This right here is an attempt to deny the agency of others being able to engage the sandbox as they wish – which firmly sites in the alone mentality. There are a plethora of other games that fit that mentality, but Eve is about player agency and being able to use in-game mechanics to express one’s will.
This perception does not match my experience. There are groups out there in various portions of space (high, low, and null) that don’t require you to be a “hardcore player”, but are reasonable people and understand some folks aren’t as glued to Eve as others. And they are still capable of being thorny enough to generally avoid most – but never 100% – conflicts.
But it still fundamentally requires one to have the mentality of “I’m engaging with the sandbox, which necessarily means I can’t always get my way always 100% of the time, so what tradeoffs am I willing to make, and what does that say about me?”. That’s what makes Eve great.