"but punching trees and grabbing rocks are a sort of procedural, emergent fetch quest that takes relatively very little developer time"

I think you perfectly described why I hate most in-game crafting. It feels like cheap filler content to increase play time.

"Games of yore were all about checkpoints. A story on rails."

I love that. I hated AC Origins for its open world and I was relieved that AC Mirage was much more linear.

> It feels like cheap filler content to increase play time.

That is true in combat games that tac on crafting afterwards, but in these games the gathering and crafting is the main content and the combat is filler. If the gathering and crafting didn't have any sort of nuance or interesting quality to them the game wouldn't become popular, you might not like that sort of gameplay but it is hardly just "filler" content.

Games journalism is nothing but poor takes.

Minecraft is still the most bought, most played and most watched game. This journalist wouldn't know fun if it creeped up on him and exploded in his face.

There are things I usually skip in single player games. Inventory management: If your game allows to pick up junk everywhere (Skyrim, Cyberpunk, Witcher, ...) your UI is shit I will look up ways to cheat these.

The last two Zeldas are awful on Switch. On PC I can fix everything I dislike about the games and tweak them to make them enjoyable.

On PC I can fix games. This is likely the main reason I'll never be a console/phone gamer and why I have a Steam Deck.

I have never enjoyed crafting. Grinding for material is also on my list (games like Monster Hunter)

Inventory management in the Resident Evil remakes are good examples of proper inventories and UI for that purpose. That way it's properly part of the gameplay and not "annoying hindrance" like Skyrim.

For me, that's garbage. I identify that as "farming" and it immediately triggers my "drop game timer", if I don't start having fun within 30 minutes of being thrown into a "gather rocks and punch trees loop", I drop the game due to poor design and refund. I'm too old to play "padded" games,I want only good quality stuff.

Yes most mmos and survival games are terrible at this, I'll never forget one of the quests in world of warcraft as a high level death knight "go gather wolves poop": I just defeated an enormous beast and saved a town, now I gather poop?

Checkpoints and story, give me that.

Or even better, give me a well designed gameplay loop, then gathering resources won't feel like a chore.

Automated resource gathering doesn't count, I'm fine if I'm not actively gathering: dyson sphere program is a great game.

For what is woth, I consider most open game terrible. Exceptions have farming items as secondary, not primary (e.g. Elden ring)

Palworlds gathering doesn't feel like a gathering chore, you don't spend much time gathering stuff you mostly spend time exploring and catching monsters or organizing the monsters work.

It wouldn't have become so popular if it is the slow kind of grindy chores you talk about, in general the most popular such games has a lot of things to make it not feel like a chore because most people don't like chores.

But a game reviewer can't really pick what they play, they have to play new shitty games that will never be popular all the time and then I can see how you start to associate these things with chores.

Agree, but disagree on the popularity argument, Ark was very famous and there was a crazy amount of grinding.

That being said, I'm not into pokemon-like games anymore, I suspect the automated battles are not my thing anymore, the fights are too dull and don't endanger you

This isn't a pokemon like game though, it is nothing like pokemon at all except the design of the monsters. Palworld is Ark but without all the grinding and pokemon instead of dinosaurs, but add a factory aspect where you can automate everything with those pokemons unlike the ark grinding and add a lot more content like bosses and events and npc's.

Arks niche at the time was taming dinosaurs, today that isn't anything special but Palworld take that concept and makes everything much better about it and around it. Other than dinosaurs that Ark is the worst survival game I've ever played, but the dinosaurs is what makes that game tick, and you don't have to spend much time on other aspects of the game.

I see, from my understanding there was still a bunch of times "wasted" fighting dull monsters, but if that part is limited, it might be more appealing.

Not sure I'm interested in the factory aspect though, I feel Factorio and Dyson Sphere Program already excel at that

The factory isn't like factorio factories, it is more like rimworld where the monsters go and do the tasks they are fit for and ferry items to where they belong.

So the main gameplay loop there is you have tasks you want done, you go out and search for and catch monsters that can do those tasks and then build out more and more. You don't have to do a lot of focused thinking like in those factory design games, such games takes too much effort to be as popular as palworld.

I see, it's worth a shot, different from what I used to. I haven't played rimworld yet because my experience with prison architect wasn't the greatest (no idea what to build or why)