The hardest difficulty is still too easy. Take away the bonus xp gain pls. Or maybe add an additional harder difficulty above this one.
Lol, super hard mode? soon will be 8 difficulties like in D4 
I think the 35% extra monster damage and extra monster poise is good. Maybe just a bump to monster HP, from 20% up to 30’ish.
But for the people who want a challenge… it’s within your control. You can reduce your player stat points, or not wear certain gear, or use certain options etc etc. Using your OP build and saying things feel easy is not a gauge of the content being easy or not difficult.
Get creative and give yourself challenges.and play style restrictions.
The point is that level your character and having to grind for levels to be stronger to overcome challenges is a core part of the experience that should be satisfying and necessary to the player at their desired difficulty level. If im playing at the hardest difficulty and have to putposefully underlevel and not level up my character just to maintain a fun level of challenge it diminishes the experience. Not leveling up your character deincentivizes interaction witj several key experiences within this game (bounties, challenges, quests, etc.) as they will all give u xp that is worthless to you since leveling up your character will trivialize the difficulty.
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Giving the enemy more hp and lowering your damage both has the same effect. You choosing to gripe that one is valid but the other isn’t is a switch in your head.
Raising dirficulty requires you to interact with the games leveling systems to meet the challenge while the other requires you to ignore multiple elements of the core gameplay experience.
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Look, for instance. Take a game like Elden Ring. Elden Ring is an open world game. But of the fun of elden ring and part of the gameplay experience is for players to explore and interact with the open world. Doing so rewards you with better gear, materials for upgrades, and XP. These are the incentives for exploring the open world. In Elden Ring if you try to kill Margit level 1 you will get hard stomped. 99% of players are forced here to level up their character and explore the world in order to pass Margit. This forces the player to engage with the intended gameplay experience. Now take a look at no rest for the wicked. In No Rest For The Wicked on the hardest difficulty the game has to offer you can easily stomp the first boss on your first try. In fact, you can breeze through the entire game fairly easily without ever having to level up or upgrade any of your gear. Suddenly there is no incentive to explore the world of No Rest for The Wicked as leveling up and upgrading your gear is meaningless. This is a balance issue.
It’s funny how much the developers of NRFTW praise the success of Elden Ring but are missing the mark on how the difficulty of the game actually made ir successful.
You know what is even funnier?
Now we are talking about balancing difficulty levels, not the game or game mechanics, and this is what will kill this game. They switched the conversation from talking about the game to discussing menu settings.
You thinking this game needs to copy every aspect of another game is whats funny I think. I can like or praise, and even take inspiration from something without mimicking everything about it. ER is a great game, but it has plenty problems of it’s own.
It sounds like you want this game to be an elden ring clone which imo the developers didnt want it to be, even if they praised the game. No offense to you btw, elden ring is a great game.
But forcing players to do certain stuff to be able to do core stuff is also not sth the developers had in mind in this game, at least from my understanding.
And saying sth is fun or is part of the fun of a game is always subjective, as it means YOU find it fun, this doesnt apply to everyone.
Im not saying those arent good ideas and i can see what you mean but saying stuff like this just ignores the fact people have different opinions and preferences.
The incentive to explore the world in NRFTW for me is people WANTING to explore the world, not only because then i can actually progress in the story.
I for example like finding caves, finding storylines beyond the mainstory, finding hidden gems and secrets and so on, but not because i need it to progress further or become stronger, but just because i love the way all those things get implemented and make the world feel more complete and rounded.
If i get stronger in the process and get a reward, great, if not, also fine with me, cause i still found some secret.
I dont need to get rewarded for every little thing and i for sure dont need to have mandatory rewards to even be able to get further.
You raised a legitimate concern; the issue is that the developers decided to make the game more appealing to casual players who do not like challenges. So, their priority is not rebalancing the game to be harder.
Do not get me wrong; they will not remove Normal and Hard difficulties. Those will stay in the game, and we might get additional ones.
However, players in the easy mode will still complain that the game is too hard and that you cannot just remove all the health and damage from enemies because what is the point of playing the game then?
Therefore, the devs will have to rebalance runes, weapons, armor, resistances, move sets, etc., to make the game easier for them, which will ruin harder difficulties.
A lot of people at the moment believe that developers will not do it… well, look at D4. That is exactly what happened with all those difficulty levels.
The developers learned that challenge = danger. You can get bomb-reviewed, which is a horrible thing that should not have happened. At least not for these guys. They did not deserve it for the Breach patch, but the challenge in this game is not their priority anymore.
That Hard mode they put in is just an attempt to save their faces that they still care about the game’s challenge… and they know it. Otherwise, why would they put in hard mode. For whom? 0.1% of player base? I think those guys wanted the game to be rebalanced and have more mechanics, not artificial ways to make the game harder.