I agree with you, and am still pushing for a Open - PVE as well
Agreed, ish, but I think the PvE should be just part of Open. if there were clear "safe zones" the game could just lose the whole Solo and Private Group thing (keep groups for matchmaking, so friends auto-join), and just have a clean Start -> menu, and goodbye to all the PP and CG hackarounds. All it needs is a green flag on the dashboard, like the Wanted status, to indicate the island you're in is "Safe" from PvP. (Combat Zones obviosuly being a PvP level where this rule would disable anyway).
The current approach of dropping people untrained and unaware in to the hot water in Open is causing a subset to just jump out and never go back. Boil 'em slowly.
The easiest way to do this is have a number of Powers that are "safe", and people can then stay, or branch out into non-power space, or go over to Power space if they feel the need to be more "interactive". PP would be effectively disabled for them, they'd need to be static in the game, or developer-controlled, but it's a way of demarking the safe zones without having a cheesy "safe zone", just a "Safe Power" where the laws are more critical of CMDR - CMDR (much larger fines, much larger police reaction, interdictors that won't work on other CMDRs etc.. weapons fire doesn't do hull damage to a CMDR in the safe zone).
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