I claimed the hand-holding is having a boss-fight without consequences of any kind for failing.
Which in a Souls-game isn’t the case still. You loose your souls if you have any as well as any consumables - which are commonly used during bosses after all - permanently which have been taken.
Not only that but the sole bosses - before Elden Ring at least which vastly eased up on it - the only bosses which had no content to be run beforehand to reach them after a death were major storyline ones commonly. I think 1 or 2 exceptions are there.
Also comparing the difficulty and hence amount of ‘help’ or ‘lack of help’ the game gives you in comparison is also ignored. A souls-boss usually takes a mediocre player 10+ tries at times. If someone fails after 10 tries at any boss besides Lagon (and even him not really outside of the campaign maybe) then that’s already quite problematic and they won’t have a good time overall… not even starting the need to speak of dungeons.
So yes… LE is absolutely hand-holding players in terms of the timeline bosses. EHG decided to throw any risk overboard as well as them generally having a very very low skill-bar anyway. And I’m not talking about desync issues because that’s the majority of the reason some people have troubles with Gaspar or Heoroth in the first place… and since 1.1 Heoroth should be a walk in the park too for those without mobility skill.
Yes, because it was aimed in generality, not at you 
Sorry for not making that all too clear though, that was my mistake there.
Your argument is based on new players… but dungeons aren’t even aimed at new players, and neither is Aberoth for example. The dungeon bosses are designed to be harder then timeline bosses and Aberoth is designed to be harder then dungeon bosses. EHG tries to cater to a larger variety of people with a variety of content.
Hence an argument saying that they should take away the challenge related to that content is not something which should be done - in the current state - simply. It would need an alternative somewhere else before that in the first place.
They do! I agree 100% with you there.
The content is outdated, not all too well implemented from the start and missing the interesting side mechanics which would make it enticing for a small - but distinct - player-base like the the labyrinth in Path of Exile does.
That doesn’t necessitate to remove the only bit of challenge they have though, it rather pushes towards EHG overhauling the content before you even reach their respective boss and adjusting it to be in line with not only the difficulty of the boss but also giving unique types of rewards for tackling that type of content.
If something is not interesting you adjust it to make it interesting… you don’t dismantle the initial reasoning for why it was built into the game.
Yes, and that’s a fine line to walk, always.
Without any sort of frustration or stress you don’t get a big sense of accomplishment, and that investment of effort needs to be rewarded accordingly as well, which is all up for discussion after all and definitely needs adjustment, nobody will argue otherwise, you can be sure.
But this game is no game which has mechanics like ‘building something’ which inherently causes long-term enjoyment directly correlated with the effort and time put into it before seeing the finished outcome.
It also can only tell its story once before that part wanes off and solely the gameplay - as with all long-term games - becomes relevant to keep people engaged.
So keeping simply the reward while removing aspects of what even makes that content challenging simply is not a viable option to go for as it would remove that sense there. No risk to get into it, just train until you can do it and then do it without being ever challenged inside it.
Because yes, it’s all about fun, you’re 100% right… and having a sense of risk - even if it’s really miniscule like a key which you get far too many anyway - is something a good chunk of people like and which enhances their enjoyment derived from it.
Which is what I’ve mentioned repeatedly by even going in-depth about the psychological behavior that goes on in peoples minds in the background.
Fair point there.
It’s a small time loss.
And that’s it.
You don’t have any - even potential - loss of some resources.
No consumables which would need you to re-grind.
Nothing besides that.
The dungeon has a bigger time investment + resource. That alone states it as higher risk higher reward. Which it is!
The Arbor provides the best possible way in the whole game to get gear, outside of MG (which is so badly implemented to utterly de-value this content, bad choice from EHG).
Sanctum gives you access to the strongest mechanic in the game for gearing your character.
Bastion is useless and needs a re-work from the ground up simply to showcase the same risk versus reward aspect.
So outside of the Bastion they’re well positioned. You get the best possible outcomes from them in the whole game outside of specific target farmed drops.
I mis-read there, sorry for that. Read ‘400’ and my brain immediately jumped to ‘corruption’ as ‘stability’ wouldn’t have made much sense.
So ignore that whole tangent there since yeah… by mis-reading I didn’t make any sense.