What difficulty do you play your games on?

Normally I play on the hardest option, unless it becomes clear that it's poorly designed (just inflated enemy health/more damage) or meant as a New Game+ challenge (you could do an Insanity run in Mass Effect on your first go, but it's much more fun to save it for your second).

Designing an AI to beat a player into submission is actually pretty easy, but making one that is challenging enough to give you a sense of accomplishment while also not just brutalizing you is quite hard. Games are meant to be fun, so striking that balance between difficulty and enjoyment is a real tightrope. People love to bring up F.E.A.R as an example of how stagnant AI development has become ("It's over 10 years old and still the best in a FPS!"), but that was a great combination of levels designed to showcase the AI's (beautifully simplistic) decision making and the overly loud NPC barks that let you know what they are going to do (and add to the illusion, i.e. they'd call for reinforcements but there's no actual reinforcement mechanic, just enemies later on that you were bound to run into) so you can appreciate and counter it.

If you give this a read, you can see why AI design isn't the only factor; a lot of behind the scenes decision making helps determine how successful an AI is. I'm not sure cutting difficulty levels would make as much of a sweeping change as you are hoping for, especially if the trend of scripted encounters and bland level design isn't addressed.

I'll usually play on default. If I really, really love the way a game plays and I think the design will support it, I'll consider going back and playing on the hardest difficulty, though to date I've only done that for the first Infamous (plan to do it for 2 soon enough), Metroid Prime and (big mistake) Viewtiful Joe.

Also if I really click with the gameplay of a series, I may turn the difficulty up for sequels, just to get that sense of progression. That can backfire too, though. Mass Effect 3's Insanity difficulty just freaking drained me after a while with how long most encounters took, to the point where I didn't finish it out of boredom, so whenever I get back to that I think I'll keep it on Veteran, or Hardcore mode at the highest.

For the vast majority of my games though, normal is the sweet spot.

I'm not usually clamoring for more difficulty in my games. Normal is almost always just right.

Easier or normal.

Shooters: Hard.
Everything else: Normal.
X-COM: Easy

Easiest then hardest. I like strolling through to see what the game has to offer on the first go, and then to have some semblance of a challenge and the possibility of an even better experience on the hardest the second time through a game due to that challenge as well as how that brings more immersion, if the game is good enough to warrant it. It's on very, very rare occasion that I'll just play the game on hardest the first time through; the last time I did that was the first Black Ops since I more or less watched my brother play through it when it came out. Coincidentally, the last and really only time I've played on 'normal' was just recently with Mass Effect Andromeda. I figured I am going to put many hours in, I should probably enjoy the combat with a little more challenge than just easy.

I may start doing that with specific games because if there's an open world game that I assume will take near 100 hours or more, I probably want to get some challenge out of it through that experience. I feel like I've said this several times on here, because this topic has been done more than a few times, but I am somewhat averse to 'normal' difficulties, I like going all the way one way or the other, though never the ones where if you die, you go back to the beginning (Dead Space 2, the recent Doom, etc). I don't have the motivation to stick through that. I feel like more games need to simply say 'this is the way the game is meant to be played', perhaps then I'll just stick with that first. I like games that don't have difficulty selects, and it's just challenging enough as it is.

i put it on easy its still if not more fun to kick the game ass on easy.

I usually go with normal because I think it's how the game is meant to be played. Sometimes I'll bump it up and down depending on the amount of challenge I'm getting from the game.

Depends on the genre. First/Third person shooters = hard. Action games and Action RPGs and RPGs= Default. Strategy games and puzzle games = Easy.

I only play "hardest" if I love the game and I am dead set on a Platinum.

I'll nearly always start and subsequently finish games on the default difficulty level. On games where I'm having a hard time and don't find the gameplay to be the main attraction, I'll lower it partway through. The only ones that come to mind at the moment are Naughty Dog's later games, but I know I've done it in other ones. Wish I could've in Persona 3, those AI teammates made that game a lot harder than it needed to be.

I'll start pretty much everything on normal. If I find the mechanics engaging enough, and that the difficulty levels meaninfully improves the challenge. Then I will bump it up.

