I think I understand your general reasoning as follows:
‘The game experience needs to be smoother but not without any friction. The original design has merit. Here is a proposal on how to maintain the essence and fix some of its issues. Though I’m also open to a more radical overhaul.’
Would that be a fair characterization? It seems we mostly agree in our broad wants, but differ in our ‘ought to be’, and can agree to disagree on those. I’m interested in how your new topic will shape up with actual numbers.
Honestly, Moon could maybe grab a few of the most reasonable suggestions/ideas and just do a poll. Get some hard data to figure out player preferences. Though getting an unbiased sample will be an interesting challenge in and of itself.
Nonetheless, some notes:
The dying in and of itself is a reasonable indication that you’re going to need to work to win in this game. Or do you feel like there is a lack of punch to the dying? If yes, how do you feel about this:
When the player dies, the screen fades to dark and has the message “The pestilence spreads!” with pulsing purple organic veins on the screen border, while the enemies slowly drag away your body.
This inserts a lot of ‘feel’ without mechanics obstructing gameflow.
Honestly, a player willing to fight through a zone with:
- a red zone name
- a high zone level indicator in red
- enemies that take minutes to beat and one-shot you
- enemies having skulls above their HP bar
- resources that take 10 hits to take down
- no active quests
They earn whatever they can retrieve from that zone, they need no further punishment. They are where they wish to be, in hell.
Furthermore, there are very obvious consequences, it takes immense IRL time to achieve a clear of this zone. And the loot, as far as I understand, is controlled by your character level and bosses defeated, so they won’t even get much better loot after achieving this nonsense feat.
I feel like the inherent short-term consequence of this short-term mistake is the player getting one-shot by the first mob.
On a final note: I’m being critical of the death mechanics, but I really hope Moon manages to make it interesting/engaging, be that: a corpse run, Dragon Rot-esque system, a Hollow Knight-esque ghost, or something else entirely. I’m mostly just very wary of tedious friction, not friction in and of itself.