Boots MUST BE COMFORTABLE, even if we go on more than a 10-hour tour. After every tour, be it a hike or full-day high mountain, the foot can only be tired and damp, never sore, bruised or God forbid blistered. We go to the mountains to enjoy, on 10+ hour tours for pleasure, joy, delight, so FOOTWEAR MUST BE COMFORTABLE. Quality high-mountain boots ARE COMFORTABLE, LIGHT and RELATIVELY "SOFT", less comfortable perhaps "winter" boots, mainly due to weight and robust, stiff sole needed for automatic crampons.
Pro alpinists, say mountain guides and mountain rescuers, NEVER carry hard high mountaineering boots hanging on the backpack. Not for dozens of years. Now they use LIGHT and COMFORTABLE mountaineering boots suitable for semi-automatic crampons. Long ago, they did hang heavy mountaineering boots on the backpack when they put on climbing shoes and tackled climbing (expert in plus first grade would say climbing shoes). Rather than hanging on backpack, they hid them under the wall. Today mostly low approach shoes to the wall are used, then changed for climbing shoes.
In 45 years of going to mountains, more or less every year, I only once (ONCE!) had to discard new mountaineering boots because after an hour of walking the sole hurt and burned. Not before, not after, with dozens of mountaineering boots - winter, summer, all-year, double (plastic), high, mid-high and low, no problems. Some more, some less comfortable, some heavier, some lighter, but all from first to last, with one exception, served their purpose - COMFORTABLE and SAFE walking in mountains.