Instant Replay
The more often the game killed the player, the more often a savvy player would save. If a dungeon had deathtraps in every hall, the player would save at every corner. If a critical hit from an average foe could kill the hero, the player would save before every battle - after every round, if the game let him! While console games rely on "save points," these are indefensibly restrictive on computers, especially when a player wants to quit and end his session.
Saving and killing form a vicious cycle. The more the player saves, the more reasonable it seems to kill him. Small wonder that RPGs introduced a "quicksave" button to minimize the player's hassle. Smaller wonder still that the games have added the suggestion "Quicksave often - you could die at any time!" Can you imagine a sports game warning, "Quicksave often - the opponent might score!" or a strategy game suggesting, "Save before and after every battle to make sure your army never suffers defeat!"
Death, which began as the ultimate, game-ending penalty, is now nothing more than a hassle that lasts only as long as a game's loading time. Meanwhile, because players keep a book of dozens of saves for even a single dungeon, lesser penalties - such as injuries or broken items - are quickloaded away just as deaths are. The save-load mentality dictates that punishments are transitory, not lasting. As a result, few RPGs today would ever dream of permanently lowering a character's strength or taking two levels from him, as older games often did. Why bother, anyway, when it will be quickloaded away?
It's no longer possible to play "hardcore" - without frequent saving and loading - even if you wanted to. Because designers build their games around the "average" player, they will include random deathtraps or high critical hits or overpowered charm spells with the expectation that the player will save to avoid them. Likewise, later encounters will be structured with the expectation of successfully overcoming earlier ones, because players will replay until they emerge unscathed. The cascade effect from not reloading early on can therefore be crippling down the line. This is especially true of NPC interactions, where it is often critically important to pick the "best" route to unlock quests later in the game or obtain status increases necessary for subsequent battles. Ultimately, even a "hardcore" player can swiftly become habituated to quicksaving.
Perversely, then, the higher the likelihood of death, the lower the tension, because the player will increase his save frequency to compensate for more deaths and will thus have less at stake when his player is in harm's way. Once you're in the coils of the save-kill cycle, there is a total absence of dramatic or even situational tension. In its place is rather unpleasant anxiety. Absent, too, are consequences for the character, who never suffers anything that is not immediately undone. What remains is merely the fear of loading delays, under which only the player suffers.
Breaking the Cycle
Lamentably, the only escape designers seem to see is imitation of console RPG sensibility: namely, sharply reducing the difficulty of combat except against "bosses." This "solution" solves nothing; doing away with non-consequential failure by removing failure itself is like cutting off your nose to get rid of a pimple. Removing failure not only takes most of the fun out of success, it takes out the fun of failure itself. As researchers like Niklas Rajava explained in a paper
