"Easy" Difficulty Stigma

So, I finally got to the end of Red Faction Guerilla and without spoiling anything, I found the last mission of the game to be very difficult- in fact, markedly more difficult than any mission that preceded it by a wide margin. I was playing through the entire game on normal difficulty, and after failing this mission for probably the 20th time, I went back into the difficulty settings but couldn't bring myself to switch the game to Easy for this mission. It had nothing to do with achievements and I didn't really consider beating it on normal to be a test of my gaming ability considering that I had gotten my ass handed to me dozens of times already. 

It occurred to me that had all the difficulty settings been bumped over one place (if normal became hard, easy became normal, and a new easier setting was created for easy, I would have had no qualms bumping myself down from hard to normal. Similarly, when I played Devil May Cry 3 (original version),  a game notorious for its incredible difficulty, I couldn't bring myself to play on easy, despite the fact that I probably would have had more fun- and I ended up making the game easier anyway by grinding out experience points on the first few levels.
 
So I guess I have a few questions for you guys- do you prefer difficulty settings in games, one flat level of challenge, or behind the scenes adaptive difficulty (ala Max Payne)? And, do you share my stigma against easy difficulties, even in difficult games?

so the problem is with the naming? 
thats weird, just play easy and call it super hard if thats your thing

That's dumb. Nobody in the world cares when you beat something on the hardest mode. Think about the quality of person who would look down on you for playing easy. They don't have much going on in their life.

To be honest, I always play on Normal "by default", but if I am having a hard time (and thus, not really enjoying the game), I have absolutely no problems in toning down the difficulty. For example, Minecraft. Sure, there are not many enemies, but I find it terribly frustrating that a creeper falls out of nowhere and kills you in one hit. At least on Easy I have some chances of not dying, or even avoiding the explosion.  
 
Games are meant to be found. I much rather play a game on Easy and have fun than force myself to play it on Normal or Hard and not enjoy it because of the difficulty.

I always go with normal first, but if the game is too difficult to the point that it's hampering the experience of an otherwise great game, I have no problems switching it to easy.  Conversly, if the game is too easy, I bump it up to hard.  I also bump it up to hard/very hard if I replay the game and feel like I've mastered the controls.

My gamertag says recreational and I mean it. I take that pretty far because there is no stigma for me. I will play on whatever difficulty without really caring. I have played Fallout 3 and Dragon Age on the highest difficulty levels but that was to make battles last more than a second. Not for 'challenge'. I have played games for challenge but that generally isn't in line with my primary goal which is just to experience games. I don't beat' games, I complete them (I've never understood that). I do like games with 1 difficulty level, like Grand Theft Auto. They makes the missions vary in difficulty in a more natural way.

I rarely play a game on its hardest difficulty. If I am doing so, it is because I am attempting to squeeze further achievements from my gaming experience. I rarely go through a game on Hard purely for entertainment reasons. I tried doing so in a moment of brashness when playing Wolfenstein, and was seriously kicking ass until I got closer to the end of the game.
Things got a little difficult after I reached a point though, and I never actually finished the game.

That mission wasn't all that bad.  Some of the side stuff was downright sadistic in comparison

It depends on the game. 

I think it's interesting that you bring this up in relation to Red Faction, I remember quite a few people on the 1up and RebelFM podcasts saying that they played that game on easy becasue it made it much more fun - people who usually play normal or hard said that game was a much better experience on easy.
 
I always play normal first, I don't mind a bit of a challenge, but if I'm forced to replay a section over and over again then I feel it spoils the flow of the game.

Red Faction: Guerrilla was so much more fun on the easiest difficulty. Normal was just frustrating.

I'm a normal/hard kinda guy. Used to play everything on easy but it started to bore.

I seem to get a kick out of dying hundreds of times, and then finally winning.

Apart from RTS games, because they hate me.

Nowadays, Normal is the old Easy.  Games used to be much harder than they are nowadays, because older games were messed up.  And then devs realized that they'd get bigger sales if people were capable of getting through their game and seeing all that content they spent years developing, instead of dying miserably on the third stage and quitting.
 
I don't feel a stigma playing on easy, however I will play normal unless I feel there are extenuating circumstances.  Games I'm not especially fond of, and are in no mood to die my way through (K&L 2, Army of Two sequel, Dante's Inferno), I'll set on a lower setting.  Especially since you get the same achievements regardless.
 
However, at the same time, I set Bayonetta on Easy and felt bad.  But Christ on a cracker that game was pushing me on normal.

I made a rule for myself when I get a new game, I play it for me the first time through. 
The next time I play the same game I turn up the difficulty to something that I'm less comfortable with due to my collected experience on my first play-through and then get comfortable with that difficulty. 
The challenge is increased and I have a different experience, if there's achievements for completing the game on this difficulty level then cool, but I learned that sacrificing a fun or cool experience simply for 50-200 points of Gamer-score is just plain silly. 
I played Mass Effect 2 on the Insanity difficulty the second time round and feel that I wouldn't have performed anywhere near as well if I'd started on that difficulty. 
As a result I love ME 2 because of the experience it gave to me from playing through it both the first time and the second time. 
Much more rewarding. 
 
EDIT: Dragon Age: Origins and its' subsequent DLC were all more fun with this approach too, I feel proud to say that I've completed Dragon Age: Origins twice on normal difficulty and once on the hard difficulty. (Bare in mind that the hard difficulty was on PC, it's not easier it's actually harder but the control system make the difficulty much more manageable, let alone the fact you can manage things from a much more RTS, overhead, point of view.)

There's nothing wrong with playing on Easy, if that's the difficulty of the game you feel comfortable playing at.  You can always play on a harder difficulty later if you want.

