And that I doubt. Yes, there are always some complainers, but outside of Souls I see no real discussion about difficulty.

Since I've started playing with mods, I've learned that, without a doubt, players want options. Some players want brutal difficulty, others want to be a virtual killing machine. Some players like realism, others want increased convenience. As long as the player is enjoying themselves, all of that is valid.

In today's environment, it should be about what consumers want, not about pretentious statements like, "the game should be played as the developer intended." I don't give a rat's ass what the developer intended if I can have more fun playing the way I want to play.

The technology is there to offer players more control over their experience. It should be used as much as possible.

I agree with you. My experience with difficulty setting has never been very pleasant. I enjoy learning how to play the game so I tend go for higher difficulties as I know that nowdays "normal difficulty" just means stroll through the game without ever dying. The problem is that games are never really balanced around the Hard difficulty, so what ends up happening is you have games like Skyrim, where any difficulty lower than legendary is piss easy, but when you set it to legendary you are pretty much forced to use a bow or magic as meele combat will almost always get you instant killed by any somewhat strong monster. 

So because the games are not balanced around higher difficulties, these difficulties ttend to force the player to play a certain way such as using gimmicks or a certain overpowered item or weapon and are usually more frustrating than difficult. Yet lower difficulties are just as silly, if you see any casual gamer play games you will see how there is no thought process behind any of their actions, they just stroll forward and bash their head against whatever pops up.

As far as the souls games goes I think they shouldn't have any difficulty setting. If anything maybe they could add a "never die" setting which would be as easy as turning a switch and your character can never die. Yet I feel like what the hell is the point of playing the game then? This is what I dont understand from these "easy" difficulty people who want to play Souls games, the whole point of that game is dying and overcoming the odds by learning and getting better. There is no great story, or great social interactions or anything like that. The games are purely about the gameplay so why would the gamers who dont care about gameplay want to play it? Other than to make themselves feel like they can do it too or something. Not much different than the players who dont want to lower the difficulty because the feel it is an achievement to have beat the games and it shouldnt be handed down to others who didnt want to put in any effort.

SO basically I think this debate is about the whole movement nowadays where people think they deserve everything and everything should be given to them without any effort on their part. It is why micro-transactions are rampant, it is why world of warcraft was ruined years ago and also one of many factors that are responsible for the terrible state of the game industry today. 

I play to enjoy and please myself, not the dev.

This train of thought always baffled me

which of them?

Some people fear that once they start adding optional helps, devs won't stop and they'll go far beyond them and dumb the whole game down.

People who get upset about optional difficulty assist. 

Because the prove is in the pudding. This is already the case, pretty much every single game out there is guilty of this. The Soul Series and a few indies are the only ones standing against this yet you have people who want to ruin them as well, for some petty reason like " I should have the right to play it too", even when the souls games are completely based around the gameplay and the concept of dying and overcoming the odds. Removing the difficulty in the souls series would be no different than removing the story in Uncharted. Yet people still want to play it like that just to feel included and say that they did it. Its silly and worst of all it messes it up for others who are actually invested and interested in that style of game.

Personally, while I don't mind it on some games, I do mind it on others. I do think that when your target demo is children or those unfamiliar with games, a bit of experiential prioritization is needed. I do think however that there are games where the experience is effected by the difficulty, and I don't at all believe in this democratic notion that everybody is entitled to their own satisfying experience. When the literature is in the mechanics, don't touch the mechanics.

I always liken it to that - literature. I do not, for example, think that someone who does not have the reading comprehension necessary to comprehend Shakespeare should get to enjoy the narratives in Shakespeare because there is such a large part of understanding the narrative that lies within the way the words are strung together. Macbeth is not a good story because of the revenge plot - but people who sparknote it will only see it as a story about revenge. You are losing a lot of information that is important by neutering these kinds of details, and I think the same category of detail lies in the complexity of mechanics present in a challenging game.

The argument to this is, obviously, let people ruin their experience. But that's where I absolutely don't budge. I do not believe anyone is entitled to finishing an experience they are not ready for. There are plenty of games made to cater to you. A game like Uncharted for example frankly is not very mechanically complex. There is not a lot that lowering the difficulty can do to change what that game means, so you can have an adult story there for people who are not very good at games. There are a lot of games like this, but there are a lot that are not, and if you want to enjoy them, you should work up to the ability to get there. And if you can't, tough. Not everything in the world has to be made for you to enjoy.

There is an overall lack of appreciation and understanding for what difficulty is, how it functions, and where its value lies that always cause nonsense debates like this to crop up. That and how games are look at as products for a consumer instead of art from an artist.