Regenerating health is so much easier for designers and players alike.
I appreciate the lack of re-loading thanx to regenerating health. They can provide an option to turn it off for the crazy people out there but to me it just feels like an easier way to "reset" the game after you took too much damage.
I can't stand replaying the same area over and over again, even if I suck terribly at the game I don't want to feel trapped behind an area I can't get past. In a perfect world the game would automatically adjust the difficulty every time you died so the game got a little easier for a few min, then ramped it back up...
I've started many games on harder difficulty levels because I thought it'd be more fun and it's usually not the case. I don't mind the game putting me on the hardest difficulty if I'm cruising through everything but it needs to adjust if I keep dieing in the same spot. (more than 2x?)