You're talking to someone running more industry alts than combat characters. You have an odd way of attributing characteristics to people that are flagrantly false.
You said the experience was "too brutal" for these people. That means they don't fit in, in Eve. This means they don't have the guts for it. They are part of the demographic that does not fit in and should find another game that's more suitable to them. Eve holds the position it does because it is brutal. It's dangerous. It's cutthroat. It has consequences for fucking up. It requires the stamina and patience to prepare, work for your assets and capabilities. These are all good things and the people lacking the prerequisite mentality and capacity to handle them simply aren't who the game is made for.
If you changed the game to accommodate these people, you'd quite literally break Eve.
And yet you are exactly the kind that has a very hotheaded approach to the game. The industry excuse is a fallacy in itself, one doesn't exclude the other.
I said too brutal as a first death experience. There are many ways to get the first death experience in eve, and for a novice player, it can take a pretty impressive dimension. Everyone has trembled under adrenaline the first time his ship got blown up for the first time, and even if that was actually T1 frigates that cost absolutely naugh, it's something that more experienced players tend to forget.
And then you have different people, all with different expectations of the game, and different way of feeling and resenting the game. I can take someone like you or Sid that will jump happily into battle in berserk mode and have a lot of fun that way, which also let's be honest, requires some skill and habit, and I can also take countless people I have met in lowsec, most of them industrialists or just jack of all trade kindof people, pretty casual in their approach, and they were definitely not refusing to do pvp or to defend themselves, otherwise they would not live in lowsec to begin with.
And yet, as pvp was not their primary facet ingame, they also tended not to like the frantic approach that could come with some pvpers. As a matter of fact, it was not a matter of guts more than a matter of personal fun.
So yes, they needed to get experienced with the thing, and to used to the thing. I don't know personally how I would have taken being jumped into a huge fleet battle and ganked by an enemy fleet of 20 players in my little tacking frigate that I didn't even know how to use to begin with. For my first time in pvp and my first death, I mean. So yes, I put myself in the shoes of a new players and that kind of experience can be 'traumatic', not in the psychological way, but in the way that you will just think "this game sucks".
You know what ? I agree with you on the fact that in every game, FPS or other games, you will tend to get your ass handed to you pretty quick in your first matches. It's also why some games have introduced a match making system to limit the problem of a novice fighting against the first ranked player of the leaderboards. Well, it's a different story in Eve, of course, but the underlying issue remains the same : losing can be fun, but losing without even understanding what happened, and moreover, getting your first hard labored ship getting shred to pieces as a result is pretty discouraging, I think, except for a handful of players.
So, my apologies if I thought you were actually implying said handful of players are the only ones to deserve Eve.
Edit : also, nobody asked to change the game.