"You Will Die" Difficulty... Can I Have It?

[fusional]

I'm not advocating for nerfed rewards, or no rewards at all, I'm suggesting that unilaterally better gear is probably the wrong route. I'll advocate for side-grades, not up-grades. Or I'll advocate for something to offer different playstyle options without appreciably buffing the player's power level. Or even just alternate meshes and textures for existing equipment.

GW2 tries this. it doesn't work. they sold a couple million boxes and over half the population stopped logging in after just a couple months. why? because there's no reason to log in anymore. they did the content, they got the stuff, and they can't improve their characters any further outside of cosmetics. it's not enough.

if you want that for casual players, fine. it works perfectly for that demographic. but if you want an entire game built around that, and for every tier of gamer to have the same sort of rewards- your game will fail. horribly.