Gah, to elaborate, let me repeat a post I made on another thread over the weekend, that had a lot to do with people claiming David Braben had promised some sort of PvP paradise. It covers a lot of the same ground. The post follows:
One of the most disturbing things in this thread is the people politely asking for PvP whilst saying David has promised it in various interviews and diaries.
As far as I'm aware, David has in various interviews and diaries spoken about the rarity of player combat and his keeness to make griefing (which isn't pvp but continous unwanted pvp) as little a problem as possible and pvp itself something rare, even special:
David Braben said:
One of the biggest worries with MMORPGs is gamer griefing if you allow PVP kills and the ways we can balance that. We’ve done that on several different layers. At the top level, the game rules make it harder to [be a griefer], simply because if you attack another player, you immediately become a pirate and then you get a bounty on your head, which means it’s fair game for other players to attack you. There’s already this top level of balancing, so it’s then how the game responds to that.
That only outlines his desire to keep griefing low, how about this interview with us on the forums:
Davd Braben said:
It is important that players enjoy the experience. We are writing this game for ourselves, and the fun of the game is the most important thing. Player-player encounters should be interesting, and part of this is the ability to hide - whether from other players or AIs.
Most of the ships you encounter will be AIs - and in many cases you will kill them - which is why we want the majority to be AIs. Generally speaking we expect players, even beginners, to be more of a challenge than an AI ship, and something that players will tend not to attack, but more cooperate with, and we are designing the bounty system (and others) to discourage PvP and encourage player cooperation.
Here he clearly talks about discouraging PvP and encouraging co-operation. That's not making it impossible, but definitely not a career choice in and of itself. Another example:
David Braben said:
What I want is the sort of game that you play with PVP enabled, so players can kill other players, but it happens only very rarely. I think in some ways that’s the best of both worlds because it balances having that feeling of danger and threat without the absolute of ‘players cannot kill players’.
Which sort of summarizes everything. David Braben has been clear from Day 1, in almost every interview I've seen. That he wants PvP in the game, but almost like a special event. Players of Elite Dangerous live in a world that sometimes pits them against other ships. Most of the time those ships are NPCs and sometimes they're PCs. The point here is that whatever people think, Elite Dangerous is a PvE game. Where the enviroment includes players. Sometimes they're your friends, sometime they're your enemy. But always in context, of a mission, of a bounty or as the victim of your piracy (which is encouraged as 'drop your cargo and can go' rather than 'I'm gonna kill you to take your cargo').
I hope the mechanics of Elite Dangerous live up to that. And I hope people who just want to randomly attack other players find that very very difficult to do.
I think David's vision is clear.
TLDR: David Braben has never promised a pvpers paradise.
My point is that the context that exists solely in the individual player's head should not be underestimated. It may be completely contradictory to yours.