Sorry, rant over. Maybe I'm just too old and bitter for modern gaming.
Sanctuary RPG got added to my "pick up in a bundle" list. Thanks.
That said, I'm not too sure RPGs have ever been all that good a genre beyond the hokey fun simulationist appeal. You'd have to trace their routes back to P&P, back to classic wargames, and figure out if those were anything more than dice chucking crapfests and then trace them back up through their growth. The mechanics are so muddled and tangled these days I really don't think I'd feel comfortable reporting on what's good as an RPG without a bit more knowledge. I can call the modern day stuff crap but fixing it is a tougher ordeal. I think it's easy to say why, say, classic X-Com is better than classic Fallout (Or even modern X-Com better than classic Fallout) in terms of conflict resolution gameplay... but then since FO's design encompasses a great deal more than just combat, where are you supposed to draw the line.
That's why I support EO and Lost Dimension and, though it's even less an RPG, VC because they are focused on the combat, on the actual gameplay, and have meaty skill trees/strategy to work through. That cuts out the stuff you think of when you think BG, FO2, etc... but if you subtract the combat, what are you left with? An adventure game hybrid? Which is almost exactly what QFG4 was. And that was downright groundbreaking as far as open-world sort of exploration, mixed with linearish puzzles and some unfortunate stat-grind.
I've been playing games a long ass time too and I don't see MMOs as being what's been watering down Bethesda's games, assuming one does consider them watered down. Bethesda's been doing them way longer than anyone else. They're an odd software house from the 90s that somehow survived without being swallowed up by a big company like all the others.
I remember playing Daggerfall and that was open world before open world was really a thing. You can still see some of that lineage in their newer games and even more so from 2002's Morrowind (which pre-dates WoW and the MMO craze).
If anything I blame consoles. If you look at the jump between Morrowind and Oblivion that's when things started to get simplified and whitewashed but Elder Scrolls also had fetch quests and click spam action combat and it never had significant choice and consequence, even back in the 90s.
I don't think simplification is a bad thing. At some point you have to figure out what point the stats serve. I look at game design and I generally rate the ideal as zero stat influence, which more RPG-ish mechanics always dragging the game down, so I'm a bit biased but... really, it's an important question. It's easy to say why there's an N frame lag on one of Dante's attacks before you can dodge. But then why are you assigning numeric stats to the character that trump the player's own skill? Are you shooting for a 200 hour grind to avoid being ignored as a game that only "lasts 8 hours?" Drip feeding player rewards? How much stronger do you really want the player to grow over the course of the game and are you certain you can balance for that growth? Better devs than you have tried and the numbers have escaped them when they let the stat growth get out of hand...
I haven't touched an MMO but I don't think the MMO is that huge of an impact. For certain games, yes, but the rush to open world exploration and copy-paste has been from so many other different design directions that I really don't think MMOs are the culprit. Anyone who made a 3D Fallout 3 would be looking toward a massive explorable wasteland and would almost end up designing a very Bethesda-style game almost by default.
Sorry, I tried to come up with a clear thesis as I was writing this and nothing comes to mind. I can't figure out RPG game design versus good game design so in general I'm agin' it when it comes to all RPG mechanics.
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