Some of the responders in the hope there are PVE servers thread, seem to be completely misunderstanding what a lot of PVE players actually want (and what they thought they were going to get when they pledged many years ago now). And honestly recently it seems that CIG for some time now also don't get what PvE players want. You see lots of comments like, "just stay in the safe systems/zones.." or.. "no because we don't want this game to become truck simulator and have no danger..." or the dumbest one of all, "just hire a PVP player in game to escort you" Given how much back and forth on this subject there has been I can only assume now that a whole bunch of the, "NO IT MUST BE PVA, FOR ALL, ALL THE TIME!" crowd are wilfully not getting the point here. PVE players want there to be risk, want there to be challenge, but want the risk to be somewhat predictable, something you can gauge vs your personal power and capability level. That becomes virtually impossible to predict if you are trying to weigh up the risk of a specific mission, or venture (whether mission generated or not) when you have to take into account random player encounters. PVE wants game immersion, they are looking for a fun few hours of escapism being in another universe, the power fantasy. With difficulty spikes, challenges etc. But with death of a spaceman being a real thing and it isn't as if you can just reload the last save point because there are real consequences, yes, a lot of players want to take an educated risk when they play and not just throw dice to see what kind PvP muppet is going to try and gank them today. PVE players want to do dangerous missions, the want to go into dangerous space, they want to engage in piracy & smuggling & bounty hunting and, mining and cargo hauling etc. No, they do not want to just stay in the defined UEE play-pen where you can't even do half the game loops. They pledged because they were sold on the idea of the next Freelancer, the next Privateer, only scaled up. The claim has always been made that SC isn't pay to win, because you are not competing with other plays to "win" the game, I strongly agree. that is exactly what this is all about. A lot of us may want to progress in the game, we may want to win plenty of encounters, upgrade ships, buy new and multiple ships. But that doesn't have to be by killing other players. Enjoy the game because it is a GAME whether you are a new player or experienced. Somewhere along the line a large part of this community seems to want to turn SC into an e-sport where winning vs others is the ONLY goal. Even the PvE they do is merely to power up for this goal. And over time it seems CIG have spent more and more time supporting that point of view and are now biased towards it. I just want the game I originally pledged for to be fun. People can have their PVA/PVP shards, sure why not? I am not saying they can't. But why are they telling me I can't have the game I want and a shard to service it? And NO, balance is NOT the reason, CIG absolutely can balance the game for PvE, there are just some people in this community that are so jealous of CIG putting any resources into any aspect of this project that doesn't only serve just what they want. Which by the way explains a lot of the completely un-founded SQ42 hate. You all talk a good fight about PVA and SC is for all, only not when any of the rest of "all" want something you don't see directly services your need to turn the game into an e-sport. SC is a massive community, there are more than enough players to populate even the best dynamic server meshing shard out there, multiple times over. You are never going to get a consensus across such a large and disparate community, so stop trying to compromise everything with a one size fits all approach and instead give the various factions the experiences they want.