I've never heard such thing, and sincerelly, I really hope they keep the permadeath concept.
Also, I don't think SC player base has nothing against permadeath, quite the opposite.
I don't know, I'm still on the fence about the whole permadeath thing. It does break your character immersion. Over time, your character becomes your online persona. It is the pixel representation of you. On a long term game (which hopefully SC will be), people begin to know you by your character. For instance, I have been going by the name Bruttle in almost every single MMO that I have played (which is quite a few) since my first mmo everquest. By this point, it is entirely possible that more people know me as "Bruttle" than by my real name. This brings up a whole new discussion about which is my "real" name at this point, but that is a whole different subject.
Permadeath breaks that. Now, it is my understanding, that you can name your "next of kin" the same name but then that turns permadeath into just another version of a death tax. This is just star citizens version of XP loss upon death. You keep all your ships, money, and most of your reputations. If you keep all of that, it really is just a death tax and calling it permadeath is just attaching a colorful name to a very old concept.
Then there's the whole reason for permadeath. It is to provide risk. After all, if you don't lose anything on death, the game would have a significant lack of excitement. Just look at COD. There is no risk in dying. You just do less good. This has led the game to evolve into the run and gun that we all know. The matches are full of players that are content to throw two grenades, die, respawn, and repeat ad nauseam. Noobtubers, if you would.
Permadeath offers a way to combat this. However, it doesn't work evenly. To most players, it offers a death tax. In doing so, it offers risk to gameplay that doesn't carry any other form of risk. To activities that already carry risk, it doubles up that risk. For example, a player gets together with their org mates and they all invest in a huge cargo load and set up shipment and protection for it.
Those players are all taking a risk. They risk their cargo investment. This could be a very large risk depending on route and volume of investment. Now, enter the pirates. They are free to attack that shipment with little to no risk. This is what I see as the purpose of permadeath. It offers a risk to pirate activity. Most pvp games with stealable goods don't offer anything like this. This leads to an increase in pirate activity and a serious disadvantage to non-pvp activities.
Take Archeage, for instance. The lack of risk has led to a disproportionate balance. For every one player doing legitimate trade, there is easily 100 players waiting to take the trade goods. This is because the game offers little to no risk of theft activities. Why spend weeks building the resources for trade goods if you can just steal the finished product from other players without any time or financial investment.
So, ultimately, permadeath is a good thing. I like the idea. However, it needs to be presented in a way that will actually be effective. It can't be just another death tax. It has to be an actual risk. It can't be severe right off the bat though. Otherwise, it is just doubling up on the risk of legitimate activities.
So to me, for permadeath to be a positive thing, it has to incur increasing amounts of risk. If you die once, it's not bad. If you die a dozen times (or are jailed repeatedly) in too short a period of time, you start risking your ships, money, and all your progress. At least, something along those lines. It needs to offer enough risk to balance without flooding any occupations with too much risk. It will be a delicate balance of permadeath, crime systems, and insurance.
So when I say I like the idea of permadeath, it comes with the caveat that the other systems are just as necessary. Because, permadeath is just one portion of a system that just might work this time. I, for one, seriously hope they can pull it off.
