In the old days if you wanted to go somewhere you walked there, which typically resulted in 5-6 hours of roaming empty islands and still needing 30-40 minutes to get back home. SpT and interzones were brought in to combat precisely that time investment prerequisite for meaningful game participation. But as with everything that get's implemented, it was implemented haphazardly with zero consideration for what evidently more intelligent people were saying.

Issue 1: Force projection

Instantly jumping between 10/5/? locations for a laughable price with no cooldown? There's batshit ***, then there's this. Increase the world size, then turn it into a fish bowl with the few fish swimming in circles while the cat looks on.

Issue 2: No consequence

Did I mention no cooldown? As in, it's irrelevant if there's a fleet outside your station, spark away for an hour and mine a bit until they get bored & leave, then you can spark back and carry on w/e you were doing?

Solution: Kill it with fire

Whoever came up with this brilliant idea and didn't consider what long-term effect it would have is an evident imbecile and has no business making decisions. Unfortunately, since the afore-mentioned unidentified imbecile will no doubt keep making decisions, the only applicable solution is to tick on a cooldown on spark-jumping (8-12 hours should be sufficient, alternatively make it 24 and tie it to a new extension that ultimately reduces it to 14 hours).

Without that, the only thing you're doing is marginally increasing the fish bowl so the poor little fish have to swim a little bit longer. There is still no consequence for sparking to the wrong place at the wrong time.

TL;DR

Told you so, a long long time ago in an IRC far far away.

Perceptor wrote:

But I thought we only wanted it because without it we couldn't take stations?

Yes, 47 pages of how you guys couldn't take anything because SpT gave us such an advantage. And yet, you are now taking stations. And SpT is still in the game.... how is this possible? We always said just show up and play the game and you'll be able to take stations. You guys finally have numbers, and are reaping the rewards. SpT had nothing to do with it.

All this change has done is make more walking for any of the expected "SteamNoobs"  who may flood the game ... May.
Or for the people who build and invest in Gamma. PvPers will only be affected by less PvP opportunities.

The change won't even correct the fact that a simple 5-10 minute cooldown was all that was needed.

Dev Zoom fell for a very persistent Ville troll.
Thats all. The game is still sick.