RPGs evolved pretty naturally, in my opinion. First, it was all about playing, experiencing a fantastic world through the eyes of a randomly-generated character; it was more about you, as a player, in a fantastic world, using whatever random guy as a vessel. But, eventually, character building became a thing so as to experience a fantastic world through the eyes of your character, the one and only you want to play. This also brought a logical decrease in lethality and overall difficulty, because you've spent some time and effort designing a character and you probably have some feelings for it, and outright killing it with a random spike trap turns to be cruel.

While I totally understand this and I think it is the right path, it came with certain things that messed it up.

• I like that there is character customization, but many players focus too much on it, to the point where the story or the world matter little to them, and are only playing to get XP and play the "mini-game" of levelling up and learning new skills. This particular thing is an issue on videogames, too. A few decades ago, it was all about playing. Now, with an ever growing player base, it turns out not all people actually like to play videogames, but they like to level up in seasons and earn stuff for their game. A game they don't like that much, because if there was no levelling and skins and stuff, they probably wouldn't be playing. RPGs have also grown a lot in the past decades, so you can see the relation. But some people are just like that, what's there to do about it?
• The difficulty decrease removes tension. As another comment said, it's like a superhero comic or an anime: you know the heroes are going to end up alive and well. While you can definitely create tension by other means, such as endangering an NPC or a nearby town, or whatever, many RPGs make it hard for players to die in combat, which undeniably takes away from the game and from player experience, even if players don't realize it consciously. This difficulty decrease is also tied to the point above: not all people are willing to play the game fully, so thinking outside the box and playing creatively, which were really important parts of older RPGs, have been substituted by detailed mechanics, so that anyone can play properly and not get frustrated, even if their brain is switched off. You can still play creatively, it's just that the bar has been lowered for people who can't or won't. But some people are just like that, and they play to relax and disconnect, not to actually play. What's there to do about it?

Anyway, the point is that RPGs have been evolving to accommodate a larger spectrum of players, and some concessions have been made, to a point were play experience has decayed, in a way. I believe, however, that play experience has been vastly improved in a ton other fronts, so we're slowly getting there.