Yeah, it is all about patience. Many people have learned to play fast action games and expect the Souls games to fall into that category. But they are slow, you should go into them patient. And that's the whole point. People going in guns blazing will think it is hard, people going in patient will think it is moderate in difficulty.

The antithesis is Serious Sam. Going in slow and deliberate probably leads to a subpar experience.

Yeah, but did anyone complain about this difficulty setting? Never heard any discussion. And this is the thesis of the OP, why get people upset. I don't think people get upset outside of Souls.

Yeah, maybe you're part of that mass market and that's why you find no fault. That is OK by the way, nothing wrong with it. The only thing is you should accept that people have different preferences.

Yeah, many people seem to forget that.

Rubber banding and adapted challenges are critized in it's own right. In many games part of the experience is to build the character and progress. If that is part of the game, you want to see, that in the beginning some challenges are impossible to beat, but if you come back later with an upgraded character they get a lot easier. If you adapt the challenge this feel of progression is lost.

Ahem. So for which games are major discussions (not a single youtuber or something, but a bigger discussion) about the difficulty settings? This is the thesis of the OP and yours seemingly, but I fail to see impactful grumblings aside from Souls.

That;s why I said, unless you venture into areas you do not belong in yet. Skyrim had dynamic difficulty scaling, making sure some things don't become too easy yet also allowing you to get over powered if you wish.

I did 'abuse' the difficulty levels in The Witcher 3. I couldn't be bothered upgrading my character so I went to hunt the high level contracts on easy mode. Which was just about possible. Still hard, yet no need to grind to be able to get to the fun stuff. I don't enjoy backtracking all that much or quests piling up like a massive todo list. If you give me a lvl 40 quest when I'm lvl 20, that's the game's fault. Yet with being able to adjust difficulty on the fly I could keep my todo list in TW3 in check. The downside was that I out leveled story missions (so increase difficulty for those) yet the rewards were paltry as the quest levels were grey. 

It's always difficult to balance open world games, dynamic difficulty is the only way to do it. In BotW I ignored the initial directions and went North to the desert and mountains first. Then when I finally went to Koriko village it was all way too easy there, or rather very unbalanced. The random encounters scale up yet the standard area enemies were all down with one hit. I also cleared / explored the castle early in the game, fun challenge. Then when I finally got there to finish the game the whole thing was pretty meaningless challenge wise.

Well then, good for you, I'm glad you're enoying them. I'm mostly dissapointed by AAA games and often tend to stay away from them, yet I occasionally make mistake, like recently with AC:OD.

And that's why, when it comes to fusion of story and exploration, from my POV, semi-open worlds will always be vastly superior...at least until your first point is solved in video games.

I had a mini-rant about tabletop RPG experience yesterday in PC thread - that eventually we'll get good narrative AI that can handle game like proper GM and that (in addition to proper physics on everything) we'll get video game RPG that can match or even surpass tabletop RPGs.

Yet, even then I think narrow scaling will work better - cause some things are just difficult and should not be adjusted much. Come later when your're ready, and game's AI GM will allow for whichever approach you might choose to solve it, if it makes sense and your character can pull it of.

Enjoy yourself playing old games and indies for the rest of your gaming life if you so much wishes.

Why thank you kind sir, I actually do mostly prefer (and have been for all of my 40+ years of gaming) non-AAA games, often in more niche genres, and luckily for me computers have always been home to most of them, so I tend to stick to that.

From time to time there is a good AAA game, but like anything else, they fall under Sturgeon's Law ("ninety percent of everything is crap") as well, and considering there are (relatively) so few of them...well, you get the picture...

Eeeeerrrr I have been playing for the last 30 days and beat most of the hard games of the time. But if you want to consider me someone from mass market that can only finish games if they are easy ok. I'll excuse me from the burden of talking to elite player top ranker.

Why thank you kind sir, I actually do mostly prefer (and have been for all of my 40+ years of gaming) non-AAA games, often in more niche genres, and luckily for me computers have always been home to most of them, so I tend to stick to that.

From time to time there is a good AAA game, but like anything else, they fall under Sturgeon's Law ("ninety percent of everything is crap") as well, and considering there are (relatively) so few of them...well, you get the picture...

Sure I get the picture, there are a lot of people with different tastes among them. And some of those like titles that most don't, and thank god VG is so diverse that this people can still find enough content to please their heart and playing time.

