From the article, they are trying to balance the concept of "save anywhere" to saving at checkpoints. This is not as easy as it sounds since if you have a "fair" game and a "save anywhere" you will annoy some of the better gamers who will find games like that no challenge while a checkpoint save will be off-putting to the more casual gamer.

Take the Souls/Borne games which are punishing but fair as an example. You can pretty much save anywhere but when you die and you die a lot initially until you "git gud" 🙂 you return to the last bonfire/lantern and you only have one chance to get you souls/blood echoes back. The same concept also applies to games like Nioh and Lords of the Fallen (has a time limit as well).

While it is possible for the developers to include a difficulty setting (eg. easy, normal hard, punishing ... etc) but you won't please everyone and if the game has an on-line component you are going to have casual players getting creamed by more advanced players even with "fair" and "balanced" matching. Of course, you can always include "Pay to Win" microtransactions but the better gamers will just not bother playing.

Then you have the concept of a difficulty setting you as the player can change "on the fly" (eg Oblivion, Skyrim, The Witcher 3 to name some) which may be helpful to a noob players but disdained by the more advanced player since that for them is effectively a cheat. Lets put it this way how many players of games that have an "on the go" difficulty setting that you chan change "on the fly" reduce the difficulty rather than "git gud' 🙂 ?

Try shopping for one online.