I understand that many RPGs focus too much on errands and hack and slash. You are right to complain about it. But since you're a developer, I don't see why you're abandoning the genre instead of attempting to *change* it.
The Fallouts and Baldur's Gates of the world may be relatively rare, but they're there and they're some of the best games I've ever played. A lot of people look to RPGs for plot and character development, because they know other game genres don't support these as well. I think that the main appeal of an RPG is the satisfaction of building up an awesome character from scratch, but the abovementioned games demonstrate that this process is only boring if it is limited by the creativity of its creator.
If you think that the RPG genre has few gems, than make more. You of all people have the capacity to do it. It's the responsibility of game designers to make games better, and to expand on strong points and eliminate weak points of the genre they're working with. If you don't like doing boring quests when you're level 1, then make the level 1 quests interesting. Don't just give up and blame the faults of a game on the genre. Once it's been proven that it *can* work, such as in Fallout or BG, than there's no excuse to churn out the same grind. Make it different.
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I understand that many RPGs focus too much on errands and hack and slash. You are right to complain about it. But since you're a developer, I don't see why you're abandoning the genre instead of attempting to *change* it. The Fallouts and Baldur's Gates of the world may be relatively rare, but they're there and they're some of the best games I've ever played. A lot of people look to RPGs for plot and character development, because they know other game genres don't support these as well. I think that the main appeal of an RPG is the satisfaction of building up an awesome character from scratch, but the abovementioned games demonstrate that this process is only boring if it is limited by the creativity of its creator. If you think that the RPG genre has few gems, than make more. You of all people have the capacity to do it. It's the responsibility of game designers to make games better, and to expand on strong points and eliminate weak points of the genre they're working with. If you don't like doing boring quests when you're level 1, then make the level 1 quests interesting. Don't just give up and blame the faults of a game on the genre. Once it's been proven that it *can* work, such as in Fallout or BG, than there's no excuse to churn out the same grind. Make it different.