First of all, ED is not a PvP centric game. ED is a a player co-op game with a PvP element. But that is by the by. You say that PvPers love a good scrap and then have a good laugh. You say you want to have fun scrapping. That you want to enjoy a fight. You say it can be exciting knowing that you may loose your ship. You say PvP can give you an adrenaline rush and that is why it is such a great thing. That is all fine... except. What if the player you come up against doesn't want those things? What if his/her idea of fun in the game is to trade, to explore or to mine? What if he wants to do these things co-operatively with friends? What I am saying is what if your idea of what is fun isn't their's? If you meet such a player, will you respect the way they want to enjoy the game or will you impose combat on them? If you choose the later then you ARE a griefer no matter what you say. If you choose the later you are causing them grief by preventing them from enjoying the game in the way they wish. If it is PvP that you want in ED, fine... PvP to your hweart's content with those that WANT to PvP.
i dont agree with your views on what elite is aimed at. elite was a single only player game at its roots, so it has bias to neither coop or pvp.
the rules in elite dangerous seem clear to me that pvp is quite freely implemented. i dont know what experience you have with this from other games, so i'll run some rules by you to compare things.
in eve there is a large area of space that is "safe". by safe i mean if another player attacks you they
will lose their ship for doing so. no if's, and's, but's or maybe's. the attacking player will be blown up by the cops. there is a chance you will lose your ship too depending on how secure the system is and how well defended your ship is. in elite if you shoot at another player you might get a bit of peppering on your shields but other than that you're free to stay in combat and can go and scrub your record at your leisure (i have a friend to thank for this knowledge when he flew in front of me as we took down an asp).
in eve there is also a large area of space that is dangerous, called low sec. in there if you are by a station or a jump gate (no hyperdrives, you need a large structure to get you from system to system) then the automated defences will help you. these defences are less powerful than elites station guns, but a lot more powerful than the authority ships guns. if you are at an asteroid belt then there is no help for you. chances are you will lose your ship and they will keep their. but at the same time that player becomes a wanted pirate. the penalties for being wanted in eve are much harsher than in elite. you cannot just pay off your bounty. you will have to spend a lot of time killing NPC pirate to slowly build your reputation back up. so low sec is a lot like most of elites space, only with harsher penalties for piracy
in eve there is also lawless space, called null sec. in there nothing keeps track of who shoots who. it is the wild west, players form up to create alliances and they claim space as theirs. they keep that space by fighting for it. elite has anarchy space and they are very similar, certainly at launch (eve players can now officially lay claim to space by building space stations and such, it did not have that at launch)
so all in all pvp in elite is far more open than in eve. which is why i believe it will attract more PvPers than griefers, the PvPers will see this as a good place to come for some fun. griefers will go anywhere for their kicks, even games with no PvP as there is always some way to upset other players. take for example DDO, it is impossible to hurt another player in DDO while questing. yet you can screw over 5 to 11 other players if you take a quest item that is needed for completion then go jump in a very deep pool of lava, thus rendering the quest impossible to complete.
heh, sorry for that wall of waffle, but that is key to the point i am trying to make. now let me address your point. first up i'm not actively PvPing in this game, so although you are directing those questions at me i will answer them from the viewpoint of the PvP community as i know them.
this is where we have a problem with mechanics. there is no way to enjoy coop with random players without also being at risk of PvP. in eve you can stay in safe space and avoid the vast bulk of PvP (there are exceptions, but they are not the rule). in elite the only option we have is to join a group. i've not checked out the forums yet, but i'm aware there are public groups we could join for a safe coop universe.
at the moment there is no way, mechanically, for a coop player to enjoy meeting strangers for coop (something i love in DDO). they can join a group, but those players will not be random strangers. so we're stuck with both types of players thrown into the pot together, the PvPers and the coop players.
it is not a perfect world. but the rules are quite clear, it is open pvp so we should expect as much. going solo sucks if you want coop, that is a bad option but it is there. open groups are a good idea, but i have no idea how well they are doing.
that said, my experience of open pvp so far has been a few interdiction attempts and me getting out of dodge each time. i'm sure that would be different were i flying a heavy hauler, but personally if i wasnt willing to risk it all i'd probably be tempted to drop into solo just to avoid the gut wrenching loss of a large hauler full of all my credits. i know what those losses feel like all too well.
so no, i do not agree that if a player attacks an obviously coop focused player that they are griefing. the mechanics are quite clear that it's a risk the coop player is taking. no it's not perfect, maybe we will see things change where controlled space has more defences in favour of the victim. but at the same token i'd not want that until the system can differentiate between a deliberate attack and a few stray shots. the number of times i've had to call off a bounty hunt to clear a 400 credit bounty on my head after a police viper buzzed me is getting irritating. and i'd also like an option not to raise a bounty if someone i have friended and grouped shoots me, that way we only need to worry about seriously hurting each other when we're hunting together, and not a few stray shots.
