The tricky thing about video games is that not everyone will play the same game for the same reason, and forcing the player to play the game how you specifically want it to be played narrows down how many people are going to keep playing it.
If I'm into a game's story, then being stopped by gameplay is the most aggravating and least fun thing the game can do, because story to me is not the reward for good gameplay and that's what high difficulty turns it into. I want to see what happens next, stop getting my way etc
If I'm into the gameplay or even feel like I accomplish something in the game, then higher difficulty is fine (ex: I don't think I ever had fun playing the Last of Us even when I beat it on hard mode, but it felt do-able after beating it on easy and I wanted my trophy statistics to look better than beating it on Easy looked).
I did beat Dark Souls and did experience the "OHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCKOHFUCK." I killed the giant wolf a lot earlier than I should've due to learning the pattern and executing, shit was heart-pounding, but when I look back at it (Ddrat, da-da-da-um-da), all the hours of stress didn't feel worth the 30ish minutes of feeling accomplished at the end of it because dying in an open world like that was so punishing (I probably "quit" at least 20 times not counting Ornstein and Smough).