My personal experience with PVP:
Joined a big alliance and participated as line member in big fleets. Got bored to death and quit eve.
Came back a year later and attempted solo and small gang PVP with friends in cheap ships, got after some learning occasionally a kill, with some luck two or three more before being nuked by the same players who came back in 10x the initial numbers. Got frustrated and quit again.
After some years I eventually got interested again in eve and wanted to try the exploration stuff, ended up loving it. Especially blowing up other explores turned out to be fun.
Got more and more confident in my piloting skills, started to experiment with new off meta fits and starting to bling out my ships, which allowed me to increase my engagement profile.
Flying now a 1+bil Astero with a 1+bil pod and have the best time I ever had in eve, because I started to engage EVERYTHING even if I cant always kill it but they typically can't kill me either.
I absolutely look forward to the new possibilities and the insane fits we will be able to experiment with. And it will be a huge improvement for other players that like me enjoy risking something if it allows us to not only to survive but thrive in this environment.