So you are saying that you don't think there should be ANY death penalty at all? You die during a leve quest, return to the aether crystal, run over and kill the same mob that just killed you 10 seconds later?
Sorry but no.
How is it a band-aid for a lack of difficulty? If you die, then surely something must be remotely difficult to you. A death penalty should encourage you not to die, to improve, to learn from bad decisions, and hopefully next time you do that same fight you are less likely to die from that. A kid steals a cookie from the jar, do you leave that jar where it was and let them do it again, or do you either give them a slap on the wrist/move the cookie jar to a more difficult place and discourage them from doing it again?
If there is no penalty for your actions then there is no reason not to do it again, and death in a game is a negative action.. Why would you encourage someone to throw themselves at a monster and die until they win? That hardly promotes a "skillful" or "challenging" game with no drawbacks.
*edit*
Guys this isn't an epeen competition about who has beaten what content.. I would suggest removing that ego for a while and come up with something constructive.
