I play a lot of video games and I like to talk about them to anybody. One thing I hear a lot (and read a lot on guides) is that video games are useless to play on any difficulty but the hardest, and that anything easier is just too easy to beat. I've never understood this mindset.

Maybe I don't understand because I tend to play games that have a class, and I usually play something like a mage that requires a lot of careful playing to survive on normal difficulties, and I just don't care to deal with the extra planning to make it work on hard. Maybe I don't understand because I tend to like to pay attention to the storyline instead of challenging gameplay. I always tell myself I'll go back through a game and play a harder difficulty on a character that will be better geared toward a harder play-through, but after I finish the story I get drawn to new games with new stories. Maybe I just like play-throughs being quick so I can move on to a new game.

I think all of these are a part of the reason I play easy difficulties, but I think the biggest reason is I don't like to lose. Hard difficulties mean that without attentive planning, understanding of all mechanics of the gameplay (and their execution), and defensive playing, death is inevitable. I like winning, not having to reload a save against normal enemies that are too difficult. I like to go slashing through things and feel at ease when I play games, not worry about how to beat a boss I've died on thirty times - it's why I don't play Dark Souls.

I understand the other side of this, though. Some people play games to be challenged. It's just not my way of playing. But it's rude and quite annoying when people say that somebody is playing a game wrong because they play an easier difficulty setting. Having preferences is fine, but degrading people because their preference is different shouldn't be such a common thing, even for something as petty as video game settings.