Go back to when you 1st mentioned Bioshock and I responded with all you need to defeat the hardest enemies (Big Daddies) is a gun with special ammo. What makes you think you can't just use guns on Normal? What makes you use plasmids? What makes you not go around and shoot every enemy on Normal in MGS3? I'm pretty sure the game has enough ammo and silencers (to not get alerts) to do that. Not to mention, you can just run through the levels if you want. I explained how you hardly need to use any of the mechanics in Witcher to defeat any enemy on the hardest difficulty. I don't know Total War at all so I can't really say much for that.
For these cases, I was very careful to say "harder difficulties" and not "normal difficulty".
- Bioshock
Here's a few quotes from the developers sourced from
an interview where they talk about "survivor mode":
Get to know some of the more indirect plasmids like Target Dummy and Enrage. Learn how to formulate plans, set up and manipulate the world. A good challenge is to see how quickly you can reduce a Big Daddy from full strength to dead, by setting traps and picking just the right fighting area before launching the attack in earnest.
Experiment with tactics that get you a lot of damage for as little risk and resources (EVE, ammo, or money) as possible. Learn to think on your feet and recognize opportunity everywhere around you. Use your abilities in combination, simple direct offense rarely works.
This was pretty much what I was saying. It's not the best example of an "intended experience", but it works as an example of mechanics that you only really NEED to use because of the harder difficulty.
To address what you wrote: Yes, you probably can just use guns on Normal. However, I remember ammo being more scarce (my most recent memories are playing the Remaster, which rebalanced the game), so I had to use my melee weapon a lot, especially in the beginning. If you relied only on bullets, you'd probably run out of ammo. That's what makes you use plasmids. In the case of Survivor, even more so.
- MGS3
On harder difficulties, players will spot the dead bodies, go on alert, call in backup, and then shoot you to death. On normal, you can probably get away with it and beat the game eventually, but you'll still probably die a lot. Depends on how much of the game you've memorized. Alerts are dangerous.
- Witcher 3
Let's assume our hypothetical players aren't exploiting an OP technique. In that case, they'd have be more reliant on potions, oils, bombs, etc as they advance in difficulty. During my playthrough, I only started leveling signs after I had made significant progress into the sword skill tree, so I didn't have your experience.
- Total War
Yeah, I don't know either.
The way I see it, it's a sliding scale of being able to just mash the attack button" and needing to use all the mechanics. This scale usually maps directly to the difficulty levels. To illustrate this, enable cheats. See how easy the game is on god mode. Depending on your cheats, you can just 1HK everybody and literally fly through the game. See how many of the game mechanics you're bypassing? That's the most EXTREME example of an "easy mode".
Afterwards, play the game on normal or hard, and see how the game makes you use the mechanics, or else punishes you with death. That, I think, should prove the point. In most games, the easier the difficulty, the fewer mechanics you need to use. The harder the difficulty, the more mechanics you need to use.
You really really overestimate how much people care about game journalists and review scores. It also goes the opposite way too. I remember reading Dark Souls comments saying it's literally the hardest game they ever played to only be disappointed that it's not even a hard game. Then, they went and stole the "git gud" meme from MGO2, which was a ridiculously hard game. If you really think a game's journalist or just people on a gaming board are going to accurately tell you how good a game will be for YOU, you got problems.
It's not just journos and review scores, it's also word of mouth. But yes, maybe I am overestimating it. Maybe the worst case scenario might not ever happen. That would be great. But I'm still going to do my part.