Yea we have, absolutely. It's not about the arbitrary difficulty of the game, it's about the experience of the game: the world, the atmosphere, the story. If all there is to a soulslike is its difficulty, maybe there's something missing in the game in the first place.

Plus, what's difficult to you could be insurmountable to others and vice versa. Someone might be very comfortable playing on Legendary Stalker - like I have been most of the time over several playthroughs, before difficulty settings were added, for example. For others, the difficulty of the game makes it outright unplayable. They might not have the time to put into the game, their motorics might not be up to speed compared to your "veteran" player, they just might not have the patience - it doesn't matter in the end. Giving them the option of lowering the stakes to have the opportunity of experiencing the same thing everyone else does, to partake in communion, to exchange thoughts on the game and world, play the game at all, is the right step in the direction of accessibility. The more get to experience the game, the better. Who cares what difficulty you've played it on?

Sure, I'll entertain the thought that not all difficulty options are created equal and I'd definitely prefer it if there were more to it than just tweaking numbers. But it's a good first step and a good enough step that more folks get to play the game. If more studios adopt this philosophy to difficulty and more players become acceptant of it, perhaps there will be other avenues of setting difficulty in soulslikes.

Is my experience less valid than yours because I've played the majority of the Lies of P DLC on Awakened Puppet? If that were the case, that'd be a very narrow-minded point of view in my books.

Honestly, I'd love that. No reason not to in my books