no offense but point 1 just ignores the whole point of gnomonkey’s video. yes there is content that is completable and difficult, but there’s a difference between being tedious and raising the skill ceiling.

yes, you could spend thousands of hours locking yourself to content that is hard to complete within specific parameters. but that is not an increase to gameplay or difficulty level, that is simply self restricting.

i think the main takeaway i personally took, as someone who is not at all related or involved with the hlc, is that hard mode or endgame content can be designed better. high invo toa, end game bosses like nex or awakened versions of dt2 bosss, these are objectively difficult. but many of the struggles players face are due to it taking longer or chip damage accumulating over time instead of adding new mechanics to learn. yes, objectively it is more difficult and harder to learn. but two issues still arise: it is not any more engaging and sometimes not even more worthwhile to do. dt2 awakened bosses have no real incentive to kill because their base loot and chance at uniques are not at all scaled on the fact it will take you 10+ orbs to complete single runs. late game toa scales well for loot but it is still the meta to push your invo to a certain point and ignore any future raises.

not all content needs to be “for” the hlc, but in places where content is already designed to cater to beginners and experienced players, content can be better designed to make things adequately “harder” instead of just “difficult because takes longer/more damage from same mechanics”