Does anybody else get unreasonably annoyed at the vast majority of rpg games that are feudal societys on a surface level but are actually capitalist societys under a thin vineer. I was trying to play pillars of eternity but became incredibly annoyed at the frist quest of the game revolving around a mill which is in a lord's domain but is privately owned and operated and which the townsfolk sell their grain to in exchange for currency (to later buy back with the same currency). I had to put the game down right there.
I think a lot of the time it's an outgrowth from developers feeling the need to have a commonly circulated currency. Although the answer in my opinion isn't to faithfully recreate feudalism but to create a unique social formation for the conditions of the world, I've always loved the eberron campaign setting for that reason.
Similarly, I hate when there are science fiction stories that have no reason for the characters to be engaging in capitalism. Like we're all on a research vessel in space with one scientific goal of finding a suitable planet for life yet we still have to worry about money for some reason.
Eve Online's setting is incredibly bleak for this reason. Millions of inhabited worlds over thousands of star systems, faster than light travel ... and the only goal of anyone's life is to work for or own a capitalist corporation. The only thing you can do in the game is make money. There's no lore anyone cares about. There's no story you'll actually read the flavor text for. There's nothing to do than find some way of making money so you can find ways of making more money. Like a million years in the future.
Infinitely cloned copies of terminally alienated oligarchs that are so up their own asses that ship crews are a write-off in both lore and in gameplay. That, and the corrupt way that the devs played favorites in the game's 0.0 wars, made me give up entirely eventually.
I... don't know about that. I was never neurotic enough to play, but I read a few blogs and write-ups on various moments within the game. There was definitely an evolution in both the composition of players and play styles. There was plenty of in-game politics, factionalization, espionage, feuding, and personality-driven conflict.
Also, lots of meta stuff. There was drama around the exchange rates and interactions with developers. Drama between the players outside the game. Drama with bugs and exploits. Drama with the rise and fall of the game's population.
There were definitely design limits. You couldn't land on a planet and explore the xenobiology for thirty years. You still needed certain raw materials to build out your kit, and joining a corporation made that process much smoother. But its like saying "I can't pull over and get out of my car, run off into the woods, and become a lumberjack in Truck Simulator" or "I can't not-pick-up-stuff in Katamari Damasi". If you want to play Minecraft instead of Eve Online, just do that instead.
Elite dangerous is like this too but in a first person scenario. Sure you can do exploration type shit and get a ship and go off into the unknown but in the end all you are doing is mapping planets and selling that map data. Either that or be a space trucker. lol