Quote Originally Posted by Jeeqbit View Post
Context was in reference to the sort of things the emergency maintenances had to fix, such as localization issues or Mech Op bugs.
  • In terms of environment design, it's amazing quality.
  • In terms of music, the quality is adored and they do concerts.
  • In terms of dungeon design, yes it's super formulaic and many people find that boring and lacking in depth. But the quality of that formulaic content is nevertheless good.
I could go on, but the point is that things being formulaic or boring does not mean they are poor quality. It just means they are simple. It is like saying a suit is poor quality because it's pure grey with no patterns or uniqueness to it.

People are spinning quality to mean different things:
  • SE probably just means things like mistranslated text or Mech Op bugs.
  • Forum users are gonna spin it to mean that simplistic, formulaic, homogenized systems are the quality issue.
Is not Forked Tower an example of a quality issue? Had SE told anyone here, including you, what the plan was with the entry system and difficulty level, wouldn't nearly everyone say: "no, you're doing that wrong"? Isn't part of a game's quality avoiding really unpleasant friction within the player base, thanks to content like CAR and FT.

I agree with you that assessing the quality of certain design choices is subjective, but I'd suggest Cosmic Explo illustrates a lack of thought and QA in multiple areas. Scaling issues that punished low-pop worlds were completely predictable, and the consequences of fail states bizarrely punishing. The project leveling content is purely a subjective preference, but find me someone who enjoyed running around in triangles clicking things for 40 minutes, and I'll find you ten who were insulted by that design.