Ok but still... you loose all your items when you die, and most of those deaths seem to be ... random.. so what is this game all about? Trying to get new items after each death? I don't get it.
I think you've nailed one major problem that's been around for quite some time.
While I don't want blame anyone, and want to be as polite as possible, I still have to say much of the design is horrible.
It's by no means bad game, it in fact is quite decent Fallout game, problem is however nothing so far is polished or even appear fair. Just for example most of humanoid encounters are sure death if you even attempt to fight back and don't try to run ASAP, not that much because of them having guns and stuff, this was true back in Fallout as well, however those guys quite prefer bursting or aiming for eyes, which gives you little chance to do what you could've done in original games.
Second flaw is the fact you cannot possibly do any encounters in Real Time unless you have vastly superior gunpower to your enemies (talking about fighting critters), or exploiting some game mechanics.
There is no way you would go shoot some people in realtime alone.
Bearing those facts in mind, this usualy leaves you completly in mercy of other players in wasteland - you need every piece of information, as well as manpower possibly.
While it does not look so, the wasteland is still full of nice guys, and the fact you have hard time to identify is quite nice feature of the game. However once you find them, it is not over, you're left to horrible interface, and loosing party or even assembling it is really pain.
If ever game is going to be more learnable and somewhat friendlier in it's interface part, you could get used to it's unforgivenes. To be honest even death that costs you so much can be quite fun if you see it comming or at least know why it happened and what could have you done.
I won't comment PvP because that is right now entirely on players to decide.
