I enjoy being challenged, I wish more games would offer well designed difficulty like Souls games. Not simply adding more damage the enemies attacks like most games do in the "Hard Mode". However, people enjoy games for different reasons, so offering more options is better as long as it does not compromise the creative vision and how the game was designed.

I believe all games should have different difficulty options as everybody is different (whether its game skills or not alot of free time).

It's almost like a 'no difficulty option' is a like a big "F**k you!" to those who don't have as good of a hand/eye coordination as others.

I can't imagine if like Capcom expects everybody to be EVO pro to play Street Fighter with a joystick. T_T

Many games are easier than they used to be, since games moved away from the arcade business model, but there are still plenty of games out there that are hard it's just not the standard anymore. Another thing to take into account is many of the people playing games are much better having played games for years and years.

This, basically. Also, a lot of the things that make a game "hard" isn't actually hard. It's removing all the BS nonsense you have to redo to get were you fucked up. Checkpoints? They're there so I don't have to replay the first area that I CAN beat. Just the one area after that, kills me, is the hard part. Am I skipping that hard area, no. Just the area I normally would of been forced to play, 800 times, to waste my time. Take GTA V. Play a heist. You fuck up. For whatever reason. Driving to the locations is a pointless waste of time. We already did it. And that is not the area I died. I don't need to replay that part over and over again. Bayonetta 1. There's this stage with the moving card paltforms.

Normally, this games checkpoints are perfect. But some levels, like this one. The pprogrmaer got stuck in 1985. And the check point starts you before you reach the rooms mini boss. After jumping over the dumb card paltforms. These paltforms aren't what killed me. The mini boss was. I don't need to redo this part. Then, because you're getting mad at dying, and jumping around over and over again. When you jsut want to fucking take on the boss. Not deal with fading cards. You start making mistakes. You fall, and the cycle repeats. Till you rage.

Difficultiy is a nice feature. Who cares if you play on what setting. I paid the $60. I can do what I want with the game. I want to have fun. Not rage and waste 2 hours on trying to outrun a postman. Grinding isn't the problem. What people really hated was the time waste to watch animations, press a, hit yes no. Oh shit I'm low on health, I gotta heal. OH SHIT I got killed by zubat, getting out of the cave. FUUUUUUUUUUUCK! Rinse and repeat. If your game can disable all the repeatable and not imporant aspects. ALA Braverly First. Then grinding isn't a chore.

Games should be fun, not frustrating.

No that is bad game design, a good example is the fusion system in Tales of Zestiria because the game has a hard time explaining it. I tried to explain it to some people on Vgchartz aswell.

Its a interesting topic.I personally believe that games have gotten WAYYY easier.And while it did get a bit harder in general comparing games nowaydays to games from 4 to 5 years prior, they still hold hands too much.

Dont get me wrong, I know there are all kinds of games, and I am happy by it.I enjoy alot playing games that dosent need to master it now and then, but I feel like too many games do that, especially games that would be better if they presented a tougher challenge.

Bottomline, I just find it wrong when a game has a history of being hard/challenging, and the developers make things easier in an attempt to catter to more people.Or games made to make the player master the gameplay but it is watered down to fears that the game will be make people rage quit, and lead to lower scores, as we seen it happen.

And personally, I even think some games should not even have multiple difficulties settings, as a easier mode could prejudice the overall experience.One such game that should do that(and as far its been always like this) is Final Fantasy

We've drifted far afield of the good ol' arcade days, where higher difficulty - quarter munchers - meant more income for game publishers. Nowadays (most) devs are concerned with players enjoying their time with a game so they'll be more inclined to buy their next game. And it's very hard to enjoy a game for long if you are perpetually stuck on stage 3 (see Battletoads).

All that said, difficult games exist, they just (usually) have baby settings for babies.

In recent times developers have a mentality, that being that if a game isn't finished the consumer will feel like they're not getting the full experience. That along with games becoming less arcade-like in which constant death was a way of making more money from a title and we have this modern design philosophy of more save points/checkpoints and other difficulty alleviating tools so that all players can experience most if not all content.

I wouldn't say those games have well designed difficulty. I don't know about DS 2 and Demon Souls, but DS1 had plenty of bosses where the only way to survive certain attacks was to have the knowledge on how to survive ahead of time, and many times the bosses would kill you before you had much of a chance to strategize or determine what to do to survive some attacks.  I recall two fire bosses in particular that made very little sense...although the other fire bosses also were kind of weird.  

On a side note: I don't know where this idea of "You have to be punished by the game" in order for it to have a balanced difficulty is coming from, but normal difficulty should be considered Nintendo difficulty in the likes of Super Mario Galaxy or LTTP.  Those games and MGS4 have the most balanced difficulty settings I have ever played in a game.  The difficulty settings in MGS4 really do feel like they say they are and I have had a run through with all of them.