The people who do null sec sov war are after completely different things in eve than people who are in low sec or doing faction war. Your suggestion that the mechanics be the same, or one be a test bed for the other, completely misses this fundamental point. I will make an attempt to spell this out for you because you clearly don't get it.


Yes there currently are more people in null sec. However, if CCP spent as much time thinking about and iterating on faction war and low sec and left null sec abandoned like they have low sec and faction war then the numbers would be more than reversed. The potential playerbase that would be attracted to low sec and faction war is much larger than the playerbase who can be attracted to null sec sov warfar.


Sov null sec is for people who are willing to dedicate allot of their lives to a computer game. They are willing to wait around a long time for those epic battles. The epic battles are indeed epic and when they happen its extremely high stakes for a computer game. That part is great and works out well for people like yourself who are retired or perhaps people in college who havenGÇÖt yet fully experienced the real life grind. IGÇÖm not putting this part of the game down at all. If I had allot of extra time I would probably do that myself. But the reality is I donGÇÖt have that sort of time. And I am allot more typical GÇô at least when it comes to adults who might play eve - than people like yourself who are retired and have lots of free time for computer games.




You said it yourself that one of the goals in sov warfare is to make it so the other side doesnGÇÖt want to sign on anymore. Well the problem is the things you have to do to in order to make the other side not want to sign in are extremely boring to allot of people. POS bashing Camping stations and gates never really getting anything but ganks and no really good fights for hours on end. This isnGÇÖt stuff allot of players find entertaining.



However, sov null sec has to be that way because the stakes are higher. The timers should be slow giving each side time to get their large fleets together. CCP canGÇÖt make it so that if you sign off for a few hours you find that when you log back on you lost your system and all your crap there. With the high stakes comes allot of boring downtime that is all there is to it.



Balancing or giving more isk for doing sov null sec stuff is just rolling that turd in glitter. I can only use isk in game and if the game play primarily consists of sitting around waiting for something to happen then itGÇÖs worthless. I couldnGÇÖt care less about it.




Faction war and low sec is for people who want to be entertained without committing their lives to a computer game. Think GÇ£better than tv.GÇ¥ I come home from work put the kids to bed and I have a an hour or two before bed. I can watch tv with my wife or I can go shoot some people in the face.




Like hans says the mechanics need to be set up to bring about frequent fun small scale fights. The faction war plexing mechanics seem to have been geared to do that but they have sat broken for years. These plex mechanics need to be fine tuned and balanced more often than anything else in eve.


If a group at ccp took it upon themselves to say it is their goal to tweak and balance the plex mechanics to make sure that there is always lots of small scale pvp happening in these plexes (and low sec general) the eve subscriber base would explode.



ItGÇÖs not going to be something where they just make one change and it works. It will need allot of fine tuning to get it going right. Lots of iterating. But it will be worth it to a much larger potential playerbase than sov null sec could ever hope to capture.



But instead it sits neglected. So what happens? I and many in low sec will often sign on and spend a few hours roaming around with no action at all. Sorry thatGÇÖs not even better than tv. String several nights like that together where I go to sleep thinking I should have watched a show instead of signing on and ccp loses subscribers.



Moreover, the fights should have *some* significance. I mean right now the low sec fights are just barely a step up from sisi. The stakes shouldnGÇÖt be so high that it turns into sov null sec but there should be some overarching goals that somewhat accurately measure who is doing well at the parts of the game people value.(i.e., who is doing well at small gang pvp) This is important so itGÇÖs not just a constant meaningless thunderdome.


I would also bet that many people who have the time to play the null sec sov stuff would like to head over to faction war and low sec if ccp actually developed it. Just for a change of pace.


TLDR:


Eve can work for people who have allot of time to play the game and for people who don't. But the same mechanics aren't always going to work for both sets of people.

Or George Lucas.