Where to begin...
Mainly the whole "streamlining" or "simplifying" bollocks, the general shift of focus towards multiplayer, rather than an interesting character-driven narrative, lack of depth gameplay-wise aswell as story-wise (seriously, game developers, RPG game developers in particular, look at older games like the BG series aswell as Planescape: Torment, you WILL learn LOADS from just playing through them once again, and I'm not saying all games should be like them, I'm saying theres a LOT to be learned from them... and I do mean a LOT)... basically the devolving of games in general.
Seriously, having played the BG series aswell as Planescape: Torment just a few years ago, rather than a decade ago as is the case for most of the fans of those games, I still consider them great games, games vastly superior to any modern RPG I've played, including the ME series(which I also love), The Witcher and The Witcher 2 being closer than most games get, but not quite there yet.
I do understand why modern games have less freedom, simply because they're more expensive to make, and if you want to make a huge world(that looks great, and doesn't seem randomly generated) that players could easily miss half of, you'll have to pay LOADS of money, while it was relatively cheap back when BG was still new, largely because the levels themselves were simpler, graphically and functionally. Torment simply didn't have as many different maps, as the BG games had.
Funny thing, though, the isometric view D&D games are aesthetically far more pleasing than say... DA2. They have their own distinct visual style, which DA2 lacks(and I'm not hating on DA2, I could bring up a different game for an example, but DA2 is the most well-known and obvious example, so I went with that).
Still, I applaud Bioware for atleast understanding that great writing is INTEGRAL to an RPG game, even if some other bits come out a bit iffy.
Oh and speaking of DA2, another thing that annoys me is publishers pushing developers to rush out a game that's only half-made. Most of the bad parts of DA2 can be directly blamed on time constraints... the game had huge potential, but nowhere near enough time to actually follow through on all their ideas and make a good(by Bioware standards, which is basically excellent by any other standards) game out of it as well.
/rant
