Alright, I'll try to address all the key points carefully, making sure not to offend anyone, as people in this community tend to be very sensitive.
First, what Elite Dangerous are you playing? I see people constantly complaining about gankers. In my nearly 10 years and over 9,000 hours playing this game, I think I've had a maximum of five encounters with gankers, and usually in community event areas or engineer systems. Normally, you don’t run into anyone in the galaxy. It seems like an exaggeration and a cowardly excuse to use that as a reason to play in solo mode.
Second, there are many ways to avoid an encounter, whether with a ganker, another commander (PvP), or even an NPC. That depends on the piloting skills and abilities you've developed. Let me highlight just a few:
- Avoiding or winning interdictions.
- If you find another commander in a system with suspicious activity (hardpoints deployed), if you have doubts, jump to another system.
- (Same as the previous point, but instead of jumping to another system, drop out of supercruise and then jump.)
- You have an SCO frame shift drive—USE IT! Get out of any commander's reach in seconds.
- Prepare your ship for these situations with fast boot sequence and good shields.
- Use EDCM with plugins like EDR, which informs you about the commander near you—whether they’re a ganker or not.
- Put a planet or a star behind you and always watch in the opposite direction.
In short, there are many ways to avoid these encounters that people complain so much about, but most prefer to develop their skills in complaining on the forums rather than learning to play.
I’m not a PvP fan, as you all emphasize. Generally—and unfortunately—the galaxy is empty. Rarely do you run into anyone, and the PvP encounters I’ve had in my life can be counted on one hand.
I've met commanders who respectfully invite me to PvP (admirable). You decide whether to participate or not. I’ve also met commanders patrolling trade routes to protect brave traders in Open (admirable). Playing in Open creates the need for roles that give meaning to the game.
One of you mentioned that I can't expect others to play or participate in my game, meaning in Open. But that’s ironic and even a bit illogical. If Frontier creates game mechanics that are so opposed (Open/Solo), where both sides have different expectations of their experience, there will always be one side that ends up disappointed. In this case, it’s the Open players.
To put it another way, if you provoke a war in my system but don’t come to fight it in Open because you don’t want to, don’t like it, or whatever, aren’t you forcing me to play your game? That game where you’d rather not show your face and hide while carrying out your actions?
From experience, commanders who play in Open (for the most part) don’t come to complain in the forums, and that’s something Frontier hasn’t understood. I’ve seen large, committed player factions become so disappointed with this mechanic that they never played again, and that’s a shame. Eventually, many factions disappear like this. And I think that, because of decisions like these from Frontier, this great game—with so much development and mechanics—doesn’t surpass an average of 10,000 players on Steam, all because they listen to the "Elite V" forum commanders instead of the commanders in the galaxy.
That said, fly safe (Open players). Solo players, be careful and don’t run out of fuel. o7
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