What does matter is network difficulty, if coin is hard to get, it will have more value than if coin is easy to get. That simple. No, ifs, ands, or buts.
Not always true. Some coins, which are now dead, ended up with such a high difficulty that it would've taken years to break blocks. Value was $0.
There's a balance to be maintained, but most importantly for a coin like this, is the business front-end regardless of anything else.
"Difficulty over Blocks returned" is just an indicator of how desired a coin is, not always an indice of actual value. It's generally a good indicator.. but still. Difficulty has continued going up on BTC, but value has continud to drop, for example.