Eve Online faced the same problem of incentivising investment, and came up with Sovereignty mechanics to persist control of space and assets. Every version of which has been a kludge with weird, boring gameplay to attack or defend Sovereign space. CGI has not even begun to think about that issue. Until they do, they might as well call the game Crafting In Safe Space, because that's all that's going to happen.
The reason I stopped buying ships two years ago is because of my [CONCERN] that with an economy 90% driven by NPCs rather than players, the game will lack the conflict drivers it needs to become epic.
I've had similar concerns, but they haven't become too serious just yet. That's mainly because CIG hasn't jumped down that rabbit hole yet. I can only hope they conduct enough research into how other games have either succeeded or failed on this front. I'm with you. I think this is vitally important to the game's success.
The problem is finding a way to generate risk vs reward. That's further compounded by the need to prevent large groups from being able to seize control over these rewards while eliminating all the risk. I've seen that in far too many MMOs. Large zerg guilds can take advantage of risk vs reward systems and gain an unprecedented advantage through numbers. This usually allows that group to gain a financial advantage which turns into a equipment advantage. The gap created there is difficult to recover from for a game.
The reasons for players to be in every corner of the game, can't be entirely profit based though. Even with a robust economy, there is eventually a "meta" for making money. Certain routes and goods will be industry standard while others are rarely touched due to either a lack of profitability or too high of difficulty. These can be made to fluctuate and incentivize players to spread out, but inevitably there will be some areas that simply aren't populated.
That's where I think player base building can make a huge difference. Whether the bases are created for crafting, processing, shipping, or just a good location for staging profitable operations, I think base building can really spread out the population. Years down the line, you don't want players to think it's a dead game simply because everyone is crowded in the "high level" areas. You want the game universe to feel alive. You can't do that with NPCs alone. There needs to be players everywhere.
This can also generate player conflict. I would love to see base raiding in the game. Imagine spending days monitoring a weathy org's base. You spend the time to find out when the majority of their players are offline. Inevitably, there would need to be automated defenses and NPC guards, but they already have those systems in the works.
So, you catch the org with only one player online and in the base. You know from a few test runs, that it takes about 10 minutes for them to reach out in the real world with spectrum and get reinforcements to log in. So, you blast in, overwhelm the npc's and the one player, and load up all the cargo they have staged at that base. Then, you jump out of the system just as a dozen of their org mates log in. They're pissed but you got the loot.
I want to see this happen. I think it could be both fun and good for the population.
