No, for the love of the freaking Twelve. This wasn't a fun mechanic. This wasn't compelling gameplay. While I agree that significant death penalties wind up affecting gameplay, they - for me - wound up affecting it to the tune of 'not fun at all, even a little bit'. Death being a slap on the wrist means if you screw something up, you can laugh about it, pick yourself up, and carry on. Additionally, XPing in this game is so relatively easy that XP penalties on death wouldn't even be an effective slap on the wrist; they weren't either in FFXI (unless you were a BLM who wasn't a fan of soloing, in the ToAU era, who wound up dying a lot due to heavy LS raiding. I have scars. And a hastily-leveled BRD that I switched my main to and never looked back until Abyssea. And you know what? I hated capping XP on BRD, too, even though it was 'easier'. It made me regret and dislike doing the fun content in the game, until Evil Abyssea came out with its XP raining from the skies, and then suddenly death was hilarious. And you know what? It owned.)

This isn't a [CENSORED] CASUALS vs. XXXHARDXXXCOREXXX argument, this is a "this gameplay sucks" argument, and to posit this as one of the 'best things about FFXI' is one of the most amazingly, mind-bogglingly, slackjawed-Taru-giving-a-goobbue-stare level of shamefully disingenuous assertions I have ever read as long as I've been reading these forums. I almost feel like the OP deserves an award for that line alone.