Sorry to be nitpicky, but isn’t that a positive feedback loop? The ‘negative’ in ‘negative feedback’ refers to how the initial result affects the system by negating or reducing the likelihood of the same result occurring in future, whereas a positive feedback loop has the amplifying, encouraging effect you describe.
Depends on the context. In programming, science, or engineering you're correct in that "positive" refers to each occurrence amplifying the chance of another occurrence. And since this is supposed to be about game design then
you're right in that I should have said positive feedback loop.
In psychology however the terms refer to your emotional response, so the meanings are switched. Negative feedback encourages more negative events, positive encourages positive. Life seldom has systems that make things harder for you if you're successful, or easier if you're failing, so it makes little sense for us to use the engineering definition of negative feedback loop.
That and my point comes across clearer by matching negative opinion with negative feedback loop, even if that's not grammatically correct. It's just easier for the reader to swallow, 'ya know?
As for your second point, Mark Brown from Game Maker's Toolkit once said that while the player should have the option to customize their experience,
it's still up to the developer to state the intended playstyle. Thus you choosing not to use tools like the exp. share, roto boosts, X-items, just to create a challenge is not a sign the game is well balanced as that's you inducing balance on the game by abstaining from the tools it gives you. If Gamefreak was really trying to deliver a more challenging experience, they would not have made using these features the default.
Using Celeste as an example again, Assist Mode is accessible in the options menu, and before it can be turned on a warning pops up that turning it on will ruin the intended difficulty of the game (but along with an admission that everyone plays differently and if you need this to keep the game accessible then by all means use it). There are absolutely no consequences to using it (even the common ones, like no achievements or some marker saying you used it) but at the same time the game's language makes it clear this easy-mode is not the intended experience.
The Exp Share is forced into your hands early in the game and the default is enabled. The game never warns you about it, and by the language and trainer distribution it clearly expects the player to be using it.
Because you're right in that Gamefreak probably never intended to make the pokemon games that challenging, rather captiolizing on other rewards like collecting and exploring with battles being a secondary priority (quite literally, based on the history of making Red and Blue). And I did admit that fixing the money penalty for losing a fight isn't going to solve every issue with the pokemon games fight between accessibility and difficulty.
But it's a start.
