From Software president Hidetaka Miyazaki Explains Why Dark Souls Can’t Have Difficulty Settings

 From Software president Hidetaka Miyazaki explained the reasoning behind this design decision in an interview with Gamespot. In his words;

‘”We don’t want to include a difficulty selection because we want to bring everyone to the same level of discussion and the same level of enjoyment,” Miyazaki said. “So we want everyone … to first face that challenge and to overcome it in some way that suits them as a player.”

The creator continued: “We want everyone to feel that sense of accomplishment. We want everyone to feel elated and to join that discussion on the same level. We feel if there’s different difficulties, that’s going to segment and fragment the user base. People will have different experiences based on that [differing difficulty level]. This is something we take to heart when we design games. It’s been the same way for previous titles and it’s very much the same with Sekiro.”‘

This reason seems rational, as it allows the developers more freedom and flexibility while designing the combat encounters for their games.