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.
I've asserted this multiple times, it's not even so much that there's too much emphasis on graphics, it's feature creep and gameplay bloat that is more often the problem with a lot of these games.
Where complexity becomes stacked to the brim with so much extra fluff that it quickly becomes more like a job than a game for the player. Especially when that stack comes packed with rather tedious mechanics that really suck out a lot of the fun from the whole experience.
A lot of studios and publishers assume this is what players want, especially if they're aiming to pump up those player numbers to appeal to investors. And admittedly quite a few players players assume this is what they always want too. More features can make a game look more "meaty" and complete, and worth their coin. And in some cases it's a totally fair expectation. But it's not always a fun and practical one in the end.
I mostly agree, but it's not complexity, it's tedium. The actual game mechanics are getting more and more simplified, but it's locked behind superfluous skill trees that artificially extend the game by forcing you to grind for what's mostly just incremental stat buffs.
Ah, took me a moment, but I see what you mean. And yeah you're right. They throw in mechanics that are dressed up to look like they achieve depth and complexity, even though functionally, it's anything but.
...If I understand what you're saying, it's like action games (for example) become psuedo RPGs?
square, square, triangle. square, square, triangle! square, square, triangle!
That's one example that can be an issue. For some games such combinations manage to be quite fun, but then for others it can be rather detrimental. Also depends to some degree on how far they go.
Darksiders 2 for example I feel went way too far on implementing loot and itemization, to the point where it became a chore I really didn't want to keep dealing with all the way throughout the game.
Shadow Warrior 2's another example that comes to mind. It was maybe a little overly ambitious with its implementation of dynamic/procedurally generated map elements, and might've gone a little over the top with some of its weapon customization/crafting (which was almost good in a lot of ways).
Now I will also point out, that I actually did enjoy both of these games a fair bit. Shadow Warrior 2 in particular I might almost praise. But both games end up dragging on a bit, with a lot of clunk and repetition dragging them down, becoming nearly a slog to try and finish.
Part of it I think is when the amount of time that you devote to side mechanics (like crafting) drastically exceeds the amount of time and effort you invest into playing through the actual game. Which is even more annoying when the payoff for that side-investment is rather meager and ends up only adding a tiny bit of additional fun to the primary gameplay.
outside of open world survival (is there any kind of standard name for minecraft clones yet!?!), crafting can definitely become a chore.