His reply was:
"Griefers... just block them and you wont see them anymore."
I thought this strange, firstly since he was obviously in Open and obivously participating in the Powerplay, so being interdicted/assaulted/harassed/killed by the enemy isn't 'grief', it's just part of 'the game you bought'.
The whole idea of griefers has reached the point where anyone firing on another CMDR is labelled as a griefer, and that appears to be the starting mindset for new CMDRs. For an online-multiplayer with guns attached, and a multi-faceted narrative that makes very good use of them, this is an incredibly weird situation.
Then there's the 'block button'... who knew? And why don't more of you PvE'ers make use of it instead of filling the forums with the same inane arguments about C&P?
The situation you describe is a prime reason why blocking shouldn't affect instancing.
Blocking people who are playing the game as intended so that one can attempt to leverage the benefits of Open without having to deal with the consequences is far more harmful than the behavior that prompts these blocks.
What I think FDev should implement is a forced pledge. This 'No Faction' nonsense simply leaves CMDRs under the false impression that they can ignore the rest of the galaxy and be left to their own devices.
Wouldn't be a solution to anything, and would be profoundly annoying.
My CMDR would never voluntarily pledge to any power and making it mandatory would perforce relegate him to 5th columnist/insurrectionist.
It's bad enough that Pilot's Federation membership is mandatory.
I'd agree... that asymmetry was part of a larger sentence. Asymmetry + No in-universe reason for the attack + No warning/communication (or insults)
The issue with distinguishing a case of griefing from something else is that the in-game rationale for the attack is often not obvious, and may well preclude warnings or communications.
Jumpgate suffered from a serious case of griefing and there wasn’t a solo mode or pvt group to escape to, so newbies just got seal clubbed and it got the rep as a player killer game. The upshot was that nobody wanted to join and player numbers dwindled until it died.
Jumpgate was hands down the best MMO I've ever played, with some of the most widespread and convincing RP I've seen in any venue. It wasn't unrestricted PvP that resulted in dwindling player numbers. Indeed, those in favor of unrestricted PvP were it's core audience...couldn't be any other way in a game that essentially had no NPCs that had player character factions pitted to oppose each other.
Griefing also wasn't much of an issue. Everyone knew the whole economy, including their personal access to equipment, was player driven and random acts of wanton violence simply harmed everyone. While there was a lot of player character on player character violence, virtually all that I saw, even when my character was the victim, was well within the bounds of credible in-game conduct, with in-game reasoning backing it up.
1. Players who Min/Max really only have only themselves to blame.
Blame for what?
I min/max in games for the same reasons I do in real life, and I consider it the optimal way to extract the maximal amount of weal with the minimal amount of woe, from any conceivable situation.
I remember when that applied to PvP ships which got stuck in systems after the owners undersized their FSDs and replaced their fuel-scoops with yet another HRP and then went out and gained a Wanted tag.
They only had themselves to blame for minmaxing their ships and yet bleating about it to FDev resulted in it getting changed.
That's not an example of min/maxing. Just a lack of foresight resulting in extreme overspecialization, to the detriment of the goal at hand (you can't shoot down CMDRs if you cannot get back to where they are).
A truly min/maxed setup would have taking the possibility of being trapped into account, and included an FSD capable of leaving the system.
Our. Game.
Not mine, nor yours or someone else's, when in open. Not even when in Solo or PG, because everything ties into BGS and maybe PP in the end
The fundamental premise that underlies essentially all of my arguments for equality of opportunity and universal applicability of game mechanisms and rules.
I already mentioned that PvP encounters are predictable since they all happen in or in the vicinity of waypoints which is completely predictable.
This is false.
The overwhelming majority of PvP encounters happen in the vicinity of known points of interests, but this is by no means all of them. There is a non-zero chance of encountering other CMDRs in the middle of nowhere, and a non-zero chance for those CMDRs to be hostile.
I've certainly encountered CMDRs not anywhere near any waypoints, populated systems, or tourist attractions, and some of them likely would have attacked if they thought they would have had the upper hand.
I know this seems like guess work, but you can watch Mr B pull this sort of stunt on his own stream 
