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Yeah man I think they primarily incentivized exploration with... the shadowtree fragments you despise and apparently didn't bother to explore to find despite acknowledging their power and usefulness.
You seem to be in the demographic that cannot ever be pleased by game design.
FWIW I don't think I've ever revisited a DLC area in a FromSoft game on subsequent playthroughs, and I'm not sure I will with ER either. They tend to be areas that are awesome to explore once, and then I'm happy to shelf them away while the main game is replayable quite a bit. I don't see anything inherently "bad design" about that result. It's there if I ever want to go see it again, it's purely optional.
I found the DLCs to be some of the best content in all of these games and usually do revisit each DLC on subsequent playthroughs (might skip Sunken King and Iron King DLCs in future Souls 2, and Ringed City in future Souls 3, though).
Old Hunters, Artorias of the Abyss, Ashes of Ariandel are all awesome, some of the best content from their respective games, or at least the most memorable. Ivory King in Souls 2 is IMO the best zone in that entire game. The Souls 2 DLCs are definitely the most hit or miss, with some total junk like Frozen Outskirts and Cave of the Dead.
REALLY wish Demon Souls had gotten its 6th Archstone DLC officially. With the remake, or added to it a year later, would have been great. Was supposed to be a frozen northern land full of giants. Well, it's the greatest what-if in modern gaming for me. We can probably see most of the elements of the 6th Archstone in other areas in later games though (Frozen Eleum Loyce, Painted World of Ariamis, Mountaintop of the Giants, etc).