yes

and even worse is that for some reason developers think its a good idea to make the fucking things sadistically hard

The ray-gun and pogo stick were novel... for the first 20 minutes, but apart from that platformers are the same - mindbogglingly simple.

While everybody waits and waits Ill just stick to Mega Man X.

For a mediocre game, Mighty No. 9 sure has suffered some tremendous delays. By the time its actually released more people are going to remember it for its drama as opposed to actual gameplay.

Especially when you consider that your average platformer is like 4 hours long

This one really makes me sad as I liked Lugaru. :(

Go play Super Mario Galaxy and MARVEL at the level design.

And then marvel at Nintendo and be boggled on how they took all the design ideas and paradigm shifts, and promptly threw them out for a return to safe timer based linear platforming!

How do you make a platformer not based on timing?

Give an example?

Timer, not timing.

You know, having a big ole arbitrary clock slapped up in the corner?

Have you ever played a game like Super Mario Galaxy 2 and get all 120 stars?

Have you ever played Banjo Kazooie?

Collectathons promote exploration.

Its practically an open world.

i dont need to be prompted to collect 80 billion piece of fluff that mean nothing to explore
show me an open world and i will explore on my own
i walked from edge to edge to edge to edge in oblivion

I quit playing it when I realized that the stuff I collected in a level wouldn't stay collected if I died before finishing. Screw that noise, and time to move on.