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Polly+Morfs : Nerd is to Geek.
Death is a problem in MMOs, its a problem simply because it exists.
Death should “of course” be a penalty of somekind but neither the designers or the players really want it to be one.
What follows is a possible solution.
#1 no penalty for death, it is just an inconvenience. The main cost here is that death knocks people back and disrupts group activities. If people start dying you have to reorganise.
#2 a “death penalty” cost is applied upon entering a zone/dungeon whatever, a cost that can be quite harsh. This also helps with creating consumables in the economy.
Now, you must play to recoup the investment you have just made, the inconvenience of dying is just a mild inconvenience.
You start off having already lost and you keep playing to turn that loss into a win. Or you give up, admit this area is too hard and stop trying. In this case even recouping a small amount of your initial loss will seem like victory.
It’s risk/reward with a real cost for failure but is still close to the MMO standard of progress progress progress grind grind grind. Shifting the fail penalty to the beginning is just a mental trick to fool the loss adverse humans.
I’ve seen this partially applied but not as strongly as I’d like to try :)
Happiness for hardcore and carebears?
Who knows, I figure it may be worth a try though.