Once upon a time EVE had skill point loss on death, if you didn’t pay ISK each death to upgrade your clone. The result was a lot of very upset players after making a single mistake and losing millions or tens of millions of SP, and high SP characters becoming highly risk averse because their replacement clones were too expensive. They stopped undocking in cheap fits to just have some fun because if they did get podded, they’d be out considerably more ISK on the new clone than they’d lose in the destroyed ship.
It was more hardcore, and a distinctive feature of EVE vs softer MMOs without death penalties like WoW, but it wasn’t good for the game itself, and was eventually removed, which most players agreed was for the best.
The largest issue with permadeath in a “hardcore mode”, would be several factors, but the most relevent is unique character names. The database is set up to disallow duplicate names, John Rochard, belongs to my account. With the addition of permadeath, hardcore players would start making; John A. Smith, John B. Smith, etc.. These characters might not take up room – a few kilobytes at best – but they restrict who gets to have the name they desire. I never checked it out myself, but I think the names survive biomass?
Other among considerations, would be the whiner baby, who gets killed, and then cries they were unaware of the facts about the mode or they activated the mode by mistake. Otherwise, I don’t think permadeath would make the mode popular to play. You could just biomass after your first loss, and pick it up as a new clone with the same name, but are you willing to lose all your skill points, ships, and stuff?
Interesting point of view. This is a piece of EVE history I was unaware of. most players seems to be averse to penalties for death and other mistakes, yet I still believe that’s what has kept this game playable for so many years. Most MMO games have overly broken metas or are simply economically unsustainable in the long run.
Penalties for death is indeed a large part of how this game works.
But if the penalty for death is to quit playing that character this doesn’t create a sustainable game cycle where people are regular part of the destruction that the game economy needs to keep running.
While inconsequential deaths wouldn’t be good, a death that is too permanent isn’t good for the game either.
Maybe a permadeath would be too frustrating and bring trolls to hunt down such players. The point of hardcore character would be a challenging addition to Eve meta, but the biggest point woud be bringing new different ways to experience New Eden.
I also have ideas to extend explorers impact of New Eden lore unfolding around the Eve gate using a similar system to Cradle of War campaigns. But that would be subject for another discussion.
I like that. We could have non-capsuleers do the menial tasks like Scouting and Hauling.
Eventually I’d like to play a Jovian with their own ships designs.
Why would anyone want to play EVE to pretend to be a farmer or a generic NPC background character?, the people with power and influence are the capsuleers, the warclones will probably not amount to much again and end up being discontinued as the extraction shooter craze dies off
So you would champion for a deliberately worse experience? who is going to pick this?
You can already do this yourself, you don’t need a game mode added, you just biomass your character the first time they are podded
All of these would just be worse, regular humans cannot compete with capsuleers in any way, shape or form because of the augments and the ability to literally learn anything instantly
As @Anna_Dyneaux mentioned long ago clones had to be updated after ever pod death, which cost more isk the higher your skill points were. It was no fun losing years of skillpoints. There were no alpha/free accounts back then - which means it was a lot of time AND RL money invested that went poof essentially.
I knew a few people many years back that lost lots of skill points. For some people it was due to accidentally forgetting to update a clone after they died and then rejoined a fleet battle and dying again. One person got drunk one night and kept undocking and PVP-ing and exploding without updating his clone a single time… well the next day when he woke up he discovered he had basically bombed himself back to the stoneage by repeatedly dying and losing skillpoints.
More recently there also used to be skillpoint losses if a person flew a T3 cruiser and it exploded. (Happened to me a few times and I did not enjoy it)
Everyone I know was happy when these penalties were removed. I’m really glad it does not happen anymore. I’m not trying to rain on your parade, but based on past experiences I cannot see most players enjoying Eve with excessive death penalties. Only a small number “might choose” such a hard mode, which would not justify the development for FCCP. Over the years they have made the game less hard and easier for new players, so they are going in the opposite direction to what you are suggestion.
I use the phrase “might choose” because I cannot see it being fun more than just a passing novelty. I can see it getting old very quickly. Permanent death and having to restart with a new character could mean a big chance of never getting to some parts of Eve that requires years of training and progress. People don’t like missing out. (F.O.M.O.)
As far as playing with limitations… I think the game already allows that option. For example skill levels are not automatic - after you shot 10 ships you don’t automatically get +1 level - you can choose what you train and when. Same applies to other areas of the game. Each person can implement as much limitation on themself as they want.
If you want to simulate not having the same levels as capsuleers you could choose not to have any implants and boosters, and limit the skills/levels you train easily. I’ve heard of some people that limited themselves to only certain skill levels, or flying only certain groups of ships, or certain empire’s ships. Trying to complete certain missions or tasks with a specific/unlikely ship class etc. I’ve also heard of some that play through the game without buying a single pre-made item from the market - they build everything themselves. I’ve also heard of some seeing how far they can take alpha characters.
If a person wants to play as a non-capsuleer it is quite possible if they use their imagination. Some people already do it to various degrees with types of roleplay in the game. Instead of thinking you re-cloned you can just imagine “I made it out of there in my escape pod somehow. Better check on the rest of my crew…” There are NPC sell and buy orders - you can use that to trade various commodities and build your own table of relationships with the NPC traders “I’m sure Fred at station A in system B will be happy with this shipment of milk”. You can build on the small briefing stories in courier and security missions. “I’m going to rescue my crew that the pirates captured.” Your imagination can extend the game for yourself. Sadly using imagination and creativity is on the decline, so make of it what you will.
I mean the salt you get for popping a venture is wild, I’m almost salivating at the prospect of what kind of eve mails I’d get from perma deathing players
The crash outs would be spectacular and legendary!
