EVE Evolved: Is EVE Online's death penalty really that harsh?

It's definitely true that it's the players with a little isk and experience that have it worst. They tend to be able to afford at most one replacement ship as the average new player trains for bigger ships much quicker than he can make the isk for them. I do think players are given a false impression of lowsec though. Missions in lowsec only pay marginally more and mining there isn't much better than highsec.

I think players are much better off sticking to highsec and joining a corp that will help them out and back them up. Not only can other members of a corp probably help you make isk a lot faster to replace any losses, the older players have a wealth of knowledge you can use to help avoid dying in the first place.

The problem with this is that EVE's death penalties aren't just tacked on as an afterthought, they're real consequences. How would you even go about removing the death penalties in certain areas? Free replacement ships? Free 100% insurance? What about modules lost and clone costs if you're podded? What about the opportunity cost of the time spent collecting and fitting a replacement ship?

Removing the natural death penalties in EVE would almost certainly ruin the quality of the PvP for most people. It's that cold, harsh mentality that keeps a lot of us interested and playing.

Also, remember that insurance does not remove death penalty. It was introduced as a cushion to reduce the cost of death by 70% of the ship's rough value and thus promote PvP. Platinum level insurance works by charging you 30% of the ship's rough value to cover the loss for 3 months, that's all.

You have to manually purchase that so it's not a hidden tax and if you take ships into PvP reguarly chances are you'll lose it within 3 months. Also, not only are tech 2 ships unable to be insured for their full market value but modules are also not recovered by insurance.

Insurance, like Mr. Drain said, is just to cushion a pilot from the monetary shittiness of losing a ship. Most players look at insurance as part of the ship cost, considering it's usually a fraction of the price, and chances are you'll lose that ship at some point. If you're clever about picking insurance packages, it's not that expensive, and it's a really good idea - especially for new players. Having said that, getting blown up is still a bummer, with or without insurance.

As for removing the death penalty in particular areas of space, I'm going to have to disagree. It'd be a little like having certain rooms in every counterstrike map that make bullets do zero damage to human players. That would radically change the dynamics of the game, if not making the match itself totally pointless and unchallenging. High security space does offer some relative safety though. There is a pretty deadly response team of a police ships called Concord to discourage unprovoked PvP hostility in most players. Of course, the police don't usually show up quickly in bad neighborhoods in real life, and that's pretty true in eve. Also a deterrent are the security penalties you acquire when you attack someone in high sec space, which pretty mark you as either dangerous or an asshole for a pretty long time. And that reputation is pretty hard to shake.

Letrange, you're way off.

1) "It is relatively easier to make isk in EvE than it is to make gold in Warcraft...The economic data shows that EvE suffers more from a deflationary trend... Everything is cheaper now than it was in the past."

What economic data? Show me a link! Eve's economy is, like many, a volatile one. Fluctuations in the market prices are wild and very hard to predict, but even my modest experience tells me that Eve's economy has many items that mark an inflationary trend. I've talked to a handful of players that started in 2003 or 2004 and have recently returned about their surprise at the increase in Eve prices. One guy in particular was astounded at the current price of the 'Harvester Mining Drone.' As he remembers, they were expensive, but relatively reasonable for their quality and use. A miner by trade, they were cheap enough for him to keep roughly a couple dozen in stock, and they were left in a station hangar where he found them when he returned. Now, mining drones average out at roughly 60 million ISK apiece. Owning 30 of these is unheard of, even ridiculous for a character of his stature. As for it being relatively easier to make money in WoW, that's arguable, but I am of the opinion that you have to work a little harder, or at least be a more shrewd businessman in the Eve economy. It's hard to keep track of Eve's overall market trends, but it's been put forth that Eve, like our real economy, has a gold standard of it's own. It's not minerals, oddly enough, but Tech II Blueprint originals. Check out this forum post if you need to get your math on.

2) "For any newbies joining things have never been so easy."

For a player starting today versus a player starting 4 years ago, yes, it is easier to install Eve. Yes, there are more tutorials, yes, there are 3rd party tools, and yeah, there is no doubt more reading material and forum-posted insight than there was back then. But this is the same for almost every other MMO that has lasted even half as long, and that includes WoW. I would argue that starting now, while better facilitated by the developers, is as or more bewildering than it was in 2004. Add to that the increasing number of Veteran players and the huge gap in skillpoints between them and the rookie pilots (impossible to surmount because of the nature of Eve's real time skill training) and you have a perceptibly more difficult environment for a brand new player.

3) "Besides there is the fact that unlike warcraft - everything is available on the market."

Also untrue. If I want a type of dinner table that is only available in China, and nobody imports it to North America, I basically have to go to China in the massive airplane I own (of course) and get the thing myself. That, or I send for it, wait a few months, and pay an exorbitant price that will take much longer and cost much more than me personally retrieving that item. Either way, I'm not going to fly to China for a table, and I'm not going to pay a hundred times more for something a guest will probably carve initials into with a fork next month. So that item is for all intents and purposes, unavailable to me, or at least not a viable option. The same goes for Eve. I'm not going to spend 4 hours traversing the massive universe to pick up some crazy-exotic ammunition that isn't kicking around the regions I usually hang out in. Yes, the ammo is available on the world market, but no, the item is not available in the market that counts, my regional market, and the markets that are reasonably close to that region.

More important for me to point out, some things just aren't available on the open market. There are specialized or rare ships, rigs, blueprints and modules that are so expensive or sought after (most of the time both) that you just can't buy them without finding a specialized dealer via contract (dudes usually located in dangerous space, or charging absurd sums of money), making it yourself, or hoping someone you kill leaves it behind in their wreckage. Each one of these routes is either extremely expensive, hard to find, painfully time consuming, risky, or an all of the above combination. So, clearly, the open market isn't a cure-all, find-what-you-want type of thing. And frankly, finding and buying high-quality things in the Eve economy sounds harder and more compelling than going "on raid x to get it again."

Hopefully I've illuminated some shit for you.

Damn, no html. This is the forum post I tried to link to concerning the 'gold standard' of Eve.

http://eve-search.com/thread/763058/author/Shakuul

That's another golden rule I not only agree with, but manage to adhere to. I remember back when I had only been playing for 4 or 5 months, and a dude in my new corp chided me about sticking to destroyers - "I can't believe you're not in a battleship by now," he said. That being my first character, it's true I was taking my time moving through ship classes while I got better acquainted with the game and it's cruel learning curve; even so, I followed this golden rule for two reasons. 1) Training properly for a ship gets you more bang for your buck, so to speak. There's no point in dropping ten times as much cash for a ship that can do the same job for a fraction of the cost - with some careful skill training and good fitting. A well-fitted frigate can consistently run level 2 combat missions, and while it's a bit of a dumb idea, a destroyer can manage level 3 missions if you're careful and stupid enough to try.

2) Better understanding the capacity of a ship, in combat or otherwise, tempers you for PvP, and helps you understand what you can expect from other players or from NPCs to some extent. Why pilot a boat you just can't use properly? You're setting yourself up for some massive PvP embarrassment, wasting money, and frustrating yourself because you're just too damn impatient.

Typically, I'll fly an entry level ship of a class with a mixture of mostly T1/T2 modules and T1 weaponry while I understand where I want to head with that class. For example, I flew a Celestis cruiser to take advantage of my character's missile and hybrid turret skills while I trained up for better drones and T2 gunnery. Then I worked my way into a Thorax while honing my armor tanking. Now I'm satisfied I'm using cruisers pretty well, and I have a pretty good idea of how to improve on what I've got.