FYI, there are a handful of games that put unique spins on the genre out there. Most of the ones I can think of off the top of my head put you in control of a "cursor character" that's like a commander. It puts a speed limit on APM, which I think gets the genre back to focusing on strategy. There's also Northgard, which is like a cross between an RTS and a 4X game, and pieces of the map are tile-like, so rather than this unit moving to these coordinates, you're commanding a unit to move from this tile to the one next to it. Then there's the Total War series, where the battles are slow paced, and the macro level resources are handled in turn-based strategy.
If you miss that old style of game, that's fine, but there are probably tons of ways to morph the RTS genre that solves its old problems, finds it more success, and still scratches that itch. I'm quite fond of Cannon Brawl, and Tooth and Tail had its issues but was on the right track.
No, they don't automatically make a game better, but if I'm choosing between two games that are similar in themes or mechanics, I'm leaning toward the one with voice acting and better presentation. That's worth extra money to me. It's far easier to retain story elements when they're acted out. Production value is still value. Not only did I get a killer RPG for $60 in Baldur's Gate 3, but I also got some killer performances to help sell it. That extra production value is worth extra money. I could play the previous two Baldur's Gates for pennies on the dollar, and I did, but I would certainly say I got more value out of the game that costs more. In V Rising's case, I know of no other action RPG/loot games that have been combined with survival games in this way, playing with independent movement and aiming instead of mouse pointers, so that's worth the money to see. I think we're done here, but your sense of value is just very strange.
Again, "more" is often to the detriment to the value of the game, because adding hours is easy. I'm saying that, on a AAA level, games were worth more to me when they were shorter. We're currently paying less for more. But at below AAA levels, I'm often served extremely well for $35.
Video games are afraid to be only a couple hours because they are afraid of charging less than $10
I would love to live in a world where we get FPS campaigns that are about 8 hours long, are fulfilling, and cost $60. That used to be the norm, and we were happy with that. A Let's Play is not a substitute.
So if you wanted to get what you're looking for in this case, Fallout 1 and 2 are $10 each, or you can get a bundle of 1/2 and Brotherhood of Steel for $20 (more like brotherhood of steal amirite).
That assumes I don't care about things like better resolutions and frame rates, voice acting, modern considerations for how people actually interact with games, etc. I've also played Fallout 1 already.
Video games are often afraid to be only a couple of hours these days, often to their detriment, but if you multiplied a movie's runtime by 2-3x for some extra production value in your game, you end up at that $35 price point easily for a game that's 5-10 hours long. Even for a direct comparison to Atom RPG, I'd rather pay 2-3x as much for a Wasteland game to get what I'm looking for, and Wasteland games aren't exactly short. Neither is V Rising.
I'm sorry that you don't enjoy video games enough to pay $30 for most of the good ones, but I hope one day you can sit down with a calculator and realize why it must be that way.
Let's say that including benefits, a developer's salary is about $100k. Maybe a small team of 8 people worked on a game like The Thaumaturge for 3 years. Before you even factor in contract work like voice acting, that would put the development budget at $2.4M. If the game cost $20, they'd have to sell about 120k copies to break even on that investment, which is far from guaranteed. By pricing the game at $35, their break even point is nearly half of that. This is a moderately budgeted game, not a AAA game with microtransactions.
Even an experienced team like Mimimi games, who made smart development choices by iterating on what they built before to keep costs down, releasing critical successes several times in a row, ended up closing down because the money coming in was too tight. Their games ranged from $30-$50 and had every sale, bundle, giveaway, and promotional opportunity you could think of.
Fortunately there are enough people who value them more than you, because most games, even moderately budgeted ones, wouldn't be able to sustain themselves at that price.
It peaked today at just shy of 100k concurrent players following its successful early access period, with about 70k reviews, both of which are indicators that it's selling extremely well, as well as taking the #4 spot on the top sellers list on Steam.
Not exactly, but I have found a taste for loot games lately, so maybe someday I'll get around to that one. It still wouldn't scratch the same itch though.
