Dumb happened Sunday night, to the tune of about 120m ISK.
That pilot is my alt, who I just got into KarmaFleet to, among other things, fly a Noctis after my main pilot and salvage all of the dead rats. I used the in-house shipping service to get a Noctis and other things to KF’s main citadel, but for terribly dumb reasons (didn’t want to scrap the rigs, all 2m ISK worth of them…) I decided I’d fly the Prorator down myself. It can cloak, what could possibly go wrong?
The dumb does not stop there though. As I was making my way through null sec, I landed in a drag bubble that had a can right near it, breaking my cloak. There was only one enemy ship at the bubble, so I was able to get away. However now the locals knew I was around, and that should have been reason enough to log off in a safe spot until a later time. Any time, really, other than the peak of primetimes, Sunday night EST.
But no, against all reasonable judgment, I jumped into the next system anyway. On that gate there was another bubble, but again thanks to the cloak, I was able to quickly disappear and the enemy didn’t get close enough until I had warped away. The next jump was my last, as the enemy now had a whole bunch of ships ready, a whole lot of bubbles, and I was done for.
Not my finest moment. On the plus side the salvage has already added up to more than the 120m loss, and while running sites I got not one but two 10/10 escalations, so maybe sacrificing the ship on the alter of dumb wasn’t all that bad, right? Yea, lets go with that…
Hardcore Casual 
Fountain is a bit hot right now, so probably not the best route. I usually go through high sec to Zinkon, low sec to Sakht, and once you’re in 1-SMEB you can jump bridge to staging. Of course, I’m also in TNT and nobody bothers to war dec us any more, so HS travel is safe.
High sec player: 120 M is a big setback. Null sec bear: 120 M is salvage. Yup, game is indeed balanced, and this wild discrepancy in income potential is not responsible for the dropping subs…not even a little bit.
If 120m is a ‘big setback’ to anyone outside of a first month player, they suck at EVE, regardless of where they end up playing.
Edit: Got paid for those two 10/10s, they combined for about 1b ISK total value. Not too shabby I guess.
So null sec has pretty much always paid out better than high sec during the more than 10 years I’ve been playing EVE Online, yet you somehow think that the whole “risk/reward” thing is now suddenly causing subs to drop? How to you explain 2006 through 2013?
There seems to be a pretty regular correlation between “things Dinsdale doesn’t like” and “things killing EVE.”
@Dinsdale Pirannha,
It’s been awhile since I’ve played EVE, but it seems to me that the discrepancy between nullsec and high-sec rewards are the lowest they’ve ever been. Things like moongoo and nullsec t2 production have been nerfed heavily, while missions/lp stores/incursions/etc have been added to highsec. IIRC, an efficient highsec mission/incursion runner will pull in 20-40m per hour consistently with no risk. Nullsec is more profitable, sure, but not enormously so and with considerable risk and time overhead.
In other words: I find your argument a bit strange.
To add to this, if you get really good/efficient at running Burner missions, the ISK/HR is closer to 50m+, which tops even my bling-fit Rattlesnake running the hardest sites in deep null with full null upgrades.
I don’t know whether it’s still viable these days, but back when we were still in Deklein, I used a Nereus with an MTU and salvage drones in lieu of a Noctis. Costs much less and works when AFK.
The Noctis works for me because I actually clear sites faster than the MTU can tractor in wrecks a lot of times, so I need the Noctis to be quick and move to the second site, otherwise my Rattle has to wait (or do a bookmark exchange, which is also slower).
Edit: I also have a cloak on the Noctis, so it can sit near an MTU without worry.