Never underestimate a large group of determined and bloody minded players. My previous reference to Goonswarm was deliberate
Again, I'm not saying any of this will happen, all I'm saying is if unexpected and damaging situations do arise out of abuse, then changes will be made. We'd all want that.
Granted, this is always going to be a concern, even for me, who has little intention (at least at first) of playing multiplayer at all.
One thing I also forgot to mention: The cartographical landscape of the Frontier universe is such that there can never be one star system that serves as a stopping-off point for access between inhabited worlds and uninhabited ones, or civilised and frontier worlds. There is always going to be a degree of choice on the edge of all those possibilities, and while you might be able to have a determined pirate griefer group blockade one space station, it's less likely they'll be able to do it to multiple stations in one system, to say nothing about attempting to do it across multiple stations across multiple star systems that all serve as refuelling points from one side to the other.
For example: Just taking a look at the Frontier First Encounters galaxy, I want to travel from Sol to Alioth in my Saker III Fighter. There is no one route to do so. I can jump via Tau Ceti through Eta Cassiopeia (the federal naval base at the time) and eventually to Alioth itself, or I can jump via Van Maanens, through Gateway, Soholia, and eventually to Alioth. Even in the Alioth system, there were a multitude of planets, each with many surface starports, as well as multiple orbital stations. Earth had three orbiting cities, the moon had another one, all in close proximity to each other, so there were options even then.
Even accounting for the fact that on initial release, you won't have the ability to land planetside, you'll still have a number of stations in any given system (with some exceptions such as Lave and so on).
Not to mention that ships are much harder to kill in Elite Dangerous. I remember just looking at a 1MW beam laser in an Eagle Long Range Fighter used to result in my being destroyed. It's not like that in the Alpha of E: D this time around. Sure you can be killed pretty quickly if you're unfortunate, or just plain bad at combat, but you can't be one-shot killed like you could in Frontier.
I guess the summary here is: It's going to be notoriously difficult to choke-point any route in Elite: Dangerous.
The problem is that people continue to compare ED play to every other game they have played. And they base the likely-hood of being 'griefed' on those games.
Here are some things that make 'griefing' as in other games much less fun for the 'griefer':
- There are police in more civilized systems who will stomp you into the dirt for attacking another player OR NPC
- Everytime you attack a player or NPC you get a bounty placed on your head-- NPCs and players will be hunting you, now
- If they get the DEATH penalty right, even a moron will think very carefully before firing on anything
- This IS NOT any MMO or other MP game you've played before..It just doesn't work the way they do-- at all
I think that's it, really. NPC's in the original games weren't exactly sophisticated, but they weren't exactly easy to beat either. MMO's tend to have AI based enemies as cannon fodder... A means to allow players to "farm" to gain levels. Elite has always been about challenge, and having meat for the grinder defeats this purpose. There was never an element of farming in these games.
I never liked coming across pirates in Frontier or FFE, especially in the early part of the game when I had a weak-as-tinfoil ship like an Eagle, and they were a drag even when fighting in an Imperial Courier or an Asp Explorer equipped with shield generators, but they're part of the game, and are by no means "farm material".
