Pretty much.
Even among the most vocal critics, their complaints center around arbitrary deaths from bugs (lag or fall damage related) which are the real issue.
Very few people seem to have a real issue with the mechanic itself, and I think many would enjoy it if it were presented as a buff instead of a penalty, which I think would be a nice messaging improvement.
Just because something isn’t in the top 5 doesn’t mean it doesn’t matter, and the forums here are notoriously an echo chamber.
That said, yes, most of my complaints are deaths from bugs, and not bein’ able to design a lava obstacle course without people refusin’ to participate because of XP loss.
I’d rather the Death Epic make the penalty 75% less or somethin’ at the very least if these bugs remain.
I don’t mind it at all. Better then losing all your items or a massive durability loss. What I can’t stand is dying to a creature with ZERO HP and the latency lets it complete one and even sometimes 2 more attacks. Getting rubberbanded off a wall, etc. Im all for the mechanic, just fix the lag!
There needs to be some sort of incentive to not die. Heck, they already spawn you close to where you die, so you don’t really have to travel to those hard to reach places after a death. Lag is something that is being worked on, so you shouldn’t even take that into consideration seeing as it’s not a feature.
What I would like to see though is either change it to a survival buff instead of penalty or maybe have a food that removes the debuff. Alternatively, if they ever implement functional furniture then maybe something that removes the debuff by ‘resting’.
I’d be happy with a food that cleared the debuff.
Well since you all complain so much. How about this for a suggestion.
When you die, you get teleported back to your home beacon, drop all items in your inventory, and have 5 minutes to go back and collect them before they despawn, or someone else could pick them up within that 5 minutes.
That seems like a very fair death system. You die, you lose everything and restart over. You know, like dieing in real life.
But if I wanted the tedium of real life I’d do that and not be playing a game to unwind after work. 
Better yet, reset you back to toon creation screen. And all you your plots are free for all to loot…
If we had a hardcore mode ruleset with separate servers I’d probably be one of the few that would actually play it more than the regular. 
… tho they’d need to fix the lag first.
Edit: Not going to happen tho, it’s too small a niche of players, it wouldn’t be financially viable.
Fix the lag… pff… Where’s the challenge 
I don’t mind the death penalty, it just makes you work harder for experience.
To be honest I am level 50 and can wipe out the 20k in about 15-20 minutes if I go out hunting.
But those forms of entertainment are probably not a survival type of game. Every game with survival aspect that I’ve played have always punished the player for dying or being I’ll prepared.
Take Ark for example, when you die, you drop all your stuff next to whatever killed you. And if you had one of your tamed dinos with you I could possibly die wich could mean HOURS (it can take several hours to tame dinos) maybe days worth of work (leveling, breeding) gone in one fell swoop.
The punishment in boundless is pretty lax.
The context of that argument was people kept actin’ like they can only enjoy somethin’ if there’s “risk” involved, and my example was proof counter to that.
Also, to simply call this a “survival game” is pretty broad.
Personally I need the risk to enjoy the game.
I love building but never liked, for example, the creative mode in Minecraft. Always played in survival.
an other thing opinion!=proof.
the movie argument is a false equivalence at best.
Movies and games are both forms of entertainment.
So is jogging, and reading a book…
The death penalty for jogging is quite severe 
Sure but the risk of coming late to a movie and not get a ticket to enter is not part of the movie.
That’s like the risk of your credit card getting declined while buying a game on steam is not part of said game.
If we want to compare just because those are entertainments… Let’s pick another category, activities. Risk vs Reward/Enjoyment, i present you: Activities. Joyriding! I give you definition: “To joyride is to drive around in a stolen vehicle with no particular goal other than the pleasure or thrill of doing so.” So If I were to compare Boundless to Joyriding, I say Boundless is preeeeety meeeellow when it comes to punishment. How about serving time in real jail instead of xp debuff? 