The Permadeath idea has been floated around a bit and CCP said they wanted to do it.
But heres the rub. Even though it is very brutal and cold, harsh and dark like Eve is it isnt the optimal arrangement imo.
I was sitting there and had just finished watching a trailer for No Man's Sky and was perusing other games on the Humble Bundle Site when it kind of hit me. What is the ultimate draw and the ultimate end to most games? I mean developers dont build them to last forever as a game, even though the idea itself would be cool, theres far to much of a change in people over time let alone in societies to imagine that happening. Nor does mankind actually imagine 'forever' with a limited lifespan. No, devs kind of look to make a good product for a time and hopefully make a living off it. Well translate that into the idea of permadeath in Eve....
The idea that we are immortal is cool of course but unsatisfactory in the sense that there is no way to kill us. We are, for all intents and purposes "gods". Perma death was the idea to bring true risk and mortality to beings for a price. Yet now with skill injectors one could argue that such a clone could be saved, at least in the way of SP and reinjected to create another "new" body. What happens if we could make clones, perhaps of Jovian ancestry?, that would eventually die out. The Jovian Plague is a lore based idea that ultimately means that too many boosters, genetic modifications and capsuleer technology would in essence finish us off. Perhaps clone jumping or number of new clones might also degrade the initial hosts data material slightly on transfer until ultimately it is gone for good?
Ultimately CCP could potentially make a server side counter for this. Number of pod deaths, clone jumps, booster usage, even catastrophic ship losses with a bit of RNG tossed in to give one a "lifespan" issue that ultimately DOES lead to permanent death. But we as players dont know when at all. They train, perhaps at an expedited rate but will fail eventually, and ultimately one can harvest SP from such a person while still alive to apply to another such a body but never a normal capsuleer body. And the death would ultimately be the result of the Jovian Plague catching up to us. The idea to harvest SP would be on the player themselves and if done before permadeath would get some SP back but never all. The newer the body the more SP could be harvested, the older and more damaged the more likely there would be residual damage to the SP itself and not all could be harvested for a new character. This would be open to RNG and balancing too.
It would mean that we would have a body for a set time but undetermined and the risks would be real in many ways. Accidents in cloning might reduce our SP total much like dying without an upgraded clone might be. Ship deaths or podding far from home might degrade the transmission signals to our new clone bays and reduce our SP totals. All risks set to offset the rewards of the expedited training speeds.
All in all it wouldnt be permadeath in that it is a normal human body, but not a capsuleer body either. That is a not a forever or until Doomheim or server shutdown.
It would also be a good way to memorialize some of the fallen amoung us. We could create a body with their capsuleer name or even real name if CCP allows and let it simply go into the great beyond. Perhaps another Doomheim might be created for such players. A graveyard so to speak.
It was a thought before I start watching a movie for the night. Comment, flame, do your Eve evil thing.