I play games to experience the world, not to take a skill test.
It's not comparable to fast forwarding a movie, it's watching the movie without constantly rewinding.

It depends on the game though. Racing games are my skill test. lvl 120 +49 in DC, #720 on the world leaderboard and still climbing.

But there are people who enjoy the actual difficulty, the challenge of how hard a game can be, just like those in real life who look at an impossible challenge and get all giddy and happy because they want to take it head on, there are others in life who just don't want that sort of deal up front and center and it happens with games. You can still learn how a game works and still get put fof by it's brutal difficulty, I can figure out how a game works but that doesn't mean there isn't a fault with it's difficulty. 

I think those people just can't put into words what I just did. They don't like it because it's hard. They like it because it's nuanced. Nobody likes an "impossible" challenge, but none of the challenges in the types of games you're referring to, the Bloodborne's and Super Meat Boys, are "impossibly" challenging. They are 100% the opposite.

Learning how a game works is easy. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about becoming intimate with a game's mechanics. Becoming so in-sync with your toolset and having a complete understanding of the rules of the word and the limitations between you and your opponents, and then performing extremely intricate feats based on that intimacy.

That's why so many people who actually like Souls games say Souls games aren't hard. Most "hard" games aren't actually hard themselves. At least not unbearably hard. People just think it's hard because these games take longer and are more difficult to become completely intimate and in sync with the nuances of their mechanic and they aren't patient enough to put in the time. The better you are at video games, the less time this process takes.

I need to get in bed with my games more to notice those sublte differences and better learn to control them in future. (really trying hard not to be sarcy but that's what I'm getting from overuse of "intemacy" and "nuances")

I think those people just can't put into words what I just did. They don't like it because it's hard. They like it because it's nuanced. Nobody likes an "impossible" challenge, but none of the challenges in the types of games you're referring to, the Bloodborne's and Super Meat Boys, are "impossibly" challenging. They are 100% the opposite.

Learning how a game works is easy. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about becoming intimate with a game's mechanics. Becoming so in-sync with your toolset and having a complete understanding of the rules of the word and the limitations between you and your opponents, and then performing extremely intricate feats based on that intimacy.

That's why so many people who actually like Souls games say Souls games aren't hard. Most "hard" games aren't actually hard themselves. At least not unbearably hard. People just think it's hard because these games take longer and are more difficult to become completely intimate and in sync with the nuances of their mechanic and they aren't patient enough to put in the time. The better you are at video games, the less time this process takes.

I can definitely take stuff from what both of you said and make it apply to me. I love the nuances of difficult games (Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Ninja Gaiden, etc), but I look at that super difficult boss as a challenge. There's a part of me that will go forever unsatisfied until I overcome it.  Same feeling I get with the Myst games.

Impossibly difficult games are really just broken games.  But games that are punishingly difficult yet still beatable?  That's the perfect balance.

The nuances of the gameplay is part of that experience. It has nothing to do with testing skill. It's about becoming intimate with a set of rules and parameters. Like I said, you don't read Shakespeare to "test your reading."

It's exactly like fast forwarding. You're skimming over the details and missing out on a lot of the experience.

If 80 hours of witcher 3 and 200 hours of fallout 4 is skimming over the details, then sure!
It depends on the game, with those I'm not invested in the actual fighting mechanics. Dark souls was good enough to do ng+++ Guacemelee was rewarding too with its difficulty. Most rpgs are not however, I play them to enjoy the world.

Anyway I tend to e apprehensive of games with fixed difficulty. You can ignore side quests if they're not fun. You can skip story if you're not interested. You can skip exploring if you just want to fight. Imo you should be able to skip boss fights too if you're more interested in all the other stuff.