Softcore or Hardcore? Anyways......How exactly did yours die? And is Torchlight THAT easy?

I think the comment someone made up above about how games aren't necessarily getting easier, it's just that a lot of us have just gotten -better- at playing games has a lot of weight to it. For the most part, we're older, we're wiser, and as such, we've picked up on a lot of the tricks of the trade that game designers have used in the past to pull one over on us. So that helps ramp down the difficulty artificially, requiring them, often, to just pull out some arbitrarily tough enemies or something in order to approach some semblance of fairness.
As for where on the difficulty curve I like my games, well, I prefer my "normal" mode to be just that: normal. By which I mean that I expect not to have any easy ride, but I also expect that I won't encounter situations where I'll be constantly frustrated at every turn and get so annoyed it'll make me want to just shut the damn thing off, eject the CD, and fling it at a wall.
And what bothers me are the extremely vocal bunch of people who say things like "RAWR! I played this through on nightmare difficulty, and it STILL wasn't hard enough!" Because that attitude just does not compute with me. I don't play games as an exercise in self-mutilation, it's supposed to be a relaxing hobby. Getting aggravated because I've been killed twenty times in a row is not conducive to me relaxing.
I was playing Dragon Age on normal, and while I could manage some of the fights, it got to the point where I felt I had to really -work- for each and every battle, even the most minute of skirmishes. I was constantly bereft of healing supplies, my people were constantly injured. And I am no fool. I may not be a strategic genius, but I understand the notions of how to control a battlefield, and yet even on normal mode I simply could -not- make progress without putting in a supreme amount of effort.
This to me does not sound like a "normal" difficulty level. So I turned it down to easy... which, with the latest patch, actually is easy. And I find that I"m not exactly happy with that, either. I'm not looking for a free ride, here. But I'm playing this game because i want to experience the storyline. I want to see what the various NPCs in my party have to say. I want to view their interactions and such, even if it means that the group I end up taking into the field isn't always the most "efficient."
Seeing as how it's a roleplaying game first and foremost and not a strategy game first and foremost, I think that sacrificing tactical concerns for the sake of story/character issues should be a fairly viable option. It does not seem to be. You cannot play on a regular difficulty mode and have a party consisting only of front-line warriors, simply because you like the concept. Because you will get torn to bits. This sort of thing irritates me.
And it irritates me more that saying as much on, say, the BioWare boards will only bring hordes of fools going "UR DOING IT WRONG, NOOB." posts from people who think that playing games on extreme difficulty is the be-all and end-all of gaming.
Anyway, that's my rant on the subject.

Also when it first came out it was even hard on easy. So hard in fact that they had to release a patch to make it easier! And to be honest i would rather have kept it hard. It forces you to actually think and act upon the situation instead of just breezing trough the game, like say... the new prince of Persia game? When its easy, it ends up becoming a chore to go through the game.
Thanks for your time, now back to my third play through! (think i will go with dwarf commoner...)

Download the DLC and get Shale to come with you. have it with you when you go to Orzammar. I wont say nothing but you will be shocked!

Thank you, AlphaMonkey, for making me feel like I'm not alone in some of the things I said earlier.
...I had something else I wanted to touch upon, but damned if I haven't gone and forgotten what it was... damn.

Not if you're playing on Very Hard and Hardcore mode. I'm having more fun with my Destroyer (Easy) than with my Alchemist (V.Hard, Hardcore), because I have to keep running, throwing speels, and invoking minions to kill the monsters, otherwise I'll get killed.
I'll try in Hard difficult, to see if challenge/fun is balanced.

I like games with "Iron Mode" You die => You start from the beginning. I play in "Medium" in this situation, and think every move. Good example is Temple of Elemental Evil. Great game, too. Never succeded at ToEE - my brother did. The Old Red Baron was like this, too.
I try to play like this for other games, forcing myself to start over from the very beginning if I die. Succeded in WC I and WC II like this, Freespace II (on medium dif the game is really heavy), PGIII SE, failed miserably at Fallout I, Fallout Tactics, Battle for Wesnoth and countless other.
For some game, I would not even try, though. Eg. Witcher (because of the boss of Chapter I), STALKER, ...

"Iron Man" playing in games can be fun and interesting, but I would never want a game to force me to do that in order to actually play it. I grew up with games like that, and those are the only games that have the right to force it because of technical reasons/limitations.
But I've seen people Iron Man some games I can't even begin to imagine doing that with. Growing with the games I did, I began to develop a habit of saving a lot. It wasn't so bad on the SNES, I didn't save quite as often as I do now. That is to say, I may find myself saving every few minutes, or I may have forgotten and not save for hours. The latter can be harsh in RPGs...

Actually, I finished XCOM 2 (TFTD) in Iron Man, difficulty average. Except the very end (bug when I went to the last battle, could not recover the save). The beginning is tough, but once you have a business running of selling body parts (what do they do with them ? Sushis ?) it is easy.

Most people probably played it on beginner. Whether they wanted to or not :)

Ha! I wonder why that got through bug testing.
Also interesting is the following note about TFTD, which shows why I never got past the first terror mission I had, and consequently never played it again.

Actually, XCOM can be very easy
- If you don't have horrible Terror missions at the beginning (like Ship attacks)
- If you know what tech to beeline (and avoid the infamous Commander Tasoth research bug in XCOM 2)
Once you have the homing missile and the mind control device, it is extremely, extremely easy. Boring, even. Mind control => Have the alien shoot friends => Mind control survivors => Shoot more aliens => Finish the survivors with a missile fired from the safety of the ship.
Except maybe SOME terror missions (see above), because you have to move out of the landing craft.
Buggy as hell anyway.