Ehm, I mean at what difficulty setting do you usually throw in the towel. I know this depends a lot on the genre we’re talking about since in JRPGs for example, the tendency was always for “normal” to be western hard. Or ya know, no difficulty setting at all but just difficulty slope like in DS/Bloodborne/Sekiro.

I personally like a challenge and that rush you get when you overcome something that requires that extra push from you. A difficulty setting that maxxes out the enemies to be at their strongest (stats, healths, endurace, “smarter” AI if that’s possible). I usually stop once the difficulty above starts messing with YOUR stats and artificially lowers them, makes you squishier BUT leaves the enemies just as strong. Unless the difficulty also makes you and enemies easier to kills/ some kind of difficulty realism, but that’s a different case

This is how I play strategies, HoMM3, and Total Warhammer for example. ARPGs too, where the difficulty just scales the enemies up and not you down (cept resistances in Diablo II where it reduces your resistance on Nightmare and similar). But it’s okay since all those examples, including Grim Dawn and Last Epoch, need to have some sort of separate difficulty verticality for the endgame (crucible in Grim Dawn and Monoliths of Fate that can be empowered for extra mob difficulty in Last Epoch). I guess it’s also needed for replayability and extra time investment from players

Shooters, tho, I always play on that realistic difficulty where a headshot’s a headshot for them and me both. I guess this is the standard though in most modern multiplayer shooters like Return to Tarkov, Hell Let Loose, where bullet sponges just be immersion breaking. But the reason I play probably goes way back to Stalker where the highest difficulty really just makes your firearms feel a bit more impactful

That’s my my relationship with difficulty sliders but surprisingly it was actually Dark Souls 2 that made such a masochist for higher difficulties in all games since. Ever since I accidentally joined the Champions covenant and proceeded to play them game on an extra high difficulty on my first run ;)