Nope. The potential for incoming PvP no matter how remote is part of the risk calculation for any activity, even alone in a system for days on end. If you’re taking actions in response to the threat of PvP, regardless if an encounter actually occurs you are still involved in PvP. Because you’re playing a PvP game. If you could get CCP to isolate you in a private system and ensure no interlopers, and you weren’t able to buy or sell anything to or from the main market then you could consider yourself playing pure PvE.
The argument is silly anyway. But those are the facts.
Also, people keep dismissing the fact that the isk, loot, and minerals you generate out there on your own, all go into the shared economy. This is competition. You are improving your economic standing against other players while decreasing theirs by proxy of decreasing the value of all the stuff you’re generating, just by virtue of generating it. Eventually, you’re going to put this stuff on the market, and buy stuff that other players have generated/made for use yourself. Just because one is doing this unopposed doesn’t mean it’s not PVP.
At the end of the day, the game was designed as a PVP one, from the ground up. The economy revolves around ship destruction. You might think you’re doing PVE when you go mining, but your mining would be for absolutely nothing if ships weren’t being destroyed, as would your missioning and the loot and isk you generate, etc.
I saw something the other day about FOB rats attacking NPC miners, turning into a slugfest between the Amarr Navy and the FOB rats until the drifters turned up; at which point they both turned on the drifters, beat the snot out of them and then went back to shooting each other in the face.
It seemed the Amarrian forces were prepared to let their miners die rather than lose their combat ships. Perhaps this decision was made because the value of the highsec ore being gathered was not sufficient to warrant a large-scale commitment of forces.
–Gadget picks herself from the floor after laughing too hard
“It remains to be seen if NPCs will develop the ability to smack talk in local…”
Let’s hope they’re smarter than the NPCs in Elite then. I fought an NPC Anaconda this morning that was yelling “prepare for your doom!” or some such at me just as I cracked the last few percent of hull on him. They were his last words.
I don’t know what a Krull is. Sounds like some PVE nonsense. On the other hand, I get told to ‘git gud’ from people I’ve just killed quite often. Real people, in PVP. It’s hilarious. “Come to nul sec and I’ll show you how it’s done with my huge blob of people I pretend are my real friends!” I just let them vent while I loot their oft fail-fit wrecks.
