Let's not celebrate a game losing a huge part of it's gameplay identity, for the sake of attracting a wider crowd to it. The Souls series was one of these few franchises left that punished it's players for bad decisions, and mistakes. But that's gone now. There were dozens of action RPGs you could have played, if you wanted an easier, less forgiving experience. Now Souls is about to change into a game it isn't really meant to be.
It's not about the respec item. It's about the philosophy behind it. It it seeped through the core of the game itself. For me Dark Souls was not just about the gameplay, or the visuals, or the art design. It was about how it felt. Everything had weight. Every decision was permanent. Every spent soul meant something. Even killing a NPC meant he/she was gone from the game. The game made me feel like I was part of a real living world.
But now FROM accommodated the people who didn't try to understand how Souls was unique. Now you can respec. Now you can bring back dead NPCs to life. Now you can zip around the map from the get-go. There's nothing permanent or earned. The very core tenets of the game have changed from what made Dark Souls, Dark Souls into just another action RPG.
That's what angers people. Not the fact that some people will respec all the time. The fact that the entire game is seemingly now built around ideas like it.
You are making a tremendous amount of assumptions based on nothing. Let me ask you this: if this respec item was available only in NG+ and then only once per NG+, does it invalidate all of your character decisions? Does it turn Dark Souls into just another ARPG?
I refuse to believe that something like a respec or waypoint system cannot be intelligently implemented into the game without undermining what makes it great. Yes, it can be bad, as it was in D3, and I think that trend does warrant some concern from people who disliked how it affects games, but that doesn't mean you can damn a game for simply stating it's trying a thing that others have done poorly before you even know anything past the fact that it exists.
You know what I think? I think the worst part of the Souls games is the fact that some of the most elemental facets of your character, things that deeply effected the way you played and how well you performed, were obfuscated from the player and never properly explained. Does streamlining things like that cause the game to lose part of it's identity? Does it turn it into "just another ARPG?"
I believe the systems in DS can be improved upon. I think it's reasonable that an earlier fast travel system, if implemented well, can make the game better. Same with respeccing and players who want primarily PvP. After thousands of hours, I promise you it's hard to derive enjoyment out of running through the game for the umpteenth time to try out a specific spec. Respecing can make that experience better and still not undermine the consequence of player desicions, if it is designed to do so.
It's frustrating because, reading posts like yours, I get the impression that any change that improves the game from systemic perspective is going to be met with backlash from people who want FROM to just make the same game again. I'd hate for a designer to feel limited by their audience clamoring for status quo when they feel that they could improve upon their design, and I'm glad game development is such that paranoid opinions like yours don't reach developer's ears before they have a chance to try it.
I have faith that the people that made the first two games so incredible and unique can do it again while making the experience better overall. Change is good.