Just to be clear- I liked The Witcher 2. I just didn't like it nearly as much as the first one. It actually is a good example of what that part of th e video I linked before was talking about - they changed too much, and to me it was no longer really "The Witcher" even if it was a good game in it's own right. A good example of a series not "going downhill" but simply changing so much that a fan of the original may be left disappointed.

Don't worry I understood what you saying, you see TW more as an RPG and not as an adventure game with RPG elements, did I summarize this (in short) well enough? ;)

Sort of. The first Witcher is more of a modern take on a old-school RPG (which I like more), and a better representation of the novels (for me at least). The second one (and presumably the third) is a modern, action-RPG, and sort of re-interprets the world, in a way that is less close to my vision of the books. That's about it.

I must admit I never read the books despite being a book fan :(

But TW3 does absorb you into the story.

But I will replay them with your points in mind ;)

devs are putting more of their effort into mobile, co op and multiplayer games. Pretty sad really.

People like to complain. Don't waste your time with it if you enjoy the game.
As long as the devs are making money and can keep updating their game, add stuff, tweak balance, etc. it's all good. Sometimes it will end up better, sometimes worse...but that's hard to evaluate, really as some things will be appreciated by some and disliked by others.
Path of Exile was fun but there was too much farming for my taste. I still enjoyed it, though. I like Grim Dawn and Diablo3 more, however.

I don't have a problem with people who claim something is going downhill as long as they give good reasoning for why. And in the cases were they don't, it's frustrating as heck.

Take Minecraft for example. You-tuber AntVenom made a video about the 5 worst updates to the game and calls out the 1.9 update for ruining the combat. What's funny is that he gave valid and detailed reasons for why having the auto-jump option on by default was a bad idea in 1.10, yet his criticism of the combat changes were just "no one asked for it" and "no one likes it". It's especially peeves me since I rather like the new combat. It's nothing special but it's a heck of a lot more involved than the left mouse frenzy that came before it.

On my previous post I talked about why people get upset over games becoming bad, then I thought maybe you'd prefer to hear some examples of games that have gotten better. Here's some of my sort of positive outlooks:

The Soulsborne series: I would put Bloodborne right up there with Dark Souls, and I'd love to see either a sequel to that, or another game in that style of gameplay in a brand new setting.

Pokémon: They are adding so much stuff to Sun and Moon. For the first time they're changing the "defeat 8 gyms, then the Pokémon League" for something brand new, and they are finally removing HM moves, which is something people have been asking for for almost two decades.

Shadowrun: Each game improved on the previous' gameplay. While Hong Kong didn't have a story quite as good as Dragonfall, it did some necessary changes to hacking that should be expanded even further in future games. At worst it's a lateral move. Plus each game has gotten it's own substantial update adding hours of content and making several improvements.

Call of Juarez: After The Cartel bombed, it might not even have gotten a sequel, but it did in the form of Gunslinger, a fun arcadey FPS with so much charm, creativity and personality that it can put to shame most AAA FPS games.

Stardew Valley: It's made by one guy and months after release he has continued to add so much content and depth to it, the biggest patch is coming out soon, adding loads of quality of life improvements and even new questlines.

Overwatch: It's pretty much the same thing. But we have a new hero and map now, plus some balance changes, I think that makes it objectively better than the release version. It will be even better when they release this mythical new game mode everyone keeps speculating.

Is this necessarily a bad thing? It could be more indicating a shift in what people want.
If people like mobile/co-op/multiplayer games, then that's what you give 'em.

I play both single-player and multi-player, and on the surface I would consider myself sort of equally split between the two however in practice I spend 99.5% of my gaming time playing single-player. At the current moment in time I strongly feel that this is the best time in history to be a gamer, and the best time to be a PC gamer specifically as well because there are literally more games available on the market right now than ever before in history, and more new games coming out every single day than ever before in history as well.

Not only that, but the average price of a game over time has dropped also. Not so much the cost of new releases, as they've even increased a bit over time - but the prices of most games drop faster over time and drop much lower as well, making games more affordable to the average gamer than ever before.

