askchapo

Hahaha to be honest I've been implying the majority of the stories I read on RoyalRoad don't have merit

I think the thing I've consistently enjoyed is the protagonist exploring the world and figuring out how to survive and get an edge, but then when the character does figure out their path they just get exponentially more powerful without a lot of real friction.

Yeah this is essentially what causes me to drop serials too, unless they have a really compelling cast of characters or are just insanely good at world-building outside of the protoganist's PoV I do get really sick of stories that reach like 200 chapters and just decide 'nothing really will threaten this protagonist anymore' and have serious chapters like "Xi Jinping waved his hand and the entire army disappeared. 'You really thought you could beat me, a level 100 Communist Leader??' He sneered as Peng Liyuan came rushing towards him, breasts bouncing wildly as the headmistress of his harem giggled at the destruction below."

I will say this, it is usually very easy to spot those kinds of slop early on in my experience - since usually they have some sort of harem or the author's personal fetishes included in the plot, they usually post 4-5 updates a week (in general this is the biggest red flag for me unless it is Writeathon or the author has stated that they will reduce the posting schedule once they hit a certain point), they usually involve 'the system', and most damnably they usually bill their protagonist as 'serious'.

If you want some serials that have great worldbuilding and the cast of characters never seem to have it 'easy' (or at least, they do have limitations/frequent challenges/hardship) - or at the very least the plot has a conclusion, I'd recommend the following:

• Worm (this one is very popular, like Wandering Inn levels, so I'd be surprised if you haven't heard of it): Superhero story in a world where superpowers are seen as fairly normal but have only been around maybe ~50-70 years. Focuses on a very introverted girl, Taylor, who awakens her power and is immediately thrown into the horrible world you get when super-powered people - especially the 'heroes' - are basically walking bombs waiting to go off at the right time. 30 Arcs, like 1 million words. Finished over a decade ago (...can't believe it has been that long, I was reading it as it released back in 2013....) with a satisfying conclusion but the author released a sequel a few years after it, Ward. Honestly all of Wildbow's works have been great, don't drag on too long, and are all really well written with compelling characters/worldbuilding. If superheroes aren't your jam, try out their other works like Pact (supernatural story about magicians who make pacts for power) or Twig (supernatural/steampunk-ish story about a group of orphans in a world where science/magic has fused and produces things like 'stitched' people, aka people who have been created/modified to be more than human in various ways) - both completed and, in my opinion, have endearing casts with fantastic worldbuilding. (Worm especially, but Twig is one of those serials I read and have certain parts just forever etched into my mind - so good from the get-go)

• Wandering Inn of course. Probably will wrap up in the next few volumes if I had to guess, but the current 10 are all really good and no one character ever gets stupidly overpowered or trivializes past story-beats (well....at least none up until Vol 10 in my personal opinion...maybe in a year I'll go back to reading it after forgetting most of what I have read of Vol 10 and look at it with different eyes but dang it Pirateaba....)

• Pale Lights: Fantastic, fantastic, fantastic story set in a world where gods are abundant and frequently make contracts with people to grant them abilities/powers related to the god's scope of divinity & mages manipulate Gloam which is like a fundamental caustic opposite to the Glare, which is the perpetual light of the sun that destroyed the previous world and is needed by humans in regular amounts otherwise they become 'Hollows' or die and have their souls destroyed. Their previous serial, A Practical Guide to Evil, is also pretty good but I think Pale Lights is way better in terms of plot, characters, and worldbuilding - especially because the majority of the cultures/languages/etc in the story takes inspiration from Spanish/Mandarin/Portuguese/Zulu languages/culture, which is something I find really neat since a lot of web serials won't bother to do much besides use some Classical Latin translator for magic stuff or will incorporate stuff from English/other languages that doesn't make sense in their world - I dunno how many times I've read a story that has a setting that is supposed to be completely different than The Real World yet the author can't help but incorporate modern slang/words/etc, so I always appreciate when an author tries to at least blend their real world inspiration with their setting so that when they do use random loanwords/vocabulary, it makes way more sense. Not finished yet (and I don't want it to anytime soon) but Practical Guide to Evil is.