Gaming Trends

Found this old thread and thought, "why the hell not?" so what current gaming trends do you enjoy, which trends do you wish would go away?

I vaguely remember that thread, how times have changed in nearly a decade. I did eventually find my games of last gen, it was Dark Souls and Xenoblade Chronicles. Unlike last gen, I've been largely surprised and happy with this generations offerings.

In terms of trends I'm digging, a return to better challenge has been quite nice, and narrative choices have become more prominent which I'm really digging. I also like more subtle and subversive elements in my games, but that could be all the Dark Souls and Yoko Taro titles I've been delving into lately.

As for trends I wish would go away... mostly Open World Sandbox Games and all of the gaming cliches it now offers like tons of fetch quests, boring Mark Hunts, and loads of fast travel cause exploring all that empty space gets tedious after awhile. Also, I need Atlus to stop making New Waifu Editions to their games, where it's the same game but they're going to cram a new character (usually a real cute girl you may or may not be able to date) in there despite the original dynamics working fine. I'm already dreading the inevitable Persona 5 Black Edition which will add some girl character who will likely be a Magical Girl. I also need developers to stop with the service model of game development, which can basically be described as releasing the Beta as a the full game and then patching in the rest of the fixes later or through DLC. The microtransaction model and DLC model are kind of obnoxious in gaming right now, and while some companies do a good job, others exploit it way too much.

I'm also on the fence about VR. For the most part, it's not a technology I see as much value in from a gaming standpoint due to the fact it doesn't seem to me to add any value to the experience of gaming since it's a purely visual medium. I get that it adds more "immersion" but I can't help but look at the trailers and game content for them and not see it doing the opposite for me. I'm happy it's keeping motion controls alive, but just like that tech, it feels like it's missing a killer IP to really show off what it can do besides just being another novelty gaming tool. On the other hand, while I have really no interest in VR, I hope it does well enough to stay relevant in development, cause finding new ways to play games is always a bonus for everyone. It's part of the reason I was very supportive of motion controls and the Wii back in the day.

I'm with WK on his first one. Too many of the 'top' games are now open world sandbox. I like those games a lot but they take so much time to complete that I can't get to them all. I can easily just ignore the ones I think I'll like less but the problem is that 'volume of content' has become the new standard to achieve, and developers have been focusing attention on creating new open world sandbox games or transforming their current series into that format, which leaves less resources to develop shorter but amazing experiences. Naughty Dog has been the one company that has stuck to its model of creating amazing single narrative experiences that don't require a ton of time and I love them for it.

I'm so glad the lootbox bubble is bursting in the faces of Bungie/Activision/Blizzard, and EA

Last generation ended with a lot of publishers shying away from risks on new IPs, and I think that burned out a lot of fans on re-hashes. This generation is beginning to take more risks and try new ideas. Letting an FPS team make an open world action RPG like Horizon Zero Dawn, and now I hear that also inspired Microsoft to let the Forza team make the next Fable game