Hi, thanks for posting some positive impressions. As for those bad, related to other players forcing PvP on you. I had the same reaction, initially. Then I’ve changed my attitude and put it up on “it’s head”. Briefly speaking - I started treating players hunting other players for sport, as part of E in PvE 
specifically, something you tend to avoid or hide from.
I’ve just tried to tag along and complete those assignments to advance my Event Progress Bar. And it was extremely frustrating to me to die midway in the deployment from other players. NPCs are very easy to take, other players not so, at least to me.
And yesterday, it was most satisfying experience. I first got shot by a duo and later, in the same deployment, seeing them arrive to my extraction beacon location, when it’s 2 seconds until the end and my assignment being complete. I even managed to fire few “kiss my as*” shots at one of them, then poof and I was safe. It really felt good 
What we have now is still just a fuzzy glimpse of what this game could become. It really has great potential in it imho. And having “safer zones” (Golden Rule #2 applies here ofc) is on the backlog.
Though they mostly want to achieve it by giving advanced players more incentive to deploy elsewhere than beginners do. It obviously couldn’t be done in the Operation Nemesis setting. With literary 3 basic maps, having a daylight and bad weather variants. Still felt good imho. Especially the Maelstrom with heavy rain and a thunderstorm.
The Fanfest presentation hinted at developing a special map assembly tool and assets library that will let them build unique maps very fast for more planets. So there will be lot’s of places to go. Maybe even with some player density indicator, to help judge your chances of success.
If you would like to have a bigger influence on the development, I recommend joining “closed playtest” group. We participate in regular playtests, roughly, every month and we are at a very close distance with CCP London devs. Primarily via official EVE Vanguard discord (unfortunately?). And they are listening to our suggestions.
Here is the official EVE Vanguard FAQ page with Discord invite link
https://evevanguard.com/frequently-asked-questions
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