I advocate that players have greater control over their own game experience, which includes difficulty modes to tailor the game’s challenge to how much you want in the game.
and yet another game I played recently, Phoenix Point, has plenty of players who are playing on the hardest difficulty for literally no reason other than they want the most challenge out of the game. They aren’t even rewarded for it.
In fact one of the most popular mods for the new XCOM games is Long War, a mod which makes the game considerably harder. Again, without any real reward.
People played Diablo 1 and 2 on Hell mode rather than doing nothing but Normal.
People in WoW run mythic raids and mythic+ dungeons of increasing numbers.
It’s almost as if it’s only some people that will take the path of least resistance and that there will also always be people who seek out challenge or people who seek out the rewards given by the hardest difficulties.