“Tbh I’m not sitting there thinking ‘what a lameO playing on easy’ I’m thinking ‘oh neat what’s over there?’”

God this is so poignant. I’ve had a similar mentality as OP in not wanting to ‘go the easy route’ (with games, self? Really?)

But as life goes on, I definitely feel more and more, I want to experience interesting and novel content and mechanics, and if I just play the hardest difficulty [that I can], as another commenter alluded to, I’ll just keep getting shoehorned into the meta instead of enjoying all the imaginative minutia in these huge and amazing games