Just throwing an idea out, since I know a lot of us play in solo or in PVE player groups to avoid gankers.
Before I get to that, a couple of definitions:
A black hat CMDR is someone who has chosen a life of crime for in-game roleplay reasons and is doing it for personal narrative enjoyment. Playing as a pirate or a pro-thargoid cultist or whatever.
A ganker is someone who kills other CMDRs with the explicit meta-purpose of causing frustration and ruining the experience for other CMDRs.
Gankers always suck, but I get black hats. There should be a place for them and I'm sure plenty of us would be willing targets sometimes when we're in the mood for a truly dangerous experience. But there should also be a place for CMDRs who want to opt out of the CMDR level of danger while still enjoying the social experience and hostile NPCs.
With that out of the way, here's the pitch:
How would you feel about having a clearly-visible "I'm open/closed to PVP" toggle while playing in the open mode? It can change how you display on the radar to other CMDRs and warn CMDRs if you're closed to PVP when they interdict, target or fire at you.
If gankers proceed to attack a "closed" CMDR anyway, there should be severe meta-consequences, like being sent to a "ban" prison for exponentially longer periods where you have to wait out your sentence in in-game time: first 15min, then 1h, 4h, 1d and finally reported to game mods for a perma-ban review.
Additionally, "closed" victims of gankers instantly respawn with their cargo, transactions and everything back how it was before death, without a rebuy. Hostile NPCs can still kill them normally, however.
Attacking "open" CMDRs is fair and valid gameplay and black hats killing "open" CMDRs will be subject to a lower stakes in-lore bounty system similar to what exists now.
In summary: allow players to advertise what types of player interaction they enjoy, and severe consequences for other players who ignore players who want to be left alone.
So my questions are:
Would you play primarily in open if this system existed?
Would you sometimes set yourself to be "open" to PVP ?
If no to above, why not, and what would you want instead?
Personally, this would "fix" open for me. I would primarily play open and set myself as open to PVP except when I'm doing sensitive things like hauling rare artifacts, doing engineering or doing CG hauling.
