I play mainly AAA games and I'm yet to find a game that disapointed me because they had multiple difficult selections or even a game I thought that got dumbed down and unpleasant because they made it to be mass market.

Most were Sony 1st party or exclusives and considering their praise I fail to see this unique view you and some others are seeing that AAA games are on a very bad situation due to panderizing to mass market.

They are just remembering you that you suck =p

That was not the vision of the devs.  They wanted to make a game where when co op is available, there are risks.  It is part of their vision for how they wanted online to work.

You can wish something is a certain way all you want, but to say they SHOULD change the entire premise of their vision for the game to suit your needs is just silly.  I do not like Fortnite because all of the building mechanics, but I do not think the devs should remove them just because I do not want to use them.  That was their vision of how they wanted their game played, plain and simple.

Its ok to suck at a game. Overcoming challenges are part of the fun.

I do agree with you that it is bothersome to have those "want help message" all the time.

Difficulty settings wouldn't be necessary if game AI would work like a good DM in the old table top RPGs. A good DM challenges the party, yet leaves a way out and will adjust difficulty on the fly not to kill off the party and end the game. Games need to figure out how to dynamically scale difficulty to challenge players from start to end without vertical learning curves or obstacles that become frustrating. Unless ofcourse you venture into an area you are not supposed to be in yet.

There are many ways to scale difficulty for example rubber banding has been used in arcade racing games for decades to keep races close. Online lobbies offer boost and increased drafting to keep racers together. The last of us also does something similar by throwing you much needed items when you get low. The AI director in Left 4 dead keeps the players on their toes. Unreal Tournament had a setting where players that run out ahead were handicapped by making them easier to hit, while doing the reverse to players that die a lot. In a game about learning patterns like Dark Souls, enemy speed can be flexible as well as hit windows and damage modifiers. A difficulty setting can determine how much the engine can scale the difficulty or not at all.

Uhhhhh... I was just discussing it... and not in terms of Dark Souls... and you just reacted as if I were talking about Dark Souls O_o...  I don't believe this topic was about Dark Souls at all originally.

It's like you're saying when people talk about fruits they're always talking about apples.  Then when someone talks about oranges, you're like, "no you're really talking about apples".

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.