I don't think there is much of a solution. The basic idea of mmorpg's that's in peoples heads is building. Build wealth, build character gear, stats etc..

In this game you do build stats but everything else can go up in smoke in seconds, so they say F this, I'm not grinding this all over again and leave. Then you have game mechanics that favor griefers, war deck's on noob corps, pvp ships in their missions baiting them, can flipping, it frustrates them to be that helpless and say F this.
Yea it's not a game for them, but that's how most people look at it. So it is a niche game by design.

...if the game would give players the tools to be truly creative - meaning if we were able to design ships, design all kinds of player stations, design station environments, design everything within the preset rules. It would mean that the whole current blueprint / industry / market system would have to be redesigned to allow more room for creativity. If you can imagine something, you should be able to build it (or at least something very close to it) in a vast expanding galaxy where you can live amongst huge alliances or as a lonely hermit in some distant forsaken system...

Why creativity you might ask? Look at the current hot games, f.ex. Minecraft has sold over 7 million copies and it has 38+ million registered users and all this in couple years and just because the game allows you to use your own imagination and creativity. There's plenty of other similar successes.

It's pretty darn addictive to create stuff from scratch, spent weeks/months to build something you imagined and then enjoy it with your friends once it's finished - Eve has these things too, but new players are pretty clueless about this stuff and I don't think there's any tutorials early in-game about how to set up POSes and stuff. Well, obviously you're not that wealthy after playing few days, but there should be something that a new player could build into space or into station or for your character.

EVE would get more subscribers, if there were more and better ways for carebears to defend against or retaliate towards griefers.

I'm not saying we carebears should be protected from griefers, or even gankers in general, but the game design strongly favours the attacker over the defender. If I want to do something other than PVP, then I have to fit my ship for that non-PVP purpose in order to do that other thing well, and that means I'm very easy to gank.

Isn't merely easy enough? Without the very part?

Also, the options to get revenge are very limited. The bounty system isn't working. With a well-defined bounty system, if I placed a bounty on Anslo's head of 200 million ISK, then what most likely would emerge would be that other players inflicted pain and hurt on Anslo that is more or less proportional to the size of the bounty, in order to earn the payout. I'd actually be nearly guaranteed that Anslo would suffer to the tnue of 200M ISK.

Instead, what happens in the current bounty system, which is by no means well designed, is that it boils down to me donating 200 million ISK to him, because he and one of his friends will scam-kill him to get the money. The bounty system doesn't even try to verify that any appreciable damage has been inflicted on Anslo, the target of my bounty. It doesn't check averaged hull values, or destroyed cargo, or lost implants in the cast of a pod kill. It simply registers that a kill has taken place, and that warrants payout of the full bounty.

I'm not satisfied with a kill having taken place.

My thirst for revenge demands that actual harm be inflicted upon the character on whom I've paid the bounty. Actual harm that at least tries to be proportional to the size of the bounty.

I don't want an EVE galaxy for fluffy hippie bunnies.

But I want a better consequence balance, and I want game mechanics that don't favour the attacker to such an extreme degree.