No advantage. Some people simply consider it fun to encounter an (extremely rare) player pirate, and are willing to put up with the annoying ganks to do so. If it's not your cup of tea, simply trade in a mode that suits your preferences. That is, after all, why we have different modes.
The whole "being attacked in Open and then complaining about it" thing is because:
- Frontier made Open the default mode choice
- Frontier doesn't warn people that Open includes PvP
- Frontier generates missions based on server the server you logged into, as opposed to having them persist with your character, so mode switching is a thing. After board flipping a few dozen times, some people forget what mode they're in, until they suddenly see an open rectangle.
When you add in the fact that some players:
- Want people to prove them content, but are unwilling to return the favor
- Are unwilling to attack players who enjoy direct PvP and are equipped for it, because they'll get slaughtered
- Are unable to kill players who enjoy being opposed, and are equipped to survive an attack
You get the current situation in Open: a small number of players, who can't cut it in
actual PvP, spend their time searching for soft targets who unknowingly stumble into Open, and then make the experience so unpleasant that many players don't bother playing in Open. Rather than
fun PvP against a skilled opponents, they'd rather GSP (ganks single players)
With most of the player base having fun in Solo and Private Groups, and most players in Open not being easy to kill, these GSPies are finding it hard to have fun. Lacking easy prey, they then have the nerve to complain about how nobody wants to "play" with them, and want Frontier to force more players into Open.
I've been playing online games, often with Open PvP, for over 20 years now. Considering the damage GSPies have done in the past, I find the salt generated by the GSPie community over Frontier's brilliant tri-mode system (patent pending) to particularly delicious.
