They would if they got good. Regardless, optional PVP is fine, there are game modes for it. That those game modes can still somehow be PVP is ridiculous. The idea that the bears can completely avoid gameplay they dislike and get equal rewards to everyone else, while the open players can't avoid the gameplay they dislike and get equal rewards to the bears is ridiculous. As it stands, bears can invade a PVP faction's BGS and force PVPers to waste 4 nights of quality gameplay to putter around with NPCs. That is the status quo. There is no counter benefit for the PVPers, nothing they can force the bears to do. Furthermore, all those players who are hiding in private group get a buff to all other BGS activities because they make no concessions to:
-learning to build a ship
-learning evasion in supercruise and normal space
-grinding for a build
-building for survival
-being interrupted in delivering gameplay tokens by hostile players
All of this leads to a clear and unfair advantage for the carebears hiding away from the full game.
Getting good at an optional play-style is not a requirement in this game. The so-called "bears" paid for the game as those who prefer PvP did - no-one bought the right to demand that game features be retrospectively locked behind an optional play-style.
When players buy a game with optional PvP and expect the game to be redesigned around them to force others to engage in that optional play-style it's perhaps unsurprising that they will end up disappointed.
If players can't accept that no-one needs to play with them then it may be that this is not the game for them.
That's nice. If your assumption is correct (it's more likely that they simply failed to think through these aspects of game design, since BGS was not "intended" to be manipulated), their intention was incorrect. It can be fixed.
It's not an assumption - it's based on Frontier's design - nothing is restricted to Open in this game, therefore engaging in any game feature does not require direct player interaction.
This is an ignorant statement. There are rock/paper/scissors builds, but it would be foolish to go into an open PVP engagement with hard counter builds, especially over a prolonged conflict, when your opponent can simply switch to a more versatile build or a hard counter to your hard counter. All counter builds are very weak to something.
A counter with weakness is an RPS build.
It's optional to play the full game, yes. There are restricted modes. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, there's no sensible reason for those modes to have impact upon the full game.
No reason for those seeking for force players into PvP, maybe - however Frontier sold the game to every single player based on the mode-shared galaxy. That some bought it and want it changed to suit their preference is obvious - and has been for a long time now. The thing is, we don't all want the same changes - so expecting things to change may, in the event that changes are made, result in things getting "worse" rather than "better" depending on ones perspective.
Why would anyone take non-combat builds into a conflict zone? Maybe one time to see what happens, but are Elite players as stupid as you're accusing them of being? I can understand a new player needing help escaping ganks. It took two hours of theory and practice to make one of my squadron's noobs unkillable for a G5 FDL in his unengineered material gathering DBX, but an entire faction of players experienced enough to expand their influence and start a war with a neighboring faction can't be held to the same standard.
I was referring to the general case, not the specific CZ scenario.
This "playing as intended" schtick is a crutch. The game as intended did not include engineering. We play the game as it is, and we lobby for the game to be improved as it should be.
PvP only exists because players can choose to shoot at anything they instance with. At the same time, players can choose who they won't be instanced with - through the modes or with the block feature.