People have short memories and care too much about an ever improving world first competition which biases their view.

I've played through Apshodelos and Eden's Gate and both were extremely similar in terms of DPS checks. You could have a couple of death and still clear their last fights the same. In terms of learning progression, it was also identical on my end since with similar statics it took me for all of them around 3 weeks (12h a week give or take). Your mileage may vary of course, but on my end, I really didn't see any difference.

If anything people are just out of Abyssos and Anabaseios, that have proven especially gruesome comparatively to what we had in previous expansions for 2nd and 3rd tiers (notably in the lower fights).

I do agree with people's reactions to SE's takes though. Their reasoning is shaky or inconsistent.