I always prefer a mental challenge as opposed to walking in and rolling thru content (read ulduar huge letdown). It's as if there's not as much pride in taking down a boss the same night you started attempts on him because you didn't get to theorycraft for week(s) with your officers.

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I like low-to-medium difficulty but medium-to-high intricacy = I don't like losing but I like (at least the illusion of) victory coming through sound strategy / deft control.

I never play any games on hard mode, nor stick with games that cause me any frustration.
But I also invariably walk away disappointed playing the likes of Fable 2 or the new Prince Of Persia, where victory is inevitable and the act of winning has been reduced to nothing more than tapping a button.

My ideal is Guild Wars, Bioware & Square Enix type difficulty ; tons going on in combat, though without micromanagement, and much importance placed on strategy /set-up - but underneath all the bustle you aren't really likely to lose unlose you blunder or shouldn't have picked the fight to begin with.

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I always used to start games at their default level of difficulty. Only recently have I allowed myself to start on 'easy' with games I want to experience for the story, rather than combat. Mass Effect is an example of that. Getting older, I guess.

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I've played through games both ways before. I've enjoyed games with a good hard challenge and also I've enjoyed them with all cheats on (extremely easy mode).

I've played a lot of games, I imagine most people on here could say the same. I'm not the best at anything although I'd say I was above average in my "skills." (I've found I'm getting slower in my old age.. now that I've reached my 3rd decade)

I prefer games that get the formula just right. They're difficult and sometimes require several retries on certain hard fights to get through but it's definitely possible if you practice enough. The original half-life got it right. I played until the last boss without any cheats, I don't think I even glanced at a faq. I'd have to reload often, save my game often but I managed to get through almost all of it.

The old Mega-man games were good for a real challenge and yet they were possible to beat and a lot of fun doing it.

Adventure games are often where I don't care about difficulty. In fact I don't care about challenging puzzles. All I want is to experience the story. The good ones are longer than movies and have the visual and auditory experience that novels lack. (don't get me wrong, I enjoy novels and movies both)

Sometimes I'll play a shooter that is just rediculous. Either the gameplay is boring or it just might feel stupid. I'll find some cheats, load 'em up and blast through the game for the storyline and the experience.

If you made it this far, there's another type of game that does it right... it's the kind where you can get through okay... but every time you see a single point missing from your health you just can't help but feel you could do better if you reload. Half-life had that a little. One of the games that really shined with it for me was Max Payne. I remember dropping through a roof window into a room with like 4 or 5 guys and blasting them to bits. I'd lose a few health getting hit once.... so I'd reload and do it again until I killed all of them without getting hit once. I could have easily kept on going, accepting the loss of some health.. which would have made the game easier. I challenged myself though.

Another game like that is Jedi Knight 2. Every time you fight a sith you want to go back and do it again, especially if you lose health.

Finally, one challenging game that just kept me coming back. The first real challenge I felt I defeated was Street Fighter 2. I beat m Bison on the hardest difficulty. (it wasn't turbo and .. I'm not telling who I used :) Just say it was something I tried and tried and tried... and probably months after first owning the game, I beat it.

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It depends on how exactly the "difficulty" is generated, but in any one game the difficulty should be tied to what it is you are tackling & the complexity tied to how many people are being expected to deal with the situation.

A solo-quest mob can be tricky up to a point in what can & cannot be expected of the average solo player, a group can tackle a trickier mob that has more abilities up it's sleeve, & raid mobs should have multiple ways of being tackled.

The trick though is not sticking to any one formula, racial "habits" for creatures is a good way to let players have some expectation of the creature they are facing's abilities & behaviours & gives them some forwarningof what to expect, though with a surprise here & there if it's more powerful than the average type.

Variety of difficulty "types" & ways to win are what lend polish to any encounter though, from a single Kobold, to some mighty overlord with hundreds of underlings, environment should play a part too in more complex situations, keeping players on their toes but also making it so every single player involved can feel that they made a important contibution to the overall sucess.

So, I can't give a "simple" answer to the question, I like variety, some things should be relatively easy, others, such as the end boss of a high level raid dungeon should provide a huge challenge in terms of what it takes to win & be a combination of having farmed prior content & learnt prior bosses strategies & dealing with several things happening at a time & progressively.

What I did like about WAR's dungeons was how it felt like a raid for 6 people (particularly Lost Vale), & that was a shining point of it's PvE content, group content like that with it's own progression was very entertaining, though some didn't like it & felt it was an artificial time-sink taken in the proper context it was very well done.

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My preference is normal-hard, but not nightmare difficulties. Call me egoistic, but I prefer to think of myself as average to above average as a gamer. I'll always hit 'normal' mode first so that I play games at what the developer considers an appropriate level of challenge.

I figure if it seems too tough, I need to toughen up and study the game more and adapt because that keeps my hand in, and keeps me learning in order to master 'normal' gameplay.

Easy mode or cheats feel like exactly that, being spoonfed - though I'm not above giving up on something frustrating and reaching for a walkthrough if I've tried repeatedly and failed.

If normal mode becomes a cakewalk, that's when I'll ramp it up to 'hard' to keep flow going. Not afraid to back down and wuss out if hard turns into a nightmare though. Don't like dying repeatedly or slamming my head day in day out on a brick wall. I need to feel like I've achieved something every daily gaming session (which can be 1-4+ hours depending on time available.)

The one exception is if I have a goal in mind, say, get to level X, then I'm on grind mode and looking for maximum numbers for minimum effort. I rarely sustain it for long, couple hours, a day or week tops, then it gets mind-numbingly boring and I look for story/immersion/challenge.

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I don't mind a game that makes me work for my victories, but I hate games that seem designed to make sure you'll have to re-do the game point 50 times, just so you can finesse a button-press combo, or jump-or-die sequence.

After about 15 tries, and much thinking, if I can't work my way past the stop-point, I return the game to the store. Challenge = good. Something designed to be frustrating = a waste of my time.

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If we're talking MMOs, the difficulty of the game seems more based on who you're playing with. Hard is fun if you have a competent team of cooperative players, so even if you get bogged down, everyone's doing their best. But if you're in a team full of rubes and the simplest objectives seem to take forever, that's a whole lot less fun.

When soloing, I try to keep things just hard enough that keeping a good head on my shoulders and paying attention will get me through the task, but if it's so hard that my progress is slowing and the rewards dwindle, I generally rethink my approach.

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For multiplayer games I prefer a hard difficulty as its fun to puzzle things out. Single player depends on the game, I play fallout 3 on normal and dawn of war 2 on the hardest mode. I am not a person that find self affirmation in digital conquest though. Rolling old school naxx had very little difference than molten core in my opinion. Id rather find my glories in the real world where they actually matter and find amusement in the gaming realm.
Those that complain about something, especially in a online game, being too easy have E-peen issues and should sit down and figure out what it is about themselves they dont like, then change it. Quit annoying the rest of us.

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PvE or PvP, solo or team, regardless of difficulty settings: I don't mind losing, as long as I feel like I lost fair and square. If I lost because I missed clearly presented clues as to how I could have won on the first try? If I lost because I wasn't paying attention? If I lost because I didn't react correctly when the situation changed? No problem.

On the other hand, regardless of PvE or PvP, solo or team, even on the easiest difficulty settings, there are game designers who think that what's fun is to utterly crush you on the first half dozen attempts, to give you no chance to get it right the first time, and to use repeated deaths to teach you what would have won in the unlikely event you'd thought to try that first, without presenting that information any other way. That, I hate.

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