Opinions:
- The game's version of death isn't sufficiently death-like in the context of the game to constitute death.
no. Death is in quotes because it specifically references what the game players would refer to as death. Which varies game to game. It's 100% not actual death so it's a mis-use of the word because your character specifically does not die but is saved by their remlok magic escape pod (unlike other games where you die and magically come back to life or have to start over etc).
There's no other implication about it and that's not a factor that's up for debate regarding what "death" is or isn't in the game. so not opinion.
- In order for death to be meaningful, the consequence of "dying" must involve some minimum level of loss above what the game currently supports.
I said less meaningful. Meaning what the game did support had meaning, and now the consequence of dying has less of whatever meaning it had before. Again, nothing of value was added as a loss upon death to replace what this was for players before. so not an opinion.
- Loss of crew may be a necessary but not sufficient condition for death being meaningful.
Nobody said that.
- The lack of meaningful "death" in a game is sad.
Nobody said that either. I said sadly, that dying in the game has less meaning. Not that it was lacking any. It would be hilarious though to hear the argument against the implied opinion that is expressed there though, i'd love to hear why we need no consequence on dying in the game. Or even less of it.
- People that don't agree with this assessment are whiners.
Never said that. I said that whiners whined about it enough and Fdev didn't care enough either way and got what they wanted. They're whiners because dying already has such a low bar of mattering and now it has even less now. And because it falls in that "woe is me - i need a participation trophy" of mentality that doesn't fit with a game that's supposed to be set in a dangerous galaxy.
An alternative opinion: Loss of time in the form of a credit cost an the forfeit of cargo and bounties is a more than sufficient proxy for ship destruction in a recreational game. Loss of in-game assets that are the result of significant grind (e.g. engineering, leveled crew) would be unacceptable because it would dampen willingness to experiment and frankly, my time is too valuable for such histrionics.
npc crew aren't the result of significant grind nor does ranking them up to elite constitute anything but a near imperceptible difference in ability. It's at best an emotional connection you go out of your way to make by holding onto the same ones over time instead of using them as-needed.
They were whined about not because of investment, but because of attachment. That's certainly well within something ideal to take away as a risk to ship destruction.