You are essentially describing 90% of Dark Soul fans.
or we as gamers could just have fun.

Not played Wizardry 4, but "well-designed" for me means a game that could theoretically be beaten on the first try without a significant amount of luck and without gaming the system.

This to me means that it must be (theoretically) possible to overcome every trap, every enemy and every puzzle the first time around on the basis of skill, finely-tuned reactions and advance knowledge alone. Any failure is attributable to the player's oversight or miscalculation as opposed to being lurched upon by some unknown factor and then using knowledge of this factor's existence to overcome the problem the next time around.

Of course, this is the optimum, and very few games actually achieve this without being too easy.

Funny you mention that particular title. Have tried getting into it maybe half a dozen times now, but it's never clicked. It's just not enjoyable to me.

Silly people. Anyone can eventually beat their head against that wall until they get through. They just choose to have experiences that aren't miserable for them.

Well, it depends on what you define as "fun". Personally, I like to be able to improve my logic skills, spatial reasoning and reactions using games, and to be challenged philosophically. That's fun to me.

If I just want to "switch off" and do something brainless, I'll watch a Michael Bay movie.

Save-scumming just to get some more HP at level up, or get better loot from a chest, is lame.

Annoying yourself playing cheap level designs with horrible end level bosses and very loose checkpoints does not really define fun for a lot of people. Throw quick save in here and things become a lot more bareable. A great example of this kind of shite is Abe's Oddysee, great game with one major flaw that pisses off 75% of the people who play the game.

Dark Souls is a game I do not understand. It is littered with poor mechanics, hit detection and awfully checkpointing system just to make it hard. Fans of the game think that it is perfectly okay because it makes you a super elite gamer. Where as the game that came before it was much more refined, much fairer in terms of difficulty, the levels were shorter with better design and for the most part if you died, it was your own fault.

I do not understand cheap kills = challenging
Sadly not everyone has good reaction skills. My wrists and hands have deteriorated so bad I couldn't complete some levels of Doom in one go anymore. Unfortunately it means if I want to play a modern shooter it takes me a lot longer then normal because I can not save my progress. That is not fun haha.

Right on about the michael bay movie, do enjoy his silly movies. :D

I never "save" in games, I "save-scum" XD

I disagree. A game can be well-designed without being theoretically beatable on the first try. Some games (Wizardry 4 is an example, but I could also cite Syobon Action as another example) are designed with the assumption that a player will not complete a level on the first attempt. As long as the game doesn't make you lose too much progress when you die, that sort of design can actually work.

In Syobon Action, for example, much of the challenge is remembering where the traps are. If you actually play the game seriously, there is likely to be some point when you forget about a trap and die as a result; I see that as being part of the game, not a flaw in the design. Different games test different skills; this one just happened to make a few unusual design choices.

(Of course, the game is not without its flaws; the controls aren't ideal, and I find the end of stage 3 to be rather tricky to execute.)

I do suggest giving Syobon Action a try, especially since it's free. (Note that I prefer the first 4 stages to the later ones; the later ones start to focus too much on execution rather than memory.)

I would actually say that random HP at level up, or random loot from non-respawning chests, is lame.

I usually youse "Savescumming Tactics" in games like Serious Sam, for the jumping parts. When I have to jump six or seven times in a row and every failed jump can lead to death, then saving after every jump is very necessary! Also I did the same in TES Skyrim in the parts where you have to be very fast to avoid traps that kill you.
To save very often is a must in many games, I often forgot to save, then I died and one or more hours of playing were for the cat!!

There are no level requirements for any artifacts or relics. There were skill restrictions (can't use that artifact Plate armor unless you had the Plate skill), and there were sometimes class/race restrictions (only Goblins can use the Elfbane sword), but there were no level requirements.

To me save-scumming doesn't exist, I prefer to save when and where I want over any limited save system any day.

FM series =x

Of course you would.

Some of my first games had system of saving in towns only. Thankfully, situation has changed and most games have function "save anywhere" (or almost anywhere). In many cases it seems to come at a cost of very frustrating elements (excusing it by stuff like "saving anywhere makes games very easy, so need to compensate for this").

Some of those frustrating elements which made me really upset lately - worlds with no respawn but with random rewards (loot, stats on level up, etc.).

Battles also tend to suffer from "saving anywhere" opportunity. A lot of them turn into "Hit-Miss" simulator, where you miss 90% of time, and you keep reloading until you are able to get successful saving throw vs Dire Charm spell or something like that.

Those are the elements which simply don't work in long sessions if you don't have access to saving. Games like Phantasy Stat II (with saving at towns) were hard, but not because your characters had 90% miss chance and so had to save after each fight. I wish saving function was used as helping tool to those who can't sit for long sessions anymore instead of being used as excuse to introduce a lot of frustrating elements.
Lame. Very. Why make loot system like in Diablo and then make no respawns? Those are good examples of frustrating elements. Also 1d10 HP on level up for fighter in D&D systems? Rolling 1 is gimping yourself by 90% and it is theoretically possible to have Lv.10 fighter with 19 HP vs potential 100 HP. I remember I made character in "Descent to Undermountain", Mage, and it had 1 HP. Mage had to go through tons of kobolds in first dungeon... I didn't know D&D systems in detail back then and I was very frustrated. I have beaten 1st dungeon and trashed the game.

It's a bit counter-intuitive, but you have to do that in the game's "mouse" menu, where you also set sensitivity, etc.
At the bottom, you have entries for left, middle and right mouse buttons, for which you can cycle through the various game actions. Basically the opposite of the "assign button to action" thing seen in the "keyboard" menu. Yep, pretty much. Oddly, despite that, I love (almost) every single second of it.