Good call, probably one of the better cases around.
For the unfamiliar, while the DS series comes with an offline option that prevents PvP invasions, it also prevents you from summoning your friends to play in co-op. So the co-op PvE comes at the price of unwanted PvP being a possibility. In fact, the way it works in DS3, co-op is even a magnet for PvP as invaders are sent in priority into worlds with multiple players. This also has an effect on the invading PvP players that complain about always being matched against 2 to 4 players. Add to that the fact that there's nothing preventing the gift of endgame gear to low level players or preventing a low level player to summon his high-level friends in co-op and the entire matchmaking is an utterly broken savage mess that causes no amount of rage. Another classic is the "gank squads" where 4 full-pvp built players group up together in co-op in order to gang up on the inevitable invaders that will be matched alone against them (additional invaders would also be matched over time, but the first one would need to survive long enough to enjoy the help). A reverse situation is with a guy summoning 3 friends as hostiles (there's a sign you can leave to be summoned as a hostile party, which makes for convenient dueling), while wearing an item that summons other players as "blue" helpers automatically. The second the Blue appears, he gets ganked by the hostiles without any help from the complicit host.
While it can be hilarious, the forced PvP if you want to PvE with your friends, the broken level/gear matching and the easily exploitable ganking mechanics make for a lot of "debate".
Dark Souls is definitely an interesting compare/contrast case.
IMHO the gear disparity in DS, even at its twinkiest, is still much easier to overcome than gear disparity in Elite. Dark Souls actually makes some effort to bring balance to "PvP player" vs "PvE player" dynamics. It has a significant head start in that everyone is out for combat anyway, so you don't need to account for e.g. traders and explorers. It also has a pretty hard cap on how much a random invader can set you back. Nobody's losing weeks or months of their time because they got invaded. The matchmaking in DS is imperfect, but it's significantly better than nothing at all when it comes to making those interactions consistently fun.
I would like to see "random" PvP encounters in Elite play out more like they do in Dark Souls. Yes, there are situations where people are ganking or min-maxing, but for the most part it's either fair or close enough that with skill and luck you can overcome the odds. I recently played all the way through Dark Souls 3 and 95% of the time, random invasions felt perfectly fair. I lost most of them of course, especially early on, but I always felt like that was chiefly due to my own lack of skill rather than an insurmountable equipment advantage. And it never resulted in progress being significantly set back.
The other really important thing that's different between a Dark Souls invasion and an Elite murderhobo interdiction is that no matter what your equipment, in DS you've
always got
a lot of options and
time to exercise them. You can stand and fight, or retreat to the bonfire to minimize the pain of your inevitable defeat, or quickly summon allies by sign or covenant, or quietly hide, or sprint for the boss fog wall, or use a seed to turn the NPCs against the invader, etc.
In Elite, on the other hand, unless you also have a "PvP-worthy" build, your only realistic course of action when pursued by a murderhobo is to immediately run. There's no time to "feel out" an opponent to see if you can fight them, or to keep them busy while you wait for help to arrive. It's not particularly fun once you've escaped a few times and the thrill of being hunted wears off.
