Player Features and Ideas Discussion

So you've been around for a while.
You have lots of folks in your contacts list -
Some you like, and you set them to "good" or "excellent".
Others - not so much. "Bad" or "terrible" for those, possibly with a bunch of skulls and daggers attached too.


I'm sure that's what many players do.
All good so far.

(1)
Alas, some of the skull-and-dagger folks are quite bad trolls actually.
And they get to convo you without your approval. Anyone in your contacts list does.
So you end up immediately closing lots of chat windows that you didn't WANT to be opened in the first place.


(2)
So you afk a lot.
Maybe you're too lazy to disconnect, maybe you forgot, maybe there's tactical / strategic reasons.
You come back from dinner, seeing 3 friends had started a convo, and after a while said how RUDE you are to not respond at all.
Humpf


Is BLOCKING a charatcer really a solution?
In my opinion, no:
- I may still want to know what they say in local chat, be them trolls or not.
- Blocking FRIENDS is one of the quickest ways not to have any. Besides podding them, maybe.
Plus, when you come back from afk, you'd have to manually UNblock them all again. Yikes!


So, essentially:
I believe the game mechanics lack a more differentiated way to control who's allowed to chat me up and who is not.
I suggest to either remove that auto-approval feature or add the ability to 'automatically approve invites' on an INDIVIDUAL basis.