Any PvP system that arises out of in world activity will naturally lend itself to an imbalance, unless the players are stupid, or we come up with crazy mechanics. For example, if you sail into a PvP zone by yourself, and are attacked by two opponents, should you automatically spawn up an AI to help out? What if they're in better ships than you? What if they're fewer in number, but higher in level? Etc., etc.
Part of the decision that you're making when you go in is whether you think you're good enough to handle PvP solo. That will require you to be very smart in how you set up the battles, when you run, and so on. And undoubtedly, from time to time, you'll be sunk.
When we say you can solo PvP, we don't mean that you're guaranteed equal odds. People often mistake our talk about player skill to somehow mean that we guarantee that no matter what the odds, a single player can win. Of course this isn't true, and it would be dramatically unsatisfying if it were. It is easier to PvP in a group than it is solo. That doesn't mean that you can't solo in PvP, and in point of fact, some people have. Of course, it would be easier to solo in PvP if we had more PvP zones, but that's something we're working on.
What you guys want is the player skirmish system, which allows you to set up the combat scenario you want against other humans, and takes you directly into the combat with that structure. It lets you set up a wide variety of challenges, level restrict it, player number restrict it, etc., so that you can set up the exact kind of combat that you want.
As always, these are two different styles of PvP. The former has a lot of risk, uncertainty, and excitement, both in the fight and before the fight. The latter really focuses on the fight, and jettisons the uncertainty and the pre-battle maneuvering. I like both kinds of PvP, so we'd like to provide both to you. But I'm just as dedicated to the ad hoc PvP challenges as the structured skirmish challenges.