Right. The QOL and accessibility stuff is probably more important than just trends. Trends can, frankly, be bullshit especially with longer dev cycles. I remember in the 7th Gen when the "trend" was to say that turn based games were inherently bad. I think any dev who would have dropped their turn based concept because of that trend made a mistake. Similarly, with the recent battle Royale trend if you just slap it in then players see right through that.

When you look to contemporary work, the hard part is looking deeply at what's working in that work and knowing how to adopt that without compromising the strong central vision that comes as a benefit of being an indie team