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A major attraction of the book series was seeing how the situation would get even more and more fucked for pretty much everyone. I consider it less nihilistic and more a semi-gleeful entertainment to be enjoyed with virtual popcorn, but maybe that's just me. Ned Stark's fate was a brilliant way to drive home the point that anyone could die at any time, even people who would in other works be protected by being considered protagonists. "Truly anyone can die and almost nobody has plot armor" may not be a big deal nowadays (because so many people have been influenced by Martin), but it was very much different from the norm when the first book was published in 1996.
I would say that it the eventual abandonment of this "no armor" stance is what made the books (and by extension, show) weaken so dramstically. By book 4, there is no one left to die: Bran, Arya, Tyrion, Jaime, and most of the other good characters could no longer be killed because they were needed for the end game, but the books continued to introduce an unending cast of disposable, boring POVs (e.g., everything to do with pirates, the stupid Lady Stoneheart plot). Even Jon Snow's resurrection was predictable.
You aren’t entirely wrong. IMO having Jon Snow be safe and Tyrion probably but not quite guaranteed safe was fine, but the rest should have been as disposable as everyone else. Also agreed about the extra plots.
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