Ok so i clearly missing something here, can you give me your definition of griefing? For me after proper research on this particular word (i'm french so, maybe i miss something about this english word) but the definition is that :
"Griefing is the act of chronically causing consternation to other members of an online community, or more specifically, intentionally disrupting the immersion of another player in their gameplay."
or even
"Purposefully shooting or otherwise sabotaging your teammates in an online game."
And that's exactly what they doing no?
I fail to see how shooting you in an online game which is set in a dangerous galaxy is 'intentionally disrupting your immersion'. If anything, it should be adding to it.
This game doesn't have teams, so the second definition which would usually apply to team-based pvp games doesn't seem to apply at all.
Within the context of online gaming griefing is usually considered to include abusing other players using in-game communication such as text and voice chat, threats (either in-game and outside of a role-playing context, or real-life threats), deliberately sabotaging team play (as in the definition that you cited) and other violations which cannot be deemed to be part of the intended gameplay experience.
No matter what you might think about it (and I'm going to stress again that I am
not saying you have to like it) there is no way that a player simply deciding to attack another in this game can be considered to be outside of the intended gameplay experience.
Put simply, I know players who have been on the receiving end of genuine griefing in games, in particular people who have suffered serious racist abuse, female gamers who have had to endure the kind of sexual comments that you wouldn't make to a drunken prostitute, players who have had homophobic abuse and death threats hurled at them and other similar behaviour, including players who have had other players single them out and actively hunt them for literally months, every single time they tried to play the game. I don't happen to believe that anybody should have to endure those things when playing a computer game.
Simply having your ship blown up by a player to whom it represented no threat doesn't really compare in my opinion. As I've already said it's a move in my opinion but that is all it is.
To be honest, I've been round this track so many times on here (as have most other players) that I'm already tired of typing about it and I'm sure most people are tired of reading about it, so I'm not passing further comment.
That graphic is awesome! You really should copyright it, because I can see it popping up in quite a few threads here from now on
Thanks
It
is an original creation of mine, however I cheerfully extend the right to use it for anything, to anyone, anywhere, the world needs more laughing.
