All right, I found an old post I wrote in August where I went into details as to why I don't want an easy mode in Souls games (and other types of games that wouldn't benefit from "more options") whilst being OK with easy modes in story-driven games. Copy/pasting it with some slight edits:
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"More options are always good" has always been a bogus statement. More options are good for SOME types of games, but not all. I get annoyed by how this statement is almost always presented as obvious fact. It might seem intuitively true at first, but it doesn't hold up to scrutiny whatsoever.
First of all, adding difficulty levels is not trivial dev work. Some games in particular require quite the fine-tuning and balancing effort. Other games are fun and shine through their game design mechanics, which, if you tone down the difficulty too much, will be rendered essentially meaningless. I'm fine with devs deciding they don't want to spend that kind of effort and focus their dev resources on other things. And anyone saying "it's just 5 minutes of dev work" and the like are showing their crass ignorance, really.
A perfect example of that is actually in a game that
doesn't have an Easy mode: Shadow of Mordor. The game's most hyped and "innovative" mechanic was the Nemesis system. But the core game itself was so brain-dead easy, that the Nemesis system was almost 100% useless. I was sloppy/impatient once or twice in the beginning and died and saw the Nemesis system in action, then I never died again for 90% of the game, and never experienced the Nemesis system again. It didn't help that the game was overall pretty dull, with absolutely brain-dead combat and climbing and stealth that was never really needed (because, once again, the game was too easy so that there was no incentive to use stealth except maybe to mix things up a bit). I can't imagine how even more boring it would be on an hypothetical Easy mode.
As for Souls games: it's not that the difficulty is the
only reason to play these games, no. But the challenge they pose is still essential to what makes them great games. People praise the atmosphere, level design, enemy/encounter/boss design, combat mechanics, etc. for a reason.
But all those things crumble if there is no serious threat to the player. Carefully placed ambushes that lurk around any corner will make the player nervous and hesitant to just barge in carelessly, adding to the tense atmosphere. If those ambushes or traps posed no real threat, that tension is gone*. A scary-ass boss, supposed to be a primeval monster/guardian that devour any hapless adventurer it comes across, loses a lot of its menacing feel if it's trivial to destroy (good ol' ludo-narrative dissonance anyone?). The depth and wealth of combat customization and arsenal at your disposal become irrelevant if you can just mash R1 with any weapon and win every encounter this way, but when you know you need every edge, you might consider using buffing items, support magic, projectiles to lure enemies or items to distract them and stealth past them.
And of course the whole "sense of triumph at overcoming great obstacles" theme that is basically the core concept of these games and is even directly integrated into the game's story and lore would lose any meaning if the games were trivial.
And then there is, of course, that little detail about multiplayer, which would require server segregation and thinning the player pools. No thanks. Bad enough that some players still play online despite "hating invasions" and then pull the plug on you the very second you invade. xD
So, to re-iterate: we play Souls games for their great combat mechanics, level design,
dark fantasy art direction (including enemy and boss visual designs), encounter design, and atmosphere.
The difficulty ties into all of that; if you remove it completely, each of these aspect will suffer. It is not the case for a game like, say, Uncharted, where the core aspects are the pulpy, cinematic, Indiana Jones adventure feel. Or even for a game like Horizon Zero Dawn, which is again a very story-driven adventure. Some games can certainly benefit from "more options". Souls games, or super-hardcore games like Super Meat Boy, don't, and I'm glad From agrees with me.
Not every game is for everyone and that's OK. Making everything as accessible as possible leads to blander, diluted content and focus group bullshit.
* This cute, humorous little comic highlights the point well:
