How important is difficulty to you in games?

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Kaunisto said:

Depends on genre.

With most action games I prefer casual, just playing the easiest.
RPGs definitely need to be easy and casual.
In puzzle and adventure games (point'n'click and such) being too easy makes it pointless.
Strategy games depends, if there's a campaign to fight through I'll do it easy, if it's just a general thing you play again and again then I go up to about medium to see what level I can still beat.
Driving games are ones that I most need difficulty with. Though in suitable amount, I do prefer to be able to finish games.

Have you tried Rally games? They are a fantastic example of how to handle difficulty in a driving game which is a genre that has the absolute cheapest difficulty settings imaginable with things like rubber banding or just slowing and speeding up cars with no nuance to the AI behaviour. The difficulty in Rally games comes from your ability to focus and get in a flow state, it's a magical experience to play at a high difficulty even if you have to slowly raise the difficulty bit by bit until you get there, nothing changes to the game but the speed you manage to take the game on at and damaging your car less to beat the decreased time.