Self Defense Still Not Allowed in PVE...

I have 540 hours of mostly Carebear lobbies. Yesterday, I started noticing matchmaking taking over a minute and had to defend myself in Stella from 2 different people. Tonight I log in and am immediately attacked by some Indian speaking guy with a free loadout. I take him out and knock him while he taunts me. I defended myself multiple times over the next few games and finally got killed by a guy who apologized when I told him it wasn't cool. lol He got my Snaphook, Anvil Splitter, and 9 Bastion cores.

I just ran into another guy, and he saved me after I went down. He said he had been thrown into PVP too and was trying to heal people to get back to PVE. I am wondering, too, if maybe there just aren't that many people on, or something. I am running into a lot more people with foreign accents.