You couldn't just make your point without being offensive?
My combat ranking at the moment is Novice, and I don't particularly enjoy combat in general. My limited participation in PvP tournaments indicates that I'm not particularly good at that either. Combat, whether PvE or PvP, simply is an activity I find tolerable in small doses, assuming I'm in the mood to begin with.
And despite all that, I
still feel secure enough when faced by the kind of player who
preferentially attacks unarmed traders that I'll let them interdict me multiple times, just to see how long it takes before they can take a hint. I figure if they're bothering me, they're not bothering anyone else. Record was seven, and I had to send them the message, "You are aware I'm willing to do this all the way to the station, aren't you?" before they gave up.
I spent a
month doing fortification runs, in Open, when Powerplay first came out. I was interdicted
twice during that time. Both times, I escaped with minimal damage. More importantly, both encounters were enjoyable, because both players treated me like an
actual human opponent. I unpledged not because of massive human opposition, because there wasn't any Powerplay missions. I simply don't like the current options to earn merits, and I saw no point in enduring more frequent NPC interdictions if I couldn't earn merits via the mission system. But I didn't have to abandon Powerplay completely. I saw a much better, and more importantly fun, way to help my Power by manipulating the BGS to reduce fortification costs, than grinding away at ABA cargo runs.
Everything I know about how this game works, from how the matchmaker works, to how the BGS and Powerplay works, to my own experiences in
this game, combined with 20+ years of playing MMOs similar to Open mode Elite, tells me that the whole notion of
patrolling a system to stop bad actors is a
losing strategy. In online games such as ED, the advantage will
always go to the aggressor, who gets to choose when, where, and how many, while the defender has to spread themselves thin, in an effort to cover everywhere 24/7.
This is doubly true when it comes to Powerplay, which is all about moving PvE tokens. Every minute you spend patrolling a system in the vague hopes of catching somebody is a minute you're not moving said PvE tokens. Yes, you may stop someone, but the merits you may have cost someone is inconsequential compared to the merits you could've earned
your power.
All of that is why I consider this whole "Open Only" thing to be an excuse on the part of a certain type of player who
requires pure PvE players to be
their content, because they cannot handle
actual PvPers, or even players like me, who sit between the two extremes. They desperately want to pretend they are 1337 PvPers, but lack the skills to take on the real thing, so they only attack PvE players instead. They play at moral outrage, calling the mode system "an exploit," "cheap," or "unfair," but refuse to acknowledge
why this fantasy they spin about how much better Powerplay would be if only those darn PvEers would stop "hiding" in other modes won't work, given the realities of online gaming, and how matchmaking in
this game works. More importantly, refuse to acknowledge that the players who play in other modes besides
Open aren't likely to move to Open if Powerplay goes Open Only. All that will happen is that they'll quit playing Powerplay entirely, which would be the final nail in Powerplay's coffin, destroying the very thing they claim they want to save.
