The only "dedicated PVE environment" is Solo. All other modes (Open and PG) have the potential to encounter other players who may attack you as well as NPCs.
No, not necessarily for combat, but for escape/evasion. Also preferably with sufficient piloting skills and situational awareness to respond to an attack.
No, being completely unprepared to deal with the potential for PVP combat and relying entirely on the PG's arbitrary "rules" in a game that has widespread griefing and trolling behavior was their own fault. That doesn't condone the behavior but it does mean that the consequences were, to some extent, foreseeable and could have been mitigated if the group members were properly screened and if there were systematic plans for mutual defence/escape protocols.
Seriously, have you played the game since launch? Griefing and trolling in Elite are basically an art form for certain players. I play exclusively in Open (never entered Solo or PG) and fully expect that someone might be trying to grief or troll me at any time in Open. I have always assumed this for exploration as well. When I went to SagA after 2.0 launched but before 2.1 (i.e., no Engineering) I flew a fully-armed Asp with a 30 ly jump range. I had read reports of a player in a Corvette sitting at SagA who was attacking players. As soon as I made the final jump to SagA I immediately deployed hardpoints and began evasive maneuvers, and was prepared to jump to a neighboring system if anything showed up on sensors. Fortunately I didn't encounter anyone with any hostile intent but I was prepared for it. That is how you need to approach the game. Even in Solo there have been bugs involving NPCs spawning thousands of ly from the bubble so you can't expect to fly around as an explorer in a defenceless ship without consequences. I would not somehow expect exploration to be a risk-free endeavour simply because a PG has a rule stating "no PVP". I mean that's well past being naïve, it's basically not understanding how Elite has worked since basically the beginning. I'm sorry but anyone who thought that they would be "safe" from PVP in a PG quite simply does not understand how the game works.
You're avoiding the main point that a person who joins a PG - which they *know* to be "by joining this group there is no PvP combat sanctioned or tolerated" - with the express intent of performing PvP combat on the illest of equipped ships - those players are "agreeing to the PG rules" by joining the PG with the express intent of "deliberately breaking the PG rules".
That's the player's predetermined mindset and as such demonstrates that the player is not trustworthy within the context of this game.
That's the single point of this thread. Not the overall person's character. And not the way the "game" allows PvP in a PG that all players agree to a no PvP rule to join. It is about the person's choice to deliberately choose to perform PvP combat prior to joining a no-PvP *private* group.
The point is that this is a *person's* deliberate choice and cannot be explained by handwavium game character role play.
Basically, the players who do this are premeditated liars. That being the case, if anyone wants to pursue this gameplay,, then of course they *can", but in doing so they must own the fact that they are liars instead of making up some baloney story of "shared galaxy", or "game character roleplay as a reaver" or other transparent nonsense.
If you lie about your intentions, own that as a person.
If you don't want to be that liar, then don't perform acts that define oneself as a liar.
Simples.
Mark H
