The problem is how easy it is to cripple someone compared to how much long it takes to uncripple. Crippling someone takes a matter of seconds and not necessarily a lot of skill, but to get uncrippled without a doctor and quite possibly no money is going to be a long, boring and shitty process. The impact on the victim is not proportional to the effort of the attacker. It just takes some bluesuit to critkick you in Reno and you've got to wander down to the NCR and just stand around saying 'NEED DOCTOR' for five minutes.
"The problem is how easy it is to kill someone and take their items, compared to how much long it takes to craft them. Killing someone takes a matter of seconds and not necessarily a lot of skill, but to get items without required crafter alts and possibly no money or resources is going to be a long, boring and shitty process. The impact on the victim is not proportional to the effort of the attacker. It just takes some bluesuit to critkick you in Reno and you've got to wander down to a mining site and just stand around and swing a hammer every five minutes."
Apparently, it's not a problem with most people.
I would like to see death have more of an effect on characters. But the problem is that life is too cheap and people are too aggressive to make it work.
Ha! Life is cheap BECAUSE death is of little significance!
That's why I strive for even a bit more annoying death. That's why I would like to see permanent death. I bet that even just a 1% chance of permanently losing a chararacter would change most players' attitude. There would be less recklessness, less hostility, less 'zerking. Because life would have value. And just managing to remain alive would be a reward in itself.
people are blasting each other like it's Quake out there
And that's what most people, intentionally or not, try to make of this game. "Getting X should be easier, doing Y should take less time, remove Z because it's nothing but a nuisance." And the end-result will be, that nothing will eventually matter, because everything will be at hand. All there will be left of this game is a pew-pew clickfest.
P.S.
Here's why it would be unplayable, every character would have to put points into doctor or end up being a huge pain in the ass to play. Let's say you are either low level or don't have doctor tagged and you get your leg crippled and die. If you fail your attempt with low skill its a 2 hour cooldown, you can't escape any encounter in either modes so chances are you'll die several times before you reach a town. Once you get there you have to rely on someone else with doctor to be standing around and be nice enough to heal you.
I don't see that HUGE PAIN. I explained this already. What's more:
Respawn points don't have to be that far from towns as they are now.
I don't see any sense in random respawn point selection.
I think doctors should have an extra cooldown cutback, like -25% for every profession level, because it's their job to heal people.