EVE Online needs a civilization ending event - not something soft like Scarcity was - but something that will break everyone back up into tribes
Event forcing people to go tribal: Constellations/regions have gates turned off due to a massive (drifter, triglavian, rogue edencom, HOSA, collapse of the four empires, ect) attack. Through the use of ratting or mining (or some other nullsec thing) the gates between constellation/regions can be turned back online. Anoms are now the only places to rat/mine/Huff and officer rats are now able to spawn at anoms. Systems with a gate offline have local also offline, as well as cyno jammed. Systems with offline gates, to a neighboring constellation/region, now spawn whs to the neighboring systems that they were once connected too
This will break up a lot of null and can also be applied to LS and be taken over through factional warfare. The attack can also cause a collapse of the four empires, resulting in empire space with offline gates and no local, but can be reverted through ratting/mining.
Kspace is basically a bunch of constellations that're disconnected from each other, like Pochven, except they can be reconnected through player actions. Officer rats spawn can spawn at anoms also.