> I don't believe this is true at all. Heck, you can look at the patches put into the various games to see places where FromSoft agreed that they botched something. I don't think anybody thinks that Bed of Chaos is the good kind of hard.
The fact that they patch the experience of their hardmode helps my case, not yours. It shows that they care deeply about the experience of their hardmode players, since everyone is forced to play it they have to care about it. While other developers just say "if you find it too hard just play on easy", fromsoft has to actually fix their games when they mess it up.
> NG+ exists
NG+ isn't a higher difficulty, its just continuing the game with yoru current character. The monsters have higher stats than the first run, but so do you since your character is higher level.
> SL1 exists
Deliberately choosing to not use certain options in the game makes every game harder, yes, but that isn't a part of difficulty options and the game isn't designed around SL1 runs.
But games with difficulty modes always are. It happens naturally, developers and testers are just doing their job after all, to them it is easier to always test things on the easiest difficulty setting so that setting is what gets most development time. Solo developers might be able to work around this, but in a large team this will always happen. High level of polish comes when everyone is forced to run through the content, since then everyone will provide feedback and solutions to problems will be found. If a part is too hard or too tedious people will complain and the part will be made easier or changed, this wont happen if you enable developers or testers to run easier modes.
The fact that they patch the experience of their hardmode helps my case, not yours. It shows that they care deeply about the experience of their hardmode players, since everyone is forced to play it they have to care about it. While other developers just say "if you find it too hard just play on easy", fromsoft has to actually fix their games when they mess it up.
> NG+ exists
NG+ isn't a higher difficulty, its just continuing the game with yoru current character. The monsters have higher stats than the first run, but so do you since your character is higher level.
> SL1 exists
Deliberately choosing to not use certain options in the game makes every game harder, yes, but that isn't a part of difficulty options and the game isn't designed around SL1 runs.