temperature of the water and begin fantasizing themselves in the role of space police. They'll say "CCP understands where to take this game. These new features change the nature of the sandbox, but it's meant to move us to the promised land. So we'll wait and see."

But what is this promised land? Under what conditions could CCP remove CONCORD and not break the game? As it stands now, to turn off CONCORD would be to turn all of highsec into lowsec. And that's definitely not going to happen. Never. Ever. So the promised land has to be a place where space has become so safe, so regimented, so rules restricted, that CONCORD is an entity that is rarely required. Suspect and criminal flags such a rare occurence, that players can become the police, because the need for a super-police is now moot. And this might be the situation that CCP Soundwave envisions. The only real instance in which CONCORD can be safely removed from the game is one where they are no longer needed. Players can then call themselves the space police, except that there's nothing left to police.

Eve is a bit like being at the beach. Most people want to go for a swim out into the sea and go on little boats and stuff but they also like to come back to the beach to eat an icecream or whatever.

Take away the beach and it's just sea, and no-one will come. Take away the sea and it's just a desert, and no-one will come.

#seewhatidid?

Can flipping, high-sec ganking and concord insurance huh..... I think you are referring to something other than PvPers. That, or you don't PvP much do you?

As someone that loves PvP I can say that I am insulted by your childish and amateur description of "PvPers".