Yeah this is nothing new. I stopped following this thread so long ago, and I just check in once in a while to see the same complaints about the dev and game development lol. Humans by default do the bare minimum to get by, we're basically programmed for it. It takes constant active effort to do more most the time. If people are paying you to do nothing, why would you work harder? They set the stage for doing the bare minimum super early on, I dunno why anybody would expect a change at this point. A fool and their money are soon parted, etc, etc.
That's one extra benefit of a team, you have people counting on you to get your parts done so they can finish their shit often. I mean sure, they can all choose to be lazy, but I feel like there's some guilt there or expectations from your partners to keep things moving most the time. Almost any one man team I see working on projects ends up taking for fucking ever and we get excuse after excuse. But everybody thinks they'll be the 1% that can actually do shit on their own, lol. I love how everybody calls out the Stardew Valley dev for being a one man team and like nobody else.
If you don't want to play with others, probably an open world sandbox rpg isn't the way to go. Stick to sidescrollers, VNs, and RPGmaker games, lol. That shit is at least reasonable to solo.