What's the point of playing a game you can't lose?

[Hat_Truck]

Quoting a Diablo 3 Developer:

I don’t think death penalties need to edge into the ‘punishment’ definition (although I realize that’s a confusion of terms) to be worthwhile.
Making sure someone can’t endlessly throw themselves against monsters/die/repeat and eventually win is something we’d want to stop. To make the player take pause and realize they’re not going to get past them unless they straighten up and pay attention and play better, or take some extra measures to buff up, or simply come up with a different strategy, those are the types of death penalties that work. Those are the ones we like and that I’m talking about.

Taking gold away from people, or taking a full level of experience away, yeah, that’s a wake up call. It’s also the quickest way to get someone to uninstall the game. A very select few people will put up with something like that. It’s fine in Diablo II because gold has almost no use, but imagine if it did. You’d be encouraged through the mechanic to grind in easier areas where you’re sure you couldn’t die just so you could earn gold safely. That sounds terrible. Without a gold penalty you can play the content you want to play and meanwhile you’re finding items and amounts of gold that are relevant. That sounds like fun.

Yes, because it's all about not doing anything that wouldn't BE FUN isn't it? This excerpt sounds suspiciously like Riot Games' infamous anti-fun philosophy. Let's not punish the player for dying, or add any mechanics that could cause frustration, that wouldn't be fun!

Ironically, they haven't stopped people from endlessly throwing themselves against monsters, dying, resurrecting, then eventually winning the game.

10% durability loss, even on the hardest difficulty (Inferno) is a joke. What's the point of playing the game if you can't even lose? It doesn't matter how good you are/what gear you have if you can just keep resurrecting/repairing until you win.

Oh but of course there's hardcore mode where if you die once you're done forever. This is the kind of terrible all-or-nothing design philosophy Blizzard is famous for.

We waited 15 years for this? Hopefully Torchlight 2 won't be so bad.