I tihnk you have to have a good mix of easy and hard. Where I live, we have a good variety....lots of parking lot micros but quite a few tougher hides in parks and on a college campus nearby (Berry College - 26,000 acres and lots of places to hide caches!). There are enough easy ones that I can grab on the way home from work and some (Lavender Green GCJ1BR) that are like Moby Dick to me (Cap'n Ahab). What is good about some of the easier hides is that you get a feel for how they are hidden and what to look for. There are a couple of micros that are hidden pretty darn well that I haven't found yet. I'm trying to methodically eliminate the easy micros from the showing up evertime I log in. So I guess in response to whether hard caches discourage new cachers, I'd have to say no - as long as there are some easier finds to cut their teeth on.