[riffraff]

I see your point but even when I was a kid 30 years ago Lego had specialized kits (castle with horses, space modules, car races) and even today they sell "just bricks" boxes.

There's certainly been a shift in marketing (e.g. Ninjago) but if you want the raw build your own experience it's still there, the offer has just expanded.

[handrous]

Most (not all!) new kits, even the ones that are marketed at kids (not the obviously-intended-for-adults ones) try hard to minimize exposed nubs, and use tons of itty bitty bricks in ways that feel like they fell out of some kind of automated CAD process.

The result is smallish, expensive, huge-brick-count sets that're cramped (hard even for kid-hands to play in), hard to non-destructively add on to (you have to rip bricks off to find nubs to attach to, sometimes doing a lot of damage before you've got much useful nub-area exposed), and really hard to repair without the manual and a ton of time if part of it gets smashed.

Some of my older castle sets have a brick count similar to modern structures (again, ones aimed