Criticizing Abuse of a Game Mechanic Gets You Banned

Elite Dangerous allows any player to block any other player for any reason they choose. It isn't just comms blocking which every MMO does. It is also blocking other players from instancing with you.

The following post on Frontier Development's Elite Dangerous forums got me banned. Why? Are they really that hateful against people who point out the flaws of their game? Really?

But it makes sense. They perma-banned an earlier account of mine for using this as my forum signature:

For this one I was banned for "trolling". I guess it was a little bit trollish. But was it really deserving of a permanent ban? 

Created a new account and made a bunch of posts freely for days. But as soon as I made this comment, BOOM, perma-banned AND the post was deleted:

So what's my beef with Elite Dangerous' player blocking feature? It's this:

Blocking not only blocks comms\messaging between players (which is cool, all MMOs do this), but it also removes the possibility (for the most part) of the blocked person from ever instancing with the blocking person again. 

FDev has allowed players to block each other whenever they want and for whatever reason they want. As a result blocking is used as a punishment and is heavily abused. I have only been blocked once as far as I know and it was for not o7ing someone enough. That's absurd. Furthermore, whole squadrons of players get blocked by others because they interfere with their ability to freely do what they want. Some people on the forums have even admitted to blocking others for the ugly ship paint they chose, for disagreeing with them in the forums, for "kill stealing" in CZs and RES sites. Etc. The second image in this post lists actual reasons that people have admitted to as to why they blocked someone.

But the most egregious thing to me is that PvPers get blocked for PvPing. It is an ED meme that everyone who engages in PvP is a "ganker"... that's how carebearish the ED community is seen. But why this is egregious is that ED allows players to interdict each other, fire upon each other's ships, hatch break each other, heck even some weapon experimental effects only work against player ships. It makes no sense to me to allow people to block people for engaging in PvP in a game that allows players to engage in PvP. Not wanting to engage with PvP is literally one of the reason why Solo\PG modes were created... so that people could play the game without worrying about being PvPed. Yet people insist on playing in Open, where PvP can happen, and block people who engage in it. 

And what's equally infuriating is that anyone who makes this point is called a "disgruntled ganker\griefer" because, hurr durr, 'you must be a griefer if you don't like the blocking functionality'.

And remember, before calling someone a griefer, ask yourself whether the PvPer is deliberately using aspects of the game in unintended ways in order to irritate and harass other players. If not, they are not griefing.