Well, compared to something like, say, WoW, I'd say perp is pretty damn big.

I think it's because, at this point in time, unless you are totally camped in there is no real reason to leave your station to fight invaders. You can sit pretty, and the only loss you have is that you're not able to farm or mine during that time. However, lost income isn't that high on people's lists of concerns as they play this as a game, and most of them can just go do something else in the meantime.

However, people become very attached to things they have made. That awesome refinery you planted down next to your favorite epi spot is a lot more easy to justify defending than an equal value of time that could be spent mining, simply because the structure acts as a focal point for emotion, both in terms of the joy that comes from destroying it and the loss you feel when one is destroyed. This sort of emotional nexus generates PvP, and therefor, content.

Just my 2 bits.

Speaking as someone who was a total PvP noob coming into perp, and yet somehow has managed to be less so a month and a half later (I blame Aeon!) I will agree that newbs can be good at PvP. You don't even need EWAR bots. Light bots fitted for tackle / scouting, as well as assaults fit for DPS, can actually put out pretty impressive results even on those of us with little NIC and even less EP.

And while Syndic may be an unmitigated *** almost everywhere else, at least he knows how to fit bots.

Biggest thing newbies interested in PvP need to focus on is getting into PvP, though. Everything else comes as you start doing that.

I like to go out every so often with some corpies and trollolol around on beta and see how fast it takes for us to get blobbed. You get bonus points if they drop heavy mechs on your assault gang.

Confirming that the food is plentiful, resources exploitable, and natives mostly harmless.

The problem with the Golden Triangle is that, for the effort and risk you put in (Read as: Watching a movie, forum trolling, ect while alt-tabbing to maneuver on occasion, and as for the risk... just lol) you get way too much out of it. And as anyone who is still stuck on alpha islands will attest, there is just a flood of sequers doing the triangle at all hours of the day, not participating in industry, combat, or anything that helps anyone else.

I think it is insane that you can pretty much passively generate income at 1-2m/h without actually playing the game. Nerf it to hell, make other missions better, anything to stop these giant trains of haulers stretching into the sunset. Hell, even something simple like moving combat mission spawns closer to the stations you set out from could help. Or have courier missions send you to out-of-the-way outposts at random. Anything other than a boost.

Reporting in, and confirming we may or may not have accidentally stolen a few bits of EVE code we loved and hacked them in.