What difficulty do you play games on?

I usually play on normal/medium difficulty. For me it's just about playing at the right level that won't make the game boring (easy), or rage inducing (hard).

Depends how I feel. Normal for just casual play or when I really am focusing more on story and anywhere between hard - whatever the hardest difficulty in that game is for when I want replay value/a challenge

Normal to begin with, unless the game is abysmally easy. After that I'll begin ramping it up, but I rarely go for the hardest difficulty (assuming there's more than one difficulty setting above normal); I prefer a good challenge, but once it gets annoyingly hard and I'm continuously having to retry sections or skip over certain things (I love to explore and find/complete everything) in order to beat the game, I don't find it fun anymore.

When I first begin I play it on Normal/Medium difficulty and then after a little bit of training, I amp the difficulty up to something a little bit more challenging.
If I get stuck on a level/stage I crank the difficulty down, play it for a little bit again and after beating it, I usually try beating it again on the hard difficulty.

Normal or the default difficulty. If it's really impossible to get through I can (hopefully) always switch to easier.

For shooters, usually expert, anything else normal

On Tales games, I try to unlock the hardest difficulties as soon as possible. You usually unlock these by battling a lot, so sometimes I grind a lot just to get the difficulties.

Some Tales fans tell me I am insane, but honestly I just do it to have a failsafe for final bosses. Usually when a boss is too hard, it's enough to lower the difficulty to be able to beat him ^-^;;. The only time I 100%'d a Tales game in the hardest difficulty was Xillia 2, but usually I have to tone it down at least one level. I never have to tone down too much, normally I can do all boss battles in Hard or even Chaos, but in Xillia 1 I had to tune it down to normal because that final boss was really annoying.

On my first playthrough, I generally go for the Normal setting as well - like a lot of others, I just like starting at the baseline/recommended difficulty and depending on how easy or hard it is, I may scale it up or dial it down a notch. I generally try not to do the latter unless I'm really getting my ass kicked and I'm just not having fun anymore though.

Depends on the game.
Normal usually for the first go'round. Though there are exceptions; i.e. I play Outlast on the hardest setting.

Easy, peasy, one-two-threesy. Unless I'm looking for a challenge.

If I'm new to the series, normal. Otherwise, I'll usually play on hard. Currently I'm trying out Persona 5 on hard because P4 was too easy on normal. If I have no choice but to grind, I'll switch back to normal. Ain't got time for that.

Depends on the games I play:

Fire Emblem games: Hard/Lunatic mode
SMT/Persona games: Normal/Hard
Tales games: Hard
Danganronpa: Mean
Fighting games: Easy - work up the difficulty
Other: Normal/Hard

I prefer playing hard mode on games, especially RPGs because I think I learn better about the game from the difficulty. Sure Normal mode is good for first experiences, but Hard mode can teach you about the mistakes you do, annnd the challenge on fighting a really tough boss in said mode appeals to me!

I play normal usually, but I play specific games on harder difficulties, like Dragon Age Inquisition, Dragon's Dogma and of course, Veteran Call of Duty for the trophies

depends, usually I start small and work my way up, sometimes I try the hardest and then have to go down

I play on hard mode on most occasions. Only if it is a drastically different type of game will I use Normal (Or easy if it's a game out of left park for me)

Either normal or hard. And that's of course assuming you can select a difficulty in first place...