This, but unironically.
Failures states are an archaic holdover from arcades. Every game should be completeable by everyone.
If people want to be MLG level esporsters then that's fine too, there should obviously be high skill-ceiling games. But at the same time, the skill-floor should be all but non-existent.
The level of punishment is an archaic holdover from arcades, but failure states? That's a little farfetched. Failure states have been a component of game design as early as people were playing dice games.
Failure states are the very underpinning of a game like Mario Kart - inherent to the racing genre itself - even with it's accessibility enhancing features. Coming last in a race is a failure state, are you to tell me that everyone should come first? This doesn't make sense.
Every success that the player attains is only a success because it has an opposing condition. One where the player did not succeed. Let's take platforming for example, it doesn't matter if you pick the player up when they fall, placing them back where they were to try again, falling and resetting the player is still failure, even placing them on the other side of the object they tried to cross, is still failure.
Rayman Legends is one of the most forgiving platformers, because its failure state doesn't punish the player significantly - yet it still has a failure state. Players can still die, they can still take damage.
However it's also about understanding your players. Hypothetically, let's say From Software removed the failure state from Dark Souls, the game is marketed on failure, sold to people on the prospect that they might not be able to complete the game, how do you think that audience would react?
Games that don't have failure states can be entertaining, especially as platforms for narrative or art. For instance, games like Dear Esther, and Gone Home suit this quite well, but others, like Mario Kart or Rayman Legends, are built on the idea that they want to challenge the player in some way and the possibility to fail is inherent to that.
As another example, take a game like Inside. Can you imagine what would be left if we removed the failure state? If the boy couldn't be eaten by dogs, or drowned, if there was no risk? The prospect of failure can be used to convey affective, emotional significance to the player that's integral to the games design and immersion.
Perhaps you and I are talking about something different. Perhaps you are talking about game over screens, and the punishment that often follows the failure state, or perhaps not. Either way, this is my perspective.
The elitists advocates in this thread are really annoying. It's Mario Kart, not Dark Souls. Grow up (i.e. try to view things from another perspective than your selfish super-gamer's ideology)
By the way I didn't understand why Nintendo chose not to implement this kind of assistance system in the last Zelda, considering how difficult it is. Since the Wii they have been the masters of smart assistance systems for child and casual gamers.
Breath of the WIld is really unbalanced in its difficulty. It can be one of the easiest, or hardest Zelda games. Generally speaking I think many of the 2D top down Zelda games were much more challenging, but Zelda's opening hours in particular are very difficult and quite punishing. The game does feature various components that effectively make the player invisincible (being able to heal an indefinite number of times in each fight) but its initial hours can be rather brutal, and even later, mediating its difficulty requires considerable preparation, as well as understanding of its systems.
