I'm not saying story is a bad thing. It's not, but it seems like a lot of devs focus so heavily on coming up with an engaging story and good visuals that they forget to actually make the game fun to play.
I think about some of the games I've played over the years, and a lot of my favorites either had fairly limited or even downright absurd plots that basically boil down to an excuse to make the gameplay loop happen.
Just a random musing.
It's a problem tied to the rise of game budgets and investor demand for more guaranteed returns. You can pretty reliably get better visuals just by pumping more money into a game studio, and that translates fairly reliably into better review scores and more purchases. Good writing is harder to get via more money, but you can at least hire big name writers from previously successful games; if they write trash this time then you can still justify your decision to hire them based on their previous success. A good gameplay loop requires capturing lightning in a bottle, and you can't do that by just pumping more money into the game. You're far more likely to find a good gameplay loop by digging through the piles of cheap indie games on Steam and looking for someone's personal passion project.
Also, and I've been deliberately ignoring the elephant in the room until now, woke devs don't actually play games and don't know what good gameplay is.
Only if you require it to be new/unique. There's plenty of gameplay loops that are proven successes, and most of these are nowhere near market saturation. But studios/publishers aren't interested in established gameplay loops (unless they're the ones that established it) they're trying to figure out how to maximize the amount of money they can milk out of their customers.
Yeah, playing Halls of Torment right now... And it's Vampire Survivors. Straight-up. Still sold a million copies, and still is a great game.
I played a half-dozen Slay The Spire clones, called that because they just ape the deckbuilder system of STS. Because that system, too, works. Maybe a dozen "Metroidvania" titles, too, named so because they copy the gameplay loop of Metroid, and Castlevania.
I've probably played two dozen "souls-like" games, 3rd-person hack-and-slashers with dodge-rolling-and-stamina elements. Because that one also works.
And don't get me started on turn based party based "Attack, Magic, Item, Flee" menu combat systems and gameplay loops! I've probably a thousand JRPGs in my library.
It's easy to get a good gameplay loop. Just take a successful game's loop. Everyone does it. No one gets sued over it.
absolutely true
Also true, lol.
or at the very least trial and error, lol. you don't have to be groundbreaking, just don't have me mashing the button like I'm playing track and field and praying I land more hits than I take, lol.