Never felt an Easy stigma. I usually kick the difficulty up to Hard at first, if it's a genre I'm comfortable with, but I don't hesitate to scramble back down the hill if my ass is getting kicked.

Easy difficulty is boring for me. It's easy to stop caring about how well I'm doing if there's no challenge, and if I don't care how well I'm doing in the game, why am I even playing it? 90% of games don't have interesting enough storylines or graphics to keep me interested if there's no gameplay challenge, and the ones that do usually aren't very hard anyway, so I've never really been in a situation where I want to see how the story turns out but the game is just too frustrating for me.

Meh I didn't find Red Faction Guerrilla very hard. I myself stick to the difficulty I set something as unless the game becomes insurmountable, just because the challenge is there for a reason and I feel rewarded for overcoming it. But yeah, sometimes when I'm playing something and get hit with a ridiculous difficulty spike I'll WANT to switch it to easy.

I almost never play on anything other than normal. I can think of only two games where I've ever changed the difficulty mid-playthrough, and both of those times were over 2 years ago.

Red Faction had some stupidly difficult moments and missions.  
I remember one destruction mission where you had to use just your hammer to destroy a building that was like a mile away. You had to use your hammer to launch the explosive barrels at it. I eventually got it by luck because there was almost no way to aim where they would go.

I remember lowering the difficulty for Red Faction down to easy pretty early on and I'm glad I did.  It made the game a lot more enjoyable.  Games are about having fun.  Don't feel like you have to change that just so you can live up to some dumb standard.

big deal . It's a GAME and you shouldn't be proud you beat it on hard or easy . Try beating life's challenges , that won't leave a stigma

I do the opposite I always go for the hardest , its a thing I picked up on the FPS games of yore ... harder difficulty = more enemies to kill so since then I automaticly choose the hardest , not always the wisest choice , but in fighting games I progresively add difficulty (like must people do)   , in only 2 games I had to turn it down to normal/easy  and leave them at that  ... Oblivion and Shinobi PS2.  But if a game is only about cheap shots then I will stop playing altogether (Ninja Gaiden 2 comes to mind) " An endless of F$#$@ missile barrages is no fun whatsoever or impossible to hit worms!!!!! 

I switched to easy in Morrowind to beat Almalexia, and for the endings to Dragon Age: Origins & Red Faction 2. I don't regret it at all! 

I tend to punish myself a lot by playing games on their hardest difficulties. It tends to have a lot of negative effects, frustration and generally playing the game in a way that you have to feel isn't the way the developer intended. 
 
Normal might just be the best way to go in a lot of cases.

I usually play games on normal, but if it's a game where I can adjust the difficulty as I go I'll change it up or down depending on specific battles. I don't like to be frustrated when I play games, so if I can't beat something on a normal difficulty level after a couple of tries, I'll usually bump it down just to get past it and the put it back afterwards.  Sometimes on later play throughs I'll start on a hard difficulty to challenge myself. In games like Costume Quest, I was kind of wishing that I could make it harder (can I? I didn't look that hard) because I prefer not just breezing through things.
 
I don't have any delusions of being able to beat a game on its hardest setting though, I'm just not patient enough. I'll never get the ME2 achievement ><

I understand your point, topic creator. I love accomplishing things even though nobody actually cares (achievements!). As for difficulty settings I just go with Normal because it's normal, not because I have an idea of how difficult that is. I just take it that they made the game with the Normal difficulty in mind, so it only makes sense to choose that. The exceptions are when it's a sequel and I have an idea of how difficult each setting is, like Halo or Gears of War or Mass Effect, where I always choose the difficulty under the hardest difficulty. I am playing Fallout: New Vegas on Normal now, but with Hardcore mode turned on. I think that's the right way to go: instead of just giving enemies more health and damage, turn it into a game mechanic that changes the way you play.

Dragon Age: Origins was the game where I actually knocked the difficulty level down a notch because somehow the game was just more fun when you felt overpowered as opposed to having a challange. Generally though, I like the "default" difficulty of any given game. I like a bit of challange but beyond that I tend to get frustrated too easily if I can't trace it back to my own actions. However, the Call of Duty / Modern Warfare games I've always played on their hardest difficulty, somehow no matter how frustrating the game becomes, I always have a good time with those games and the level of challange that difficulty gives. 
 
But, to get back on topic, yeah.. I've always had a stigma that going "easy" was a cop-out of sorts and it was sort of like cheating. But as I've gotten older and have less time to game, I want the most out of it and I can't let such things keep me from enjoying a game because I can't knock it down.

I play pretty much every game through the first time on Normal, then usually bump it to Easy unless for some reason I want a harder difficulty. The only games I can recall beating on their hardest difficulty are Halo 3 (Co-Op Legendary is incredibly fun) and Ace Combat 6 (can't remember exactly why, but I accidentally deleted the save so I'll have to do it again...damnit).

I play games mostly to kill time and have fun, hence why I like to play on Easy.

i always play though the game on easy first so that way i can take in the atmosphere and read everything and not have to worry about running out of ammo and such.  And then on the next play though (if the game warrants it) i turn up the difficulty.

I definitely favor playing through the first time at the highest difficulty as I like to be challenged by games. If a game gets too easy, I lose so much interest especially if the main selling point is the combat and the story is lacking. Plus getting those difficulty achievements in one go is an added bonus.

For me personally, I feel as though Easy has been ruined for me in many many cases.  I don't really recall specific games, but there are a ton of games that when put on easy, they simply go and totally roll over you can pretty much just walk right through them without much resistance other than many avoiding the gameplay/enemies/ect...  Usually I will play on Normal, sometimes hard (if there are 4 difficulties; easy, normal, hard, veteran)