Quote Originally Posted by Yora View Post
This seems to me to be primarily an issue of the numbers no longer matching up with the expected story and setting. I wouldn't call it a mechanical flaw as you could move on to more dangerous environments. But when it leads to players being unhappy with how their story progresses that's still a problem with game design.
That does seem like it would often lead to that, since the one story it produces is "we were a bunch of treasure hunters in a relatively safe area who succeeded too often and decided to go somewhere we'd have a chance of dying, because reasons."