Elden ring absolutely does meet player expectations - challenge is the expectation of the souls-like genre.

6 Charisma can roll a 20 and be able to convince whomever of whatever

Certain people should never be able to make certain successes

only as amazingly as they are capable

I don't disagree with any of this but I'm not talking about how the win should look in the fiction.

It's just that when you roll a crit but don't get a crit, most players will get extra disappointed. That's a fact of the human experience that no rules text will ever change.

Good design accounts for the reality of how people actually use a thing.