I can completely understand not always wanting to play a competitive game. In fact, I don’t always like playing Eve myself. Sometimes, I want something cooperative and/or more casual. But Eve is what I go to when I want a brutal, PvP-centric game. And, I’d prefer it stay that way, rather than see it try to poorly imitate what other games already do better (because they were designed from the ground up to do those things).
All of that being said, I am not opposed to people care bearing it up. I think that straight PvE’ers are an important part of the player ecosystem. They make significant contributions to the player driven economy, provide content for hunters, and contribute to the social critical mass. So, I am not one of those guys that hates care bears. However, I do believe that they should either learn how to become hard targets and practice proper risk management strategies, or go find something more their speed. Once again, I’d prefer it if Eve concentrated on delivering the type of experience that it is good at delivering, rather than try to poorly imitate what other games already do better.
Anyway, I’m not opposed to more PvE opportunities, as long as they have balanced risk to reward ratios. But it really sounds like you might be more interested in a 4x space game like. Master of Orion 2, Sins of a Solar Empire, or Galatic Civilizations III. Personally, I’m kind of interested in Starborne, but Eve already eats up most of my free time.
Anyway, “PvP avoidance” is a real skill that you can learn. The details will vary depending on what region of space you live in, but, for good or ill, it’s admittedly rather easy to avoid PvP in this PvP-centric game. In highsec, for example, you can avoid a lot of trouble by simply keeping your safety set to green and not anchoring any structures (which opens you up to war decs). So, your only threat after that is suicide ganks. But even then, you can reduce your chances of being ganked to damn near zero if you know what you’re doing. For example, I’ve done a metric butt-ton of PvE over the past 6 years, yet the last time I was ganked I was only about a month old. If you want to learn more, check out the section called, “How not to be Ganker bait” from the linked post.