At this point it’s a self fulfilling prophecy, no one expects Google products to last so they don’t use them and because no one uses them they don’t last. Which sucks because the products themselves are usually pretty solid.
Lol right? I bounced off ss2 a couple times because it was too scary for younger me. A few years later I got the itch to give it another go, but I had to downgrade my graphics drivers to get it to run on my system so I forced myself to finish it that time lol
Man warframe is such an interesting game. I bounced off it twice. When it first released and then again in like '17, but not long ago I fell into it hard for 3 months. So much so it was my #1 played game for my steam recap lol.
So up until very recently, the monster hunter games had a theme of living in balance with the environment and monsters were only hunted to help control manageable numbers or if some had gone out of control. Then they were apparently specifically told to tone down their environmental messaging to appeal to a wider audience.
I believe the things you are calling out are an integral part of the ARPG genre so there isn’t going to be much change to the core without fundamentally changing the game you’re playing. Plenty of people enjoy the wanton clicky destruction and seeing numbers rise, just look how popular stuff like cookie clicker is.
Have you tried monster hunter? (Or god eater or wild hearts) Those games sound a lot like what you’re describing. At its heart the core gameplay is ‘Hunt monsters to gather parts to make better gear to hunt more powerful monsters’
Instead of mowing down tones of small things though, you take down a single large and dangerous foe. As you progress, new and more powerful foes appear, but despite the large roster of monsters, they all feel unique. And while better gear certainly helps, a good deal of skill is also required.
I don’t know if I’m opposed to store exclusives exactly, but epic was paying out the nose to drive people to their store that didn’t even have a shopping cart.
They launched a store without a feature every online store has had for decades