Is it this simple? When I started with ED a lot of people said, that the ED playerbase is very friendly, grown up and helpful.
Yeah... When thinking about it, that is still true for a great majority of the players. Perhaps you are right. I should not judge the overall gameplay experience by some encounters that happens indeed far more less then the pleasent ones.
I just think it's a waste of time. Like you say ultimately you'll never know and if you do know then the information is useful.
It's more important to focus on yourself and your attitude towards it.
That's not to say that this situation oughtn't and will never be improved but that is where we are right now.
Using the logic from FDEV (and not sure where this was first posted) if they only focus on gameplay that people actually use - then ALL PvP is well down the list.
They could "easily" fix long range ganking at Deciat - either by extending that stations range, jumping in a capital ship and spawning more and harder NPCs to keep the peace but they choose not to.
There's no evidence of a significant flight of CMDRs to PG or Solo based upon the rare PvP, certainly not enough to bother FDEV who would presumably take steps to rectify it if they even saw that as a problem.
...flying around unpledged would very likely reduce those risks.
