The game just needs to define what it wants to be, and make that clear to the potential players. Then they will decide if it sounds like a game they want to play.
DCC explicitly says "this is a meat grinder. If you like those, you'll like this game."
Fate says "this is a cinematic story game."
D&D says "this is everything/anything you want!", and as a result doesn't focus its ruleset enough to make us very picky people happy. They made an attempt to create a more modular set of rules that would allow you to put together anything from meat grinder to story mode, and I like that, but they didn't go far enough. Meat grinder survival mode needs a much different set of rules than does cinematic action story.