As someone who wants to be in Sov Null space, I was pretty happy to take a break to Pochven and other things because there was a wide range of mechanics that, when combined, made nullsec largely unviable for a group of the size I play in (small-to-mid scale, 20-50ish character fleets for typical activities). With the proposed focus on Nullsec, I figured I'd revisit the rough list of things that were the primary pain points when I last left, and see how they're going.

\ 1. HAC/Muninn Meta: Mostly Fixed

Muninns were a major issue because they provided a simple N 1 answer to functionally any problem because they were faster than any possible kiters, had raw alpha to deal with heavy tanked ships, had enough tank to trade reasonably well, and were cheap as chips. With Muninns removed, there aren't really any HACs that fit the same role, meaning if blocs choose to blob in a HAC or BC doctrine, there's usually some form of counter you can utilize to beat N 1.

\2. Heavy Asset Strength: Better

The other component of doctrinal issues was the relative weakness of being the local group that commits heavier assets to fights. Battleships have gotten a lot of improvements between more buffer, SRS, Surgical Strike removal, and other adjustments. Pirate BS are expensive as fuck, but that's how it should be given their relative strength, and there's no truly dominant ship like swiss army machs or similar.

\3. Power Projection- Somehow even worse?

Whilst HAC nerfs meant the better doctrines did tend to be slower, which helps a little, the giant elephant of Ansiblex Jump Gates looms over most small/mid scale activity. The distance required from a NS bloc staging to places 3, 4 regions away in actual time is just too low to properly force the people living on the edges of empire to defend themselves rather than rely on daddy Horde/Goon/Frt to prevent contestation of major timers. If you want organic smaller/middle scale NS groups, you need this fixed.

Zarzakh has made things significantly worse by allowing the movement of heavier assets across great distances- we're seeing not just blocs moving full battleship fleets from north to south, but the largest entities in lowsec also reaching out into areas they should have no business projecting strength, as well as seeing blocs find it trivial to intrude on lowsec fights in larger ships. There's no real reason groups unaffiliated with the ZZ controllers should be able to do this, and it's actively making space a lot smaller than it should be.

\4. Income- Honestly, it's fine I guess

The DBS floor being instituted at 100% means subcap ratting is pretty much completely back for anyone who wants to do it and is even half-competent at defending an ESS. Mining is a bit unfortunate where moons that used to be pretty valuable in the mid-range (R32 and R16 in particular) are in the dumpster because of the glut of moon goo that was dumped by doubling all moon ores with the waste mechanic, but hopefully prices eventually climb back up. A0 systems are highly valuable as well, which is a nice thing to fight over. CRAB beacons are pretty irrelevant since small groups don't have umbrellas.

\5. Warfare mechanics on Citadels/Sov: Generally fine, minor issues

For smaller sized groups the real issue entosis has (when fights are massive, full of TIDI, and ADM6 on top) is completely irrelevant. The only (somewhat minor) annoyance is that because the way vulnerability windows are calculated, even a very low ADM rapidly restricts a timer to a single timezone, even in a mostly unused system with an ADM in the 2-3.5 range. This could be fixed by changing it from division (18 hour window divided by ADM) to subtraction (each ADM point roughly subtracts 2.5 hours, for example), reducing the value of early ADM gains and increasing the value of a 5.0 or 6.0 ADM.

Citadel fights are fine- defenders get an advantage but it's not crazy.

TL:DR

A lot of smaller things have been fixed, but the elephant issue still power projection. Once that's properly fixed, I think you'll see a lot of smaller and mid scale players and groups (myself included!) return to Sov NS.