In rare cases I will pick the easier options because I just don't give a fuck about the challenge, notably Catherine, Fire Emblem, The Last of Us and most shooters. Exception being Halo which I think is best played on heroic generally.

Most games default difficulty is a joke. I play on the hardest option available because I don't see the fun with no challenge.

Normal for the vast majority of games.

The one real departure from that are platinum games, mainly because their hard modes are generally fantastic. The Bayonettas, wonderful 101 and metal gear rising in particular are much better games at the highest difficulties.

RPG: Harder than default, sometimes hardest.

Default, with the exception of Halo which I always feel compelled to play on Heroic. Very, very occasionally I'll bump things down to easy when all I care about is the story (e.g. Last of Us). I've got limited game time and am much more interested in playing a lot of games versus diving deep into the mechanics of a specific game.

I will, however, often pick the Ironman or limited saves option if it's offered alongside the normal difficulty. I like the sense of decisions being permanent...I just wish more developers would let you pick that option a la carte and not force-bundle it with the hardest possible difficulty.

Case in point: Fallout 4's survival mode. Granted, I haven't played it in a while so maybe they've added modular options (and undoubtedly there's a mod for it) but I wish it had a setting where I could have the limited saves and food/water/disease systems without being instakilled the moment I run into a bandit with a molotov.

Always the easiest available. I'm too old to get frustrated with games.

Whatever the toughest one is, I bump it down one notch from that

It gives me an excuse to replay at a harder difficulty, if the game's worth another go after I'm done

99% of the time, default. Every once in a while, I'll bump a game down to easy if I'm really getting frustrated. For example, for the last boss fight in Yakuza 0, I went down to easy just because the end of that game is such a marathon and by the end, my hands were literally hurting so I just wanted to get it over with. I very rarely have the time or patience for really hard games anymore.

Depends on the game. I usually wait for a 2nd playthrough.

4x and strategy games? I keep going up until I master the game or get bored with the mechanics.

FPS? Depends on the game. Bullet sponge enemies are just annoying. More enemies or less health is okay.

RPGs? Depends on the game, again. Witcher 3 was better for it, but something like Final Fantasy XIII I just want to finish.

In short - it depends.

Default. For the most part "harder" difficulties simply 1) increase enemy stats or 2) decrease player stats. Its a really "easy" way to add a bunch of content to a game so that is why you see it so often and finding a well designed set of difficulties is pretty much non-existent. I really prefer games that generally have no difficulty options (ala Souls, recently Hollow Knight, etc) as they are generally somewhere inbetween a "normal" and "hard", so feel challenging, without being overly frustrating. I think the only games I commonly play beyond normal are larger strategy games, but even there they are simply "cheating" the AI to make it harder. Strategy games are the only games I feel make sense for harder difficulties as the large differences of strategies/playstyles can really change how difficult the game feels.

To me a recent example of how terribly done difficulty settings are is the recent ME Andromeda. The game has like 6? difficulty settings, the only difference is the enemies have more health/do more damage....thats it. I started on hard originally, played 30 hours of the game on hard, eventually I literally got bored of taking forever to kill the SAME enemies I was killing from hour 1. That combined with terrible game designs (the enemy bases that only have one auto save at the start and can have enemies literally spawn surrounding you and auto-kill you therefore repeating 7 previous fights) led me to turn the game to normal as I simply wanted to finish the game to see if it actually gets good. Low and behold I go from being able to fairly easily die if I walk out of cover on hard to literally invincible on normal. Literally impossible to die all the sudden I play some, eventually wonder why the fuck there are TWO settings below normal and turn it down to the lowest just to end the game. I believe I fought maybe 2 new enemy types TOTAL after I turned the game down from hard to ultra easy. Literally couldn't understand the point of any difficulty below normal as the difference was...minuscule.

If it's a genre I'm familiar with then I play on the hardest option.

I'm pretty terrible at games that are considered 'hard,' so I almost always play on Normal. I would rather spend more time playing different games than perfecting the mechanics of a few.