"The ideal balance for game difficulty is for a game to be hard enough that you're going to die and fail a few times but it's never so hard that you get frustrated and basically require sheer luck to beat certain parts (Super Mario Sunshine I'm looking at you and your sh!tty camera)."
What the hell are you talking about? Sunshine's camera was great. I think you really have no idea what a terrible camera looks like. A terrible camera would be the one from Sonic Heroes. Anyway, this "balance" is impossible as everybody has different skill levels. I mean, I beat master mode once with all pilots and every mission on every difficulty in F-Zero GX. So suffice to say, things I might consider easy may not be easy for the rest of the game-playing populace.
By the way, Ian, it's nice that you figured out that the exclamation mark kinda looks like a lowercase "I" allowing for a lot of fun filter dodges but I th!nk !t's t!me we bur!ed !t.