Death penalties don't exist to "slow you down", they exist to make you not want to be bad, not want to play with bad players, to be afraid of dying, and to actually feel scared and stuff. FF14 is "oh oops I died oh well!" "oh let me go suicide i don't care if I die!". No one tries to survive because it doesn't matter, your life is not on the line and it's VERY boring.
Rift suffers from the same thing, you lose 10gold if you die(less than 1 monster worth of money, a soloable monster)and I never care if I die in that game.