Why?
I loved Returnal, then ended up hating it - Because of the difficulty and lack of save points and harsh/broken progression.
So now a game I could’ve had on my all time top 10 isn’t even on my top 100 list if I would ever bother making such a list.
How is that a good thing? What positives do I get from that? What does Housemarque gain from that?
All it does is making me less likely to buy their next game and it has also made me cautious on the whole roguelike genre and also other games people mention when talking about hard games, like Sekiro,
So, no. How about focusing on making sure people can have fun with the games instead. How about making sure the completion percentage isn’t getting lower for every boss battle. Are devs proud if only 10% of their customers see the conclusion of the story and will bother with a potential sequel?
Easy mode, save points, even rewind mechanics. Everything is fine as far as I’m concerned.
Just make it all optional! So people can choose how much challenge they want, and use trophies/achievements to reward those who play without any help, make a git gud trophy or something.
My son finished Super Mario Odyssey as a 4 year old. Because of a brilliant easy mode which replenished the health whenever he stod still for a few seconds. Still challenging to find the right spot for health regen when enemies attacked, but he finished it and was super happy and proud. Would never have happened with only one difficulty supposed to be perfect for everyone.