To play devil's advocate;
I think you and other people might have different definitions of PvP. To me, PvP is consensual. Something I decide to take part in and is not forced upon me by a random Beluga suddenly broadsiding me.
Toggle my PvP tag on, join a battleground, that sort of thing.
Then there's ganking, in open PvP rulesets, where you just sit ontop of somebody's corpse and kill them indefinitely. Generally frowned upon in most communities. Why shouldn't it be frowned upon here? It should be. That's the end of that discussion afaic.
Then there's piracy, that's a PvP activity, that nobody seems to bother with because for one, whenever I'm interdicted by another player, I immediatley high wake out. Which makes pirates give up trying and turn to simple murder.
It's a catch 22.
Nobody is talking about actual solutions to this problem. Because it is a problem. You can't even talk about it without the discussion turning toxic. The 'carebear' side is eating the 'git gud forum dad' side and vica versa.
Furthermore, tinfoil hat on, the toxicity between the two vocal majorities on the topic is beneficial for the developers, because they don't need to actually do something about it. They contribute some half- forum post to the discussion and that's done with.
I'm not saying that's what they're doing. Because they're Frontier and not EA, but it does make you wonder sometimes.
Tinfoil hat off.
I liked your devil's advocacy, o7
Personally I behave as you would wish but I don't think that means everyone else has to join me.
What I mean is: I started attacking other players in March 2015. However, every single other player I've attacked was either Wanted or a Powerplay enemy (outside of the strict exception of player group warfare, when I used to be in AA). In other words, I've never attacked a random. I don't even kill players in CZ's unless its consistent with mah Federal RP (i.e. they are fighting for non-Fed v Fed).
I'm an outlier, I guess. There aren't many of us left, who combine RP with PvP. And I have killed a lot of players, including quite weak ones (OOC I sometimes turn a blind eye to e.g. low rank Powerplay enemy Cmdrs, or those probably carrying explo data, but not always). So basically you could say that I am playing this game as aggressively as you can whilst still consistent with Sandro/Braben's vision of a Wanted or Powerplay tag being the attack trigger.
But ... I don't think everyone has to play the way I do. I have no problem with 'vegan Open'. Some guys don't want to attack anyone, ever. Also I have no problem with piracy, or 'kill em all'. About the latter murder-hobo-ing in particular, that is what the in-game crime system is for. 3.0 of course buffs that. We shall see by how much.
But, I repeat, one thing that basically all present or former members of PvP groups agree upon is that in-game is in-game. The deal is between Customer and Developer, not Customer and Customer.
So basically, don't hack or log and you're golden. This is why whatever else we might shout at each other, you won't see AA and SDC or whoever shouting at each other on here about whether SDC blew up an explorer or something. That's just in-game, and comes back to in-game rules and in-game tools.
Am I saying there's no room for personal ethics (RP or otherwise) in video gaming? No. You can see that I apply them personally. But personally = 'personally'. I don't demand them of others.
Or put another way...
To me, PvP is consensual.
No, in Elite Dangerous it isn't this is the mistake people are making time and time again. To you it might be, to Elite Dangerous it completely and utterly is not.
... the more succinct version ^^
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