spend a couple hours hunting in the rural lowsec landscape
So they don't have a
single hunting park under
any of those huge Gallente station domes? In a cluster this big, if you can think of it, it's probably out there. Like Rule #34.
stay stationside like the cool pilots
Not that I don't appreciate Seriphyn's original point (that there is good RP to be had planetside), but Casiella kind of hit on something that I think we're overlooking. Space stations are truly
enormous city-like structures and there are thousands of them. When you're a capsuleer who can zip back and forth between stations in seconds and across constellations and regions in minutes and you have access to all the best perks and services, why take the time to enter deep gravity wells? Everything you could want is available to you in space.
That being said, getting in and out of a planetary gravity well takes more power than just docking and undocking from a space station. Still, it seems the heavy lift capabilities in use at our (top notch) PI spaceports are such that launch and landing can nevertheless be done rather quickly and in rapid succession with industrial goods. High acceleration/deceleration limits for freight transport makes that possible.
Passengers can't tolerate those forces quite as well, I'm sure, but a 30 minute "slow" descent from station to surface seems within reason for civilian traffic (and for RP). Say... 5-10 minutes acceleration, some unpowered descent, and then a 5-10 minute braking burn, flaring just before touchdown? Military shuttles could probably do it faster, but passengers will be less comfortable. Who knows how the Sansha dropships do it. Magic wormhole tech maybe.