Ah. So this is is a troll thread. Well, that explains a lot of things.

Among them your continual lack of argumentation. At least it clears up one thing: there's not really anything wrong with PI, and that makes the whole thread quite redundant.

Oh, and: I think it's kind of cute that I have such a dedicated follower as yourself. You even almost manage to not make it creepy.
GÖÑGÖÑGÖÑ

I see tears streaming down your face while you wear the smiley facade.

PI is a legitimate profession. It was a happy medium for highseccers and lowseccers with tax profits ultimately getting sunk out of game.

Much of those profits and planets now go into the hands of the big alliances putting even less control in the hands of the thousands of small corps/players.

Off-topic, but Tippia's avatar has those creepy bug eyes that seem to bulge out at you...

So.. howcome I'm still making 500M+ a month with my PI, and only need to check my planets every 4 days or so, and haul once a week?

Oh.. and ofcourse, ever consider making a deal with those 'monopolies'?
I saw a certain big alliance setting up some POCO's somewhere, and though I had no interest in setting up PI in that system, I chatted with em and asked howmuch tax they would charge me if I set up on 'their' planets.

They were quite willing to cut me a profitable deal that while I'd still be paying them taxes ( and thus giving them free money :) ),
I would still be making a good profit on my PI.

GǪand why is that a problem (if it's even true)?

Do you ever move further than your own system? Do you even do lowsec PI? How come you are SOOOO knowledgeable in EVERY facet of the game?

Upon reflection, last I heard you were a highsec S&I player.

I am fine doing either of those things IF there is a reason behind it. And part from Dust, what is the reasoning?

Now contribute or buttout ffs.

Obligartory: OP is in n00b corp and plays a game in single mode thats benefits players thats play it with others and wonder (whines) now why he cant compete.

What happened to the good old trolls of the past who kept us atleast entertaint on these forums, nowadays only whiners post here to share their lack of grip.

edit: and only Tippia is still here and tries to explain EVE to them

Off-topic, but Tippia's avatar has those creepy bug eyes that seem to bulge out at you...

met worst, in answer to your original question about CCP being bothered about your five accounts.

The answer is no.

If you have a problem with EVE feel free to open the air lock and walk out.

WAS no NEED or WANT except DUST release APPROACHING and TOO many PEOPLE making TOO much ISK with TOO little RISK

... hot topic.. I come back and it's 3 pages long already.. aaanyway.

Running incurions has nothing to do with PI, and i doubt you can make 500M with incurions in the time it takes me to do my PI.
I spend about an hour a week doing PI on a single toon, and I scrape out 500M a month with that.
So that's about 4 hours, adding in the finding of a fleet, getting ready, doing sites, and finding replacements for the people that have other things to do, does your incursion running make that much in 4 hours? I don't think so.

The rest of my time a month, I spend doing other things which make money, and this is on a single toon PI only.

My point was, that just because someone else owns the POCO, doesn't mean you can't make use of 'their' planet. Simply chat with them, and make a deal. Especially in low sec where system control isn't as easy as say, sov space, and people come and go all the time, it's good business practice anyway.
If you have the capital to set up a POCO, and the force to make sure someone doesn't go and blow it up, shutting people out of a low sec planet is madness. There are just too many planets around to shut out everyone, they can always just go to another system/planet/region. It makes MUCH more sense for them to allow access and give you a reasonable tax rate.
This way, they will have people coming to 'their' planet and doing PI, and all the work those people put in making stuff on the planet gets taxed. Taxes that are paid to said alliance.
Aka free money, from each and every person that comes to your planet. Hell, I'll sign for that.

I've run the figures on howmuch it costs to set up a POCO and the RoI and such, and it definitely favors allowing other people to use it in low sec. Especially a nice busy system. Even a moderately sized alliance can make tons of money doing it, with the cost of getting your POCO blown up regularly added in, you'd still be ahead in the game.

This is more an observation and a query regarding PI.

TL;DR : Lowsec is even deader than before due to POCO's. One less reason to bother with it.

The elaboration:-

As a player who has done lowsec PI for a long long time, the motivation to setup ninja POS's and float around lowsec gathering resources was both fun and interesting and on many occasions quite challenging (if not downright scarey). It made a modest profit and was almost a full-time Eve occupation in itself.

It required regular logins and made me invest in RL money to run my 5 accounts. There's simply not enough profit in PI to plex it all. And now, there's even less to be had due to POCO monopolies starting to rear their ugly heads.

So today I unanchored my last tower out of lowsec and closed up all my PI. The massive time, RL money and isk investment training 5 perfect PI chars with blockade runner skills is now wasted. The cost to do PI for personal towers and a small amount of manufacturing is on the verge of pointless.

Of course, the usual banter about go kill POCO's and install your own etc. will be bandied around and sure, I can join some alliance and do just that but that just reinforces my point about monopolisation of the game. I know what the "do this" solution is but I also know the reality - as do most players who do/did PI in lowsec.

IMO, it's a case of yet another nail-in-the-coffin for lowsec players who WANT lowsec, are prepared to RISK it in lowsec but have absolutely no incentive to be there unless they start a whole new alliance and spend 5 years building it into yet another monopoly.

I am seriously at a "wtf do I do now" moment after almost 4 years of trying it all.

Has anyone else struck the same sense of "where the **** is this game going" frustration?

you sir, are an idiot, lowsec may be dead, but its far more dangerous than bluefested,cynojammed,intel-ridden 0.0

this is true, all of our systems are cynojammed, every one of them (you're dumb)

There were lots of people predicting this in the deve blog thread. Made no difference, as with many changes CCP makes. The comments threads most of the time are an exercise in futility. It was very apparent that they wanted this for DUST. Hope they know what they're doing with that. In the meantime yeah, fewer people in lowsec.

Welcome back to highsec

For making higher end products, a POCO would definitely be recommended though, so you can extract everything you need, make P1s and assemble them to P3 or P4s at a planet with low/zero taxes.

This.

PI in hi-sec is still very profitable despite the taxes. Sure, output volumes might be less, but there is still good isk to be made, especially if you use alts as well.

No RL industrialist or Business person would tolerate a 30% tax on ANYTHING

Keep in mind that the politics and crap in null is/was enough to push many, many people back to high - now CCP are (inadvertently perhaps) adding lowsec to the "It's mine" alliances as well.

I had an entire chain happening, at the moment I cannot.

That was the anom nerf