I think the argument over hard and easy is a circular one that leads nowhere.
Hard and easy aren’t real. It’s like when people describe water as wet when it’s the other way around… Water makes the things it touches wet.
The only reason the game feels “easier” as you play is because you’ve spend time absorbing information and acting on it .. aka learned something.
This cycle will never go away no matter how “easy” or hard they make the game. If people have no experience in the game they will likely not understand it and not be successful in it. And when they not successful they cry it’s too hard if they’re the type of player that doesn’t want to improve (ignoring outliers like physical limitations).
The time it takes to go from not understanding to understanding is all upon the individual. And the only thing that drives players to improve is that conflict to begin with if you don’t like getting your ass beat. The thing is everyone will make this distinction for themselves. But if you also remove all the sharp edges there’s little to no pressure for people to improve as well.
So commercially it makes very little sense to me not to cater to a wider audience. If people want walking story mode, ok. Simple enough. If people want to walk in he’ll and be doom guy, let them. Or… I guess we could just keep having the same conversation every patch where people describe what hard and easy means to them xD