They're already caving in and giving a difficulty option eventually, and they're in a no-win situation in my opinion.

IF it's character tied, then anyone, regardless of world, can just alter the difficulty on the fly and steamroll someone else's world

if it's world tied, people who want difficulty harder or easier will need to restart worlds

And at the end of the day, it's just going to be a "Take less or more damage, and deal less or more damage" type of deal.

I think the only "Good" option would be for current settings to be "Normal" Easier halves damage, and "harder" doesn't increase damage taken, but increases the odds of Star Enemies appearing, including adding star variants that didn't exist before (Serpent, Abomination, Growths, blobs, oozers, etc).. Hard bumping 1* to 18% and 2* to 2% and "Extreme" bumping 1* to 39% and 2* to 11% with Lox, Boar and Wolf being the only exception to the increased * spawn rate.