>>714340789 (OP)
its such a weird genre. when they're done right they scratch a ton of itches. They give you a "meaningful" grind, they have pretty solid gamestage progression, they can present all sorts of player challenges, they're open enough to let the player make their own challenges, and they allow the player to really flex their own creativity. Overall just a really satisfying gameplay loop.
On the other hand they have a tenancy of becoming stale or just pure tedium when not implemented well and a lot of them do feel kind of samey with just different gimmicks to try to differentiate themselves from eachother. Also a lot of them have some level of jank you have to be able to put up with or look past to get enjoyment out of. The other issue is the ones that are story based or progression based have no real point to continue once you beat the game.
A lot of people will shit on minecraft, but honestly its probably the best example of the genre. Casual enough that its accessible to everyone but just enough content and freedom that you can play it for years and still have things you can do. Its biggest complaint is its simplicity and lack of more complex features, but in many ways its what allowed it to stay relevant for over a decade when many other survival crafting games fail.
The other big issue with the genre is when the devs start to have an antagonistic relationship with player expectations/desires. Looking at something like 7 Days to Die - most of the player base seems to want something more to FPS minecraft with zombies and will try to find ways and exploits to make that happen. However the dev team seems hell bent on trying to make the game more like rust where regular and short server resets are a thing, patch out a lot of techniques that are fun for players, and lean into making the game less about base building and more about being a horde shooter. Its not the only game that has an issue like this either.
