These regressionist attitudes really grind my gears. Nostalgia is the biggest reason for anger at today's gaming climate, and I'm glad the industry is progressing despite it (this coming from someone who grew up on old school cRPGs, I'm talking Pool of Radiance from the Gold Box here). Don't get me wrong, there are more than a few shitty games coming out these days. But I think a lot of people are suffering from "Nothing But Hits" syndrome. It happens with personal eras of music as well. It's why your parents think your music sucks. They only remember stuff like The Beatles, The Doors, Led Zeppelin (examples, not everyone's parents grew up in the same era), and completely forget all the total garbage that came out.
Let's take a slightly more modern example: Dragon Age: Origins. Everyone thinks this game blows the sequels out of the water. It does in some aspects, don't mistake me there, but the game's flaws make it far inferior to me. For instance, you can distribute stat points upon level-up in Origins and Dragon Age 2. Okay, why? If it's a Warrior you're always going to pump strength and con (bit of dex for Sword/Shield talents if a tank), if you're a rogue it's always going to be dex and cunning, as a mage it's always magic and willpower. Same thing going further back. Why would you level anything besides INT or CON on a Wizard? It's customization in name only, makes you THINK you have more agency in your character development than you do.
In terms of skills, the vast, VAST majority of your XP is gained by killing stuff in combat in almost any RPG. So when I level up, how the hell did I get better at talking? Or picking locks? Or making potions? It makes no damn sense, and why I applauded when BioWare took the Persuade/Intimidate options out of leveling up in Mass Effect 2 and attached them to your morality bars. What this did was it made your combat XP focus on combat, and then your morality bars acted as a sort of "speech XP", the more you did it, the more you could do it.
Finally let's talk combat. Firstly, it's stupid and frustrating as hell when your meticulously min/max'd party gets destroyed in what should be an easily winnable battle because of shitty luck with dice-rolls (D&D RPG's, most others have safeguards in place to prevent such BS). Second, a lot of these games have overpowered healing mechanics so damage can't stick. Going back to the Origins example, the Heal spell, as well as every SEPARATE HEALING POTION TYPE had it's own 5 second cooldown. Meaning since damage can't stick, the only two states that matter are Alive or Dead. So they had to have instagib mechanics to kill you, usually in the form of grabs (Dragon chomping you, Ogre punching you, animals tackling you, etc). Contrast the new game Inquisition, where you can carry only VERY few healing potions, there's no healing magic, and no health regeneration, so damage sticks VERY hard. You really have to pay attention to how you mitigate damage across your party or you're gonna get screwed.
Combat mechanics in a lot of older RPGs are just boring in general, with little to no active ability usage outside of magic, focusing almost entirely on building your character's passive attack strength and durability. No thinking on the fly, no agency in a character defending themselves, just dice-rolls and spreadsheets.
Notice I haven't touched on story at all? That's because the story was the main thing that got me through those games, and there HAS been a noticeable drop in both story quality and complexity. But as Jandau stated above, that's a victim of the technology. It's a lot harder to animate facial movements, pay voice actors for dialogue, and create an active cutscene rather than have a few sprites standing around the normal game area and having text boxes pop up. The tradeoff here is improved immersion. Complexity suffered, no doubt. But my emotional investment increased because you can see and hear the emotions and drama play out on the screen in a more cinematic way.
I guess my whole point here is that advancement is worth the cost of a minority of gamers' enjoyment. Why? Because eventually we're going to hit that singularity where graphics can no longer be improved in any appreciable way, it becomes cheaper and cheaper to create those scenes and worlds, and then they can finally focus completely on writing amazing stories with great gameplay and mechanics. To me it feels like we're nearly there. So just be a bit more patient, is all.