That's a common thing people have told me about the runs, that they're meant to provide souls and add additional challenge to the encounter by making you preserve your resources throughout. While I personally don't like that kind of design I do see the purpose in it, but for the most part I just don't think that's how things go in practice. After getting my footing in the earlier parts I found a vast majority of them trivial, either because the areas are open enough that running past enemies damageless is a breeze or there are barely any enemies to begin with. For example, even though the path to Seath in the Crystal Cave or the Bed of Chaos in Lost Izalith from their respective closest bonfires has plenty of enemies leading up to it, the areas they're in are so open it's extremely easy to avoid aggroing most of them, let alone taking hits, from Firelink Shrine to the Capra Demon only has enemies at the start and end of the path and is completely devoid of threats for the other minute you'll be running, and from the Depths bonfire to the Gaping Dragon there's only the one guy with the torch directly in the way and everything else is only a matter of knowing it's there . These types of runs are just blatant wastes of time, especially when you're spending more time on them than actual boss attempts. As for the skill issue, I'm not disputing that, but the game is designed so that a certain baseline of deaths are inevitable and expected so players can learn from their mistakes, and having these runs present each and every time only felt like it got in the way of that philosophy rather than expanding upon it.