Speaking only for myself, I find the PVP aspects of this game immensely rewarding regardless of the outcome of each encounter. Meaning: irrespective of whether I get a kill, or I myself get killed, or the target gets away. Each interaction is its own reward. The outcome is an incidental byproduct.
Open world games like Elite with the possibility of spontaneous PVP mean that you have to be on your guard constantly. You are like one of the creatures in the sea or in the wild. There are some targets you can take on and probably defeat, and there are others that will almost certainly defeat you. You are both hunter and hunted at all times, everywhere. You have to constantly be aware of, and assessing, your situation, making decisions quickly before a failure to act either deprives you of a victory or causes you to suffer a defeat.
The difference in playing with and against human players as compared to NPCs cannot be exaggerated. The NPCs in this game are virtually irrelevant once you've calibrated your gameplay around other players. I can't recall the last time I've failed an NPC interdiction - they are utterly toothless "immersion timers" that are a trivial annoyance and nothing more. I have literally sat and tanked shots from NPC police while chatting with someone in Local, my 4-pipped shields shrugging off the incoming fire like an umbrella sheds rain. Outside of ATR - which I have as yet not even experienced, as I'm not even good enough at ganking to have gotten my notoriety high enough - the NPCs are just sort of there, and are ignored unless we're doing a massacre mission. In which case they are, in fact, executed en masse in the most boring and summary manner imaginable.
There's simply no comparison between the challenge that NPCs present and the challenge that human players present. I am not a particularly talented gamer, but I love facing challenges and overcoming them. It takes me huge amounts of time and effort to "git gud," but it's what I play games for. I have yet to win a single victory in a 1v1 against an experienced PVPer. I'm at that phase where getting a few rings off their shields - or even, rarely, getting their shields knocked down - before I am killed is what has to pass for "progress towards goal."
I don't mind. Elite has a very compelling flight model, a vast open galaxy full of surprises, and a neat community of helpful and mostly wholesome players (yes, I'm in fact talking about the gankers now, among others). Defeating another player of any variety feels good. It took a lot of work - grinding for materials, unlocking engineers, learning the "lay of the land," and no small amount of "getting lucky," to even have the privilege of engaging someone via an interdiction. If I get a win out of it, yeah, it feels good. But not because of any grief I might cause the other player. That doesn't even exist in my thinking, honestly. The friend requests and various interactions I try to have with players are, I believe, evidence of same.
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