I'm not dodging anything. I'm telling you, I've already addressed your point, yet your reading comprehension continues to repeatedly fail you.
Oh, we're playing by those rules, huh? In that case, I've already won. Why? Well, because I say so, of course. Arguing the Blanko way is a lot easier than actually putting effort into making points.
Why are you trying so hard to pretend I haven't addressed your point? If you don't remember or know what I've said - despite you responding directly to it - you could just ask me to repeat it.
Classic Rushy projection, amirite? Let me remind you that I did attempt to demonstrate how Dark Souls is more complex than you claim it is, and you shot it down with this:
That's what you call an attempt?
Now, I know your standards for "making a point" are very low, but usually you would include a thing called "reasoning". I'm really not sure what you expect me to address when you're not addressing any of my points first.
Take the skill system for example. You could run through the entire game... and not even use it. Now you might say "well thats player choice man" no it isn't. It is horrific design. You can ignore an entire system in the game and still get through. They attempted to add complexity to the game that was wholly unnecessary. You would hardly notice if they never implemented it at all.
On the contrary, it's a sign of good design that the game is consistent in its design philosophy. Since the game is designed not to pull cheap spots on you, by extension you don't need to pad your stats to withstand cheap shots either. I don't see what's bad about giving the player options anyway. You say it is, but again... no reasoning.
In addition, if the stat system wasn't ignorable, that would mean it would be poorly designed. Because if it wasn't, that would mean the player would be forced to spec into something the game would expect you to require, completely eliminating the ability to specialize and thus defeating the purpose. It sounds to me like you want RPGs to be garbage where you raise stats because "lol bigger numbers".