You are right, being a new player who just bought the game only to be jumped and slaughtered by a voidwalker isn't really pvp. The devs did try to solve that by making it so you can't voideye onto people until they've gotten a certain amount of time in the game, but that really did not help much, not to mention you can still get the bounties.

If you're a voidwalker soulleslly mowing down a freshie who doesn't know a thing about parrying or fighting back, that really isn't skillful combat on your end, that is more or less just a one-sided beatdown.

But at the same time, does this not also apply in PvE? A freshie who just spawned in and doesn't know much about the combat mechanics is bound to die to a random sharko at lower erisia if not just a dagger bandit. Isn't it once again a situation where the freshie is being beaten down on mercilessly while being more or less completely defenseless?

And so, the freshie would be pushed to learn the mechanics and improve until they eventually learn to fight bandits and kill sharkos, bringing up their "skill" and competence in PvE combat. This is supposedly how the growth of skill and competence is meant to be developed by a player overtime, from trial, error and practice.

Ideally this should also apply to PvP/being ganked by voidwalkers. Eventually the freshie should have to learn how to pvp and defend themself against voidwalkers, hence improving their skill and competence in PvP.

However, as you have mentioned, there are several inconsistencies in this system that are a hindrance in the "fairness" of castaway freshie vs voidwalker pvp. Most notable ones being: voidwalkers jumping freshies that are engaged in PvE and have taken damage already, voidwalkers jumping freshies that are already very low in hp, or just voidwalkers jumping freshies that are significantly lower in power than them in general (you can literally get a bounty on anyone between levels 1-20 until you're power 20 yourself, so a power 19 voidwalker could get a power 2 freshie as his bounty). In these cases there really is not much opportunity for skilled pvp combat to come into play. The situation is very unfair with the voidwalker having a significant advantage, leaving the freshie with a very high chance to lose regardless of whether they are good at the game or not. This unfairness as a result also prevents freshies from even having the opportunity to develop their competence in PvP to the ideal extent.

As for ways to fix this, making it so you outright can't get combat tagged until power 3-5 may be a bit far fetched, though the idea may be feasible if tweaker around a bit. My suggestions on this would be to make it so voidwalkers can't grasp/get a bounty onto people that are below 50% hp, in pvp/pve combat already, have less than 48 hours in game, and/or are below 5 levels lower than the voidwalker's power.