lol, you people are over the top, I play solo/pg to avoid PvP, nothing else. Even if it were the most perfectly balanced game in the history of games, I still wouldn't play open. Why the hell don't you people get this? People simply DON'T WANT PVP. The fact that there is a zero reward, total risk system involved is just icing on the cake, one more incentive to KEEP me, and I assume many others, in solo, but it's far from the primary reason. What is the reward for killing another player? What is the reward for being killed by another player? What is the reason for killing/being killed by other players? The answers? Nothing. Nothing. None. It does indeed add a level of security to go to solo/pg, but it's not the reason why most do. Though, in my defense, it is absolutely 100% illogical to even play in Open if I am not looking for a player versus player fight.
You want NPC's to be just as "dangerous" as players? So you want to take 100% of the fun out of the game? You want T9's loaded with ~6 mill worth of cargo to be bombarded by 3 FDL's? a Corvette? A wing full of Anaconda's? You want ~30 mill re-buy + cargo Cutters to just be totally wrecked by wings of 3 or 4 NPC's, all with nearly zero chance of success for the victim just to take fun away? You want fully loaded combat Corvettes sitting in the middle of the Galaxy prepared to two shot the first Asp that comes along that spent 3 hours a day, every day for 4 months gathering exploration data? You want NPC's to sit outside of stations prepared to annihilate the first player ship to un-dock? This is what you want for the game? This is why there will remain such few players in open. It's not a safety concern, it's avoiding stupidity. #OPTIONALPVPINOPEN
And one last thing, I certainly do fear NPC's. It's a bit fearful when a wing of 3 Viper Mk III's interdict and drop in on my Asp while smuggling, followed by a couple security vessels and I just barely escape with 24% hull, or when an FDL with a wing of 2 Pythons attack me for my invisible cargo, or when that security eagle boost rams me while I'm half way out of the mail slot in my Corvette and he bounces off and dies, and the entire station and 8 other security vessels start firing. I have plenty a challenge in Solo.
Struck a nerve huh...
Well dying is currently too hard because no combat-minded skilled players will currently give a damn about hunting a player killer or killer wing for their 110k bounties while himself risking a multi-million rebuy.
If killers suddenly start floating around carrying 80 million credits bounties from whole sessions of wrecking expensive ships, perhaps this will change. We might actually see the birth of bounty-hunter groups.
No, you'll see the exact same thing that happened when player bounties did get into the millions, people killing each other to get rich quick, which is why the bounties are so low now.
Proper crime and punishment won't make a bit of difference for most, they play Solo to avoid any other players, period, there's nothing you can do to that will change that, see BlueLumen's oh so eloquent response, see the people who constantly say there needs to be a PvE only Open, you won't remove that fear. Still needs to be in place, that way it will keep the gankers down a bit in Open, not much though, like Maj said, money ain't hard to come by at all, I'm not a PvPer. I'll do it, but it's not my thing in Elite: Dangerous, I'm an explorer, my sig should make that clear enough, unlike what BlueLumen thinks, and I do play in Open except when I'm out in the Black, hi res screenshots you know. I've lost 1 ship to PvP, my Anaconda no less, cost me a few minutes of lost time..oh no! I smashed multiple Pythons and Anacondas into planets and moons jacking around, the rebuy doesn't mean a thing to me, that's an hour of trading at most.
And then there's the little fact that pirates don't need other players to do their profession, NPCs don't tend to clog, don't put up much of a fight, and you can get rich off them at no risk, just takes a little bit, but hey, no clogging at all! Griefers need other players, that's it, not pirates, please do keep that in mind. This comes from someone who started off as a pirate in this game, players and NPCs both were my targets, never had a player stick around though, they all would just vanish, and I was clear in supercruise that I was a pirate and wanted cargo, so... Made plenty off NPCs though, got some decent bounties on my head, and sat outside Gorbachev station killing all the system authority ships until there were no more, there's only a limited amount of them you know. Then I docked at Gorbachev station, repaired, rearmed, left and stopped being a pirate, that's just so jacked up it's not funny. Made credits easy, no risk all, no repercussions for being the bad guy in the heart of the Federation, yeah, no.
