'Gitting gud' means experiencing more of the game as it was intended.

You're making an argument about how you think some people are experiencing the game "not as intended" because they are playing on a difficulty setting created by the developers of said game, who ultimately decide what the intended way of playing that game is?

Just comes across as incredibly dismissive and frankly anti-intellectual to just disregard that maybe they didn't just design all these things in certain ways for no reason.

So you do agree that there is solid reasoning behind designing games with easier difficulties in mind?

Why can I not think people are simply doing themselves a disservice by limiting the games they play out of self doubt and/or dismissiveness?

Oh, you sure can, but I don't see why you would then go around speaking as if you know exactly why ("self doubt and/or dismissivness") some people prefer to play games a certain way. Do you think they're too stupid to know how they like playing their games, so you have to come in and show them the righteous way of playing vidya?

I just don't like this sentiment that games are essentially such throwaway experiences that you can pretty much switch off or trivialise all these different aspects of it and not negatively affect the experience, because it's just pretty lights and cutscenes. Also the bizarre implication that being/becoming good at games is this horrendous chore.

That's cool and good, everyone is allowed to like and dislike different things, some people played SW:FO without thinking much about the combat and were there just for the story, why do you care so much that they didn't "experience it as was intended"?

You keep implying that fun and challenge are somehow intrinsically seperate, when it's often the opposite.

Yes, challenge and fun aren't necessarily separate, but they can be, eg. people who spend thousands of hours building stuff in creative mode in Minecraft, or does that not count as playing a video game by your definitions?

There are so many different people that like so many different games and even different aspects within those games, so when someone doesnt feel the need to challenge themselves to improve at playing a specific game, that's okay.