Adding risk to the game?

[Eldevern]

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It's more or less that.

The thing it is easier to make solo games with a step-by-step increasing level of difficulty. For a MMO especially RPG, many people aren't running them for challenge, even less competition, but for the RP and the story.

One factor to consider is the reward. A recent study about Fornite explains that players are expecting some kind of reward. Punishing contents with pure loss are not interesting because they appears like a waste of time.