Need 200k wishlists more to lower Bard's Tale IV base price.

agrees with pretty much everything. ...only looked from a kinda niche point of view, a steamgifts one, sometimes even a cheap (but cheap) asset flip can do magic here

There are games out there that you can't wait to play, there are those you're looking after to snatch for a nice discount, there are those you consider "when I get a chance", and there are those you don't want to touch even with a stick.

Vast majority of all the games will be in the third group and fourth group, with the last one actually being much smaller as you don't have a knowledge about huge pile of trash being released every day.

Everybody will have a different opinion on what games are worth its full price, what is worth a discounted price, what is worth to snatch only in a bundle, and what should be idled and forgotten. However, there is one fact barely anybody can argue about, and it's over-saturation of the market and a huge competition of games fighting for our attention. And I'm not talking here about gogo trash that falls to the last group, but about a lot of polished indie and AAA titles that are really good and would be nice to play, but our free time spent on video games is always fixed and can never exceed a particular number of hours. This leads to making choices, choices that everybody will have different, based on his taste, opinion, knowledge, possibilities and even mood. If you consider just Humble Monthly and exclude all other bundles, you'll quickly find out that it's very hard if not impossible to keep up with finishing just games included there in a mere month before next one comes up, and those games are supposed to be enjoyable at the minimum, if not outright good. Quality of those games vary, but in every batch there are at least a few titles worth playing, and some will be long enough to keep you busy for at least several weeks.

Objectively speaking there is no reason to pay full price for the game if you don't want to play it right away. If you've only taken all current new releases and waited for one to two years, you'd find out that you've saved at least 50% if not more on all your titles, and you didn't lose anything by not playing it earlier. This is happening right now with releases dated 2016 and before. Why should one spend full amount of money on a game he's not even super interested into instead of grabbing literally anything else that he already owns, or that is already on huge discounts and get at least 2x as many games for the same price?

Maybe I'm oldschool or super cheapskate (probably both), but I really can't understand why people have some awful urge to buy games at full price at the release date, knowing in advance that there will be bugs, day 0 patches, a lot of missing content in form of future DLCs and the price from the space (don't get me even started on missed expectations and hype disappointments). Instead, just two years later, you'll get GOTY edition for 1/4 of the original price with entire content, all patches and as much if not even more fun as you could get until now.

And by all means I'm not saying that you should never pre-order or never buy games at a full price, that would be outright stupid - there is still that first category I talked about. However, ask yourself how many games you really can't wait to play. From all upcoming releases, only Cyberpunk 2077 falls into this category for me, and from existing releases, only Two Point Hospital made it in to convince me to pre-order it, for the sake of nostalgia and my commitment to support good strategy/management games. Plus a few smaller positions like Crusader Kings 2 DLCs, but those are mostly irrelevant and rare.

And the money I saved? I'm still looking to play Assassin's Creed Unity, while Assassin's Creed Origins is already on -50% discount less than a year since release, with all patches, DLCs, season passes and other stuff. Not long time ago I've finished Black Flag which I won in a giveaway from other user that bought it on -75% discount. Why pay 4x as much for 2x as little content when you can just wait to get it cheaper? Unless you want to support the developers of course, like I did myself, but this is exceptional and limited to a few titles, not all releases of games that you eventually want to play. Saving money by going after your backlog and grabbing games you want to play from existing bundles is rather smart and efficient, not "SG mentality" that should be looked at with disgust. If anything, I'd claim those who pre-order blindly, running into bugs and getting hugely disappointed as fools thanks to whom I can have a very nice experience afterwards, because their complaints and disappointment is pushing devs to fix their game which realistically can't get any worse than now.

I agree with you that Steam has been flooded with trash in the last years. The physical copy market less, due to costs, except you view all the casual games as trash (but kids and mommies might disagree).

But there's a huge gap between outstanding / revolutionary on one hand and asset flips on the other one.

Out of curiosity: do you have nothing to play atm? Because you've already played all the outstanding ones and there are no outstanding new releases? Then I'm sorry for you, but either you had a lot of spare time in your past or you are very picky (not blaming you for this, but you shouldn't blame others with a widely spread taste).

What is outstanding? Only Metacritic > 95%? And what's about your personal preferences?
SteamDB lists 417 games with a Steam review score above 90 %, 1506 above 85% (it doesn't state anything about number of reviews necessary, but there has to be a minimum prerequisite, because they don't list any 100% game; the nearest is Portal 2 with 97,25%).

Afair (don't hit me, if I'm wrong :p) you enjoyed Dying Light. And Mad Max. Are these outstanding action adventures? I don't think so. Still they're a good diversion and provide fun. Both newer titles and same genre.

But there might be people who like various genres and/or want to play classics, since they couldn't play them back at that time or focussed on other hobbies. They don't need a new outstanding game every month because of their backlog (surprise: with maybe dated, but outstanding games within).
Wrong PR and game breaking bugs made many players avoid pre-order and release day versions like a plague.. and wait for first reviews. I don't need the newest mobile phone, why do I have to need the newest game right now? Patience is nothing bad.

Supporting a developer: If you got a game by a bundle or discounted and you really like it, who stops you to write a good review, recommend it to friends, within communities, curate it AND buy it again to gift it to friends etc.? Or buy their next game at full price. These possibilities aren't gone afterwards.

Also: bundles and discounts weren't the idea of players. How come? ;)