So the way I see it, is that your first statement is true however only because it is a subset of the following statement: "Devs are putting more of their effort into developing games." That is to say, there are more game developers out there and they're developing more games - more of every type of game imaginable, for single player, multi-player, co-op, MMO, MOBA, and they're doing it for consoles, PCs, Macs, Linux, mobile platforms and every other possibly conceivable platform imaginable. There is no lack of games for any kind of player out there. No lack of single player games any more than there is a lack of multi-player games.

I don't see anything inherently sad about that at all personally, the world of gaming is full of abundance for every gamer pretty much regardless of their tastes and preferences. I think it's fantastic. The games that are being developed that I have no interest in whatsoever simply can be safely pushed aside and ignored while thousands of others being developed that match what I'm looking for can take my focus and provide me with something to be excited about. The fact there are games being developed also at the same time with a focus for people that have different interests than I do is a great thing also.

What would be a sad thing, is if every game in the world was developed just for myself and people with the exact same tastes in games as I do, and others with different tastes had no options to choose from to meet their own needs. The games that appeal to those people don't in any way take anything away from my own experience so they're of no real negative consequence to me. Sure, there are games out there I dislike and even scoff at, and some that I feel are being developed in an over-saturating way, but none of that stifles the creation of games I actually do want to see coming out either.

I guess whether someone sees all of this as exciting or sad isn't really right or wrong, but in the eye of the beholder. All 10 of my eyes are casting their beholden gaze on all of the exciting games that are being developed however and blotting out anything not so appealing.

IMHO, it's the best time ever to be a gamer indeed. An endless supply of games for all tastes to be excited and happy about. :)

Remind me to fix this once I get my laptop back.

Oh, BTW... before I forget... fix that when you get your laptop back. :)

Thanks, friend. My memory's so terrible these days. What would I do without you?

I see such complaints also on Team Fortress 2, e.g. I saw some person complaining just the other day "I miss the old TF2...". I am unsure how old TF2 he was longing for anyway.

After the latest big TF2 updates (many months ago), I think I've detected both positives (+) and negatives (-)

+ As far as I can tell, it is now easier to join a game with your friend(s), ending up in the same team so that you can play together. Earlier it seemed that while there was some complicated way to invite a Steam friend of yours to the same TF2 game which you were already playing, you'd usually end up in different teams, either when joining the game, or when the game auto-balances the teams. If this works now as intended, this is a rather big plus for people playing with their friends on public servers.

+ It seems nowadays there are less people who just hang around in the game and not really playing, like doing some stupid shit like just dancing around or walking around watching others doing nothing. Maybe the new gamemode(s) favor people actually playing, or maybe those people are nowadays hanging around only on some community servers.

- For some reason the official TF2 servers are not running e.g. ctf_sawmill or ctf_well maps anymore. Why the heck not? I miss those two maps, they were great. You might sometimes see them running on community servers, but usually there aren't any players.

- I liked the ability to change team on the fly if the other team had less players, and you saw them losing. Kind of a challenge trying to turn the tide for the losing team. It is boring to play on the winning team which is easily annihilating the other team, as for some reason all the good players ended up in the same team. You just keep telling yourself "Why the fack doesn't the other team put a sentry there, and one of their soldiers use a Cow Mangler to stop that hw+medic combo....? That's what I'd do.".

- There is no time limit to the matches. This is sometimes a big problem when both teams are defending great and the game just goes on and on and on. This is especially bad on maps like Landfall where capping or even getting to the enemy base alive is quite hard to begin with. I mean, sometimes matches can take like 1-2 hours, and then people start getting annoyed and don't want to exit the game because then they wouldn't get any skill points from the game (you lose them if you abort an ongoing game), so sometimes I see my teammates even stopping playing and trying to let the enemy win the game, just to end the game. Phuck that!

It used to be better when you knew a match would end in 30 or 60 minutes, even if there were no caps. Not sure how it then decided which team wins, maybe by how many kills there were etc.

So, I can't really say if TF2 is now better or worse after the big updates. It is both.