Yeah, I've seen a lot of people that play this on youtube that have way too much time on there hands and are able to make it way farther than anyone else realistically can.

I don't think they'll ever patch in easier difficulties. From my understanding, the developers wanted the frustrating difficulty of older games that were tough for no other reason than they were just insanely frustrating. I think that's part of the era feeling of this game, but I could be wrong.