I have been playing in a mix of game modes since release and from my experience incidents of gankingsilent murderers has massively dropped off , especially since 2 . 1 . It still exists for sure but it is nowhere near as frequent in the majority of the bubble . There are hotspots which carry higher risk but the vast majority of systems have very low player traffic . I urge anyone scared of playing in Open to outfit a relatively cheap ship and just give it a go for a few days or a week . Hell , go back to a sidewinder for a bit if you ' re really worried about your ingame bank balance . Try it , see how many times you die to other CMDR ' s . If you don ' t like it then at least you can go back to GroupSolo knowing you tried it for yourself and made up your own mind .