Managing High-Leathlity Games

[Beta Centauri]

So, death was constant, but it was also entirely trivial.

I'm still stuck on this: how can it not be trivial unless the player doesn't want it to be?

If your character dies, you simply continue with another one. The only way for one to feel that this is anything but trivial is for one to tell oneself that it is significant because one wants to. Even if one is resurrected instantly, one could find the experience significant.

If one doesn't want to find it significant, then they won't. They'll disengage from their characters and treat the whole thing lightly.

I'm dismissing here the threat of being sidelined, because if the only way to make an in-game event significant is to attach an out-of-game consequence to it, then the game is clearly flawed.