Permadeath

And yes, especially 'special' mobs coming back is a bit of a stretch. But then the players coming back is a stretch too, no? (yes, I know, many have implemented some form of permadeath).

If you are doing your job right designing a game, the newbie experience should be almost good enough that people don't care about permadeath any more then they would picking up a new novel.

I don't consider permadeath a reasonable solution for most virtual worlds.

Permadeath is simply a way to encourage the playing of more than one game so they can try everything.

Last week, as you might recall, I promised to play Fire Emblem: Awakening with permadeath on. I also promised to continue battling no matter what happened: in other words, if any of my party members died in combat, they'd be dead for good.

For many fans of the dungeon crawler genre, the ultimate risk is permadeath. And it’s just what it sounds like. If you die in a game with permadeath, your character is toast. Gone. Permanently.

Combat gets a lot more challenging in the back half of the story, especially if you ratchet up the sliding difficulty gauge to hard (which, notably, features Fire Emblem’s signature permadeath for added consequences to your actions).

it features character permadeath which can’t be disabled; as the press release puts it, “in this Fire Emblem game, if your soldiers meet their end, they’re gone forever.”