Why is this so...boring?

[Barranoid]

I am a couple of hours into the game, did a couple of quests, farmed a little, went hunting, forged new weapons and restored the house to it's former glory. I did stuff for people and pretty mucgh found every settlement there is. And now...now what? Sure I need to "find some stuff" but that's just another dungeon crawl, kiting things with my trusty bow, not getting hit even once.

So, does it get better over time or is that it? Where is the promissed freedom? What am I supposed to do with all that money I've got after I bought everything I actually want? What's with the NPCs? Do they ever do something important?

Don't get me wrong, I like the atmosphere in this game and I like how it looks (really reminds me of "Wildermyth", one of my personal favorites) but besides the grind for resources, there doesn't seem to be anything to it. The combat is bad. Like REALLY bad. The crafting is...well it exists. The interactions with NPCs are not worth mentioning and the story is there but it hides in the bushes. Gameplay wise, the story is pretty much optional.

Problem is that with an optional story and no really good alternative game mechanics, this whole thing feels rather bland. Boring. I can't have any meaningfull interaction with the NPCs, the fights are grindy and not worth it, the farming feels like a sidequest and gathering is just a grind.

As of now I have the feeling that the game doesn't know what it actually wants to be or where it wants to go. This is (officially) not an early access game but it clearly feels like one and I have no idea wether this is going somewhere or not.

[Tenoshii]

That's how feature incomplete sandbox games can go especially when you make the choice to avoid doing several things the game has to offer or otherwise deem them not worth it after a few interactions. For the most part the game doesn't really force you to do anything. Outside of the main quest most of the information about the game world is told through notes and books. So if you don't go around and find and read them and use those clues to explore further (or have an interest in doing that), then sure you'll "run out of things to do".

The issue is magnified by the fact that the game mechanics lack varying degrees of depth, but even once they have added what they want to, there's a good chance it's not going to change anything if you have no interest in the core gameplay loop of most of the features it offers (i.e. if you don't like the farming and don't like the combat, there isn't a whole lot for you).

The combat in general is imbalanced because there is little to no consequence to ranged combat. The only way a player gets hit while using the bow is by making a mistake (or getting stuck on an obstacle). Enemies have no ranged attacks, crowd control, tackling or area denial abilities that you typically see in isometric action games to help prevent the player from engaging an opponent and dispatching them without taking much if any damage. Not to mention how the player can move too fast while aiming and shooting. Even if some of those things were addressed, the player could still abuse dodge since there is no cooldown or charge mechanic to prevent spamming it.