There are studios out there making games with the QoL improvements modern gamers demand without without modern bullshit like subscriptions and microtransactions. Baldur's Gate 3 is a particularly prominent example of a studio doing the right thing and being massively rewarded with sales.
Just in... we're re-releasing old classic games, but making every reward 10x harder to earn... but adding in microtransactions so you can get them without having to do all the playing portions.
Is making the game live service a quality of life improvement? There's still a market out there for Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, and Borderlands, after all; a large one.
A season pass is a bundle of several DLCs intended to release over a period of time, usually a year, and they usually come with a small discount for buying in bulk or maybe a few extras for buying them all together instead of separately. A battle pass will often have a "free tier" and a "paid tier", and it's basically a experience points progression meter that encourages you to keep playing the game longer (and they have an incentive to put the best rewards behind the paid tier to get you to pay for them). Typically battle passes are only available for a limited time, and if you don't get them while they're available, you missed out, which creates a greater sense of urgency to play longer during that period of time.
Sounds like a skill issue. Joking aside I play largely old school games as a baseline, but maybe try playing some newer CRPGs to ease into it like Pillars of Eternity, Tyranny, or really any of Owlcats games. Also it could be worse ya couldve tried playing Arcanum which is rough even for me to play.
I find this comment amusing because other than Vagrant Story needing 1h to access the memory card, I think modern QoL has destroyed the fun and community in video games. Exhibit 1: the souls series. Not only did it introduce actual difficulty (not HP bar go brrrrr) in a world where it was gone it also had obtuse storytelling and a lot of missable content. It has resulted in one of the best franchises of the last 10y and a strong community that produces lore and discussion content to this day.
The main issue is in surveys of people who identify as "gamers", your farmville enjoyer also considers itself a gamer, so AAA studios started to produce games to an audience that didn't exist. Now the laid off development teams are paying the bill.
There should be more games like Outward, Valheim etc. Fun games that eschewed QoL that should have never existed like map click fast travel anywhere.