Pure conjecture. At best, this is merely anecdotal, if you personally know those people. In this case I could easily counter it with my own anecdotal evidence: I just had half a dozen friends come back/try out this game due to word-of-mouth about recent entropy-focused changes.
Factually and logically incorrect. The market only collapses if there’s a glut, and not a shortage. Why is this the case? Because unlike real life, which has limitless potential for creation and innovation, EVE’s economy functions only by effects of the broken window fallacy. The only reason that industry exists in EVE is because things that are destroyed need to be replaced, because the initial needs of seeding the market are taken care of very quickly.
A lack of nonconsensual PvP would, over time, lead to a situation where the supply of goods and resources is so high, that everything loses its value, and player economics becomes meaningless. Gaming history is rife with examples of this, including early games such as Diablo 2 and SWG. In more recent MMOs, developers have no choice but to either constantly increase the cost/decrease the yields of everything, or create a system of perpetual power creep in order to drive market demand for something. This, by the way, is one of the primary drivers of player burnout.
Meanwhile, an extreme shortage of supply still results in a functional, workable market. In fact, this is how EVE was like during its early days. You know, the time that it was actually growing the fastest? Do you want to know why it grew fast? Because player decisions and politics had much more acute consequences (losing a battleship was an event), and players couldn’t shut up about how fun the game was. That includes new players. When was the last time you heard a new player rave about how fun and exciting EVE is? I constantly teach newbies about PvP, and rarely hear more than lukewarm opinions about the game, even from players who stay for the long term.
If the carebears actually got up and left, there would be no such thing as “PvP players”; there would only be players. These players would mine, do sites, manufacture, and fight each other over economic opportunities. Like they are already doing now.
Conjecture.
Not even close.
