At most dev may put a disclaimer in front of the difficult settings like "the way we designed the game to be played". They may even put an even harder setting for people that want it.

I see no reason to get upset about the idea of having difficulty options. It's just arrogant as having options doesn't mean you no longer can enjoy the game the way you want to.

For example, while I personally enjoy the difficulty in Breath of the Wild, including its durability system, I wouldn't object to options that would let you adjust enemy HP, damage, frequency of stronger enemies, the durability or an option that would *gasp* get rid of durability altogether.

I've never understood the issue with this kind of idea either, Curl, even on a game like Dark Souls.

I mean, look at Smash - the adventure mode has its difficulties listed as "Easy", "Normal (Recommended)" and "Hard". The designers designed that mode with a particular difficulty level in mind (hence calling it "recommended") but provided other options to cater to different skill levels. I'm not gonna lie, I've had to push it down from Normal to Easy on a couple of occasions. I might have had three hours to blow on a single challenge when I was 20, but not now.

Different difficulty options are pretty much never a bad thing. They don't require a lot of effort to include in a game, and they allow it to reach a wider audience. Besides, what's easy for one person isn't always for another.

No.

He's saying that if you only driven automatics and buy a car with manual you should learn to drive with the manual transmission. It might be harder initially but as time goes you get better.

Nope. Would at least be something like "don't make this car with auto option, whoever wants to buy it should learn to drive manual because reasons".

Absolutely not what he is saying. And we are talking about options here.

So using cars a better example would be how (and this happens) you have 3 trims of a honda civic with one having a manual, one an automatic and one with a semi automatic (with paddle shifters to still give you manual control but without the hassle of a clutch). What he is basically saying is that if driving a manual is perceived as the "best way to drive" then even though its hard and shut out majority of the drivers then they shouldn't still make an automatic which in his mind breaks the true experience of driving. S you either get better at driving a manual or don't buy the car at all.

This is about options. 

When you really think about it; what sense does it make for a dev to make a game that only 5% of the gamers out there can play? Do you think any publisher would ever complain about more sales? Or they would go "we aren't happy that 10M people got the game because 9M of them finished the game on the normal difficulty instead of the hard difficulty".

Do you know how easy it is to build in difficulty levels into most games? With a game like dark souls just make the enemies do considerably less damage. Simple as that.

If you ask me, I think a game without an at least basic (hit point) difficulty setting just shows laziness on the part of the developers. 

Exactly. I started on a higher difficulty level and reduced it where I was struggling then back up  when it seemed to be getting too easy. I like games that allow you to switch difficulty on the fly. That's always an incentive for me to start on a higher difficulty level. If you can't change it on the fly I usually play on normal or easy.

In Metroid Samus Returns there's this scanner ability that allows you to see destructible blocks and discover a portion of the map. Using it is completely optional since you can pretty much do the same thing the old fashion way with bombs and power bombs. But when core fans knew about this they saw it as something terrible. Like... how could Nintendo dare to give the player the choice of playing like they always did or use something that is much more convinient? Shame on you, Nintendo! Only true hardcore gamers are allowed to play Metroid and the only possible way to do it is by laying bombs in every fucking square of every room!

Huh. No wonder the Metroid franchise is getting smaller and smaller...

Much more sensible option than starting straight on Give me God of War as I let my friends influence me on doing =p

When you put it that way...sure. The thing is, from my observation at least, it's impossible to balance games for wide difficulty scaling and preserve intended expereince. Eventually, you get games that are trying to be more "accessible" where that "accessibility" creeps into every design decision, no matter the level....right about every AAA game these days is guilty of that. To the pojnt of whole genres being hijacked and completely diluted.

Like i said I think that narrow scaling can work in some games. I don't really expect any AAA publisher to implement it though, mass market is there audience and they are designing games for mass market. Nothing inherently wrong with that, there are plenty of people who like those games. Just as it's nothing wrong with those who have other priorities offfering their games "as is", and it's up to each person to decide if it's for them or not...and git gud...or not.