Sorry what? My whole post was about different gaming tastes and that there are and should be games for different tastes and THAT is elitist? I am actually not for the hard difficulty. But as I and others said many times, Dark Souls isn't that hard, it just needs a different approach. You and others here basically say, that games shouldn't be produced for my tastes, that my tastes don't count, yet I am the elitist, not you?

For years I was very unsatisfied with gaming. This was, because most games only tended to the biggest markets available, and niches fell out of view. Luckily we got the indie explosion. Many indies are filling the niches of gameplay and concepts the big AAA stuff avoids, because they need the bigger markets to recoup there costs. That's why I often have more fun with indies. Not always, my tastes partly overlap with the mass market, but partly not. I find it quite disturbing, that you say, there should be no games for me, only ones for you.

And if you read my posts, you would've seen I have nothing against difficulty settings, I only say it solves not the problem of the complainers about Souls. Because Souls is not difficult, it just plays differently. And I like Souls for being differently.

The elitism came from your presuntion that because I have no issue with the AAA I play I'm mainstream on a way that really looked like arrogance. I play games from different difficult levels from very niche to mainstream appeal.

Nope I didn't say games shouldn't be made to your or anyone else taste. What we have said is that the gaming having more options don't take away from you and people aren't DEMANDING they are REQUESTING (very different thing), and when you and others say it can't have and people should play other things but not touch your game then you are being the elitist.

Sorry to burst your bubble but the very definition of niche is to be out of view, if niche games had big market they wouldn't be niche they would be mainstream. What you could complain is that the games you like are niche so they have low production value or quantity produced.

I couldn't care less if Souls don't get an easy mode and again never said there shouldn't be games for you. I never play CoD, Fifa and other best sellers and am quite sad that they get much more attention and sales than the games I like, but I have long accepted that there are people that like them and that is fine, so I don't ask those games to not be made so people pay attention to the type of games I like.

You and I may think the game isn't hard. But you can't deny that if a mode with more damage dealt and less damage taken wouldn't be very easy to implement, would make more people try to play it and wouldn't remove anything from your enjoyment.

40+ years. Nice, you beat easily my 25+ years of gaming. And for DonFerrari: If I had to play old games and indies for the rest of my life I would lose only a few interesting games, and looking at my backlog I would be fully content with that. I have so many interesting DOS games yet to play, and as I never was a console player in the old days, so many games and game series I never even saw. And Indies producing some of the most interesting games these days.

I have no doubt you would have plenty games to play, me too. I have been playing for over 30 years so I have enjoyed the old games as well, I have no desire to be stuck on the past, but if gaming ended today I would still be able to play for the rest of my life with what I have.

Exactly. So why people demanding every game should please their tastes (which implies they shouldn't be there for different tastes)?

Who is demanding that every game should please their tastes? Reaching much? The discussion is on people that are totally against having easier difficults for games. When I was 6 I played Castle of Illusion at easiest several times, when the remaster came to playstation 3 I played it on hardest. Have not a difficult setting be available there I probably wouldn't have nostalgia about the game.

40+ years. Nice, you beat easily my 25+ years of gaming. And for DonFerrari: If I had to play old games and indies for the rest of my life I would lose only a few interesting games, and looking at my backlog I would be fully content with that. I have so many interesting DOS games yet to play, and as I never was a console player in the old days, so many games and game series I never even saw. And Indies producing some of the most interesting games these days.

Yeah, I'm fairly old, 50 is not that far away at this point.

I've always kinda gravitated to mostly more niche genres (back in 80s graphic adventures, war strategies and flight (and sub) simulators, then in late 80s I got into CRPGs) and A and AA games rather than, what we now call, mainstream or mass market AAA games. Occasionally there was AAA game got all my attention and love (like Tomb Raider back in days), and there still are AAA games that I find worth the price and my time, it's just that they are extremely few and far between.

Luckily, there was indie explosion, which is slowly turning into steady A and AA growth, and at the same time there was boardgaming explosion, so I could actually never get to play everything I wanted even if AAA industry completely vanishes.

I am always fascinated by older gamers mainly because of how rare they are. I wonder now that gaming has become so mainstream will we see an explosion of old gamers in a decade or 2, and how will that change the gaming market to have such a huge age gap/range between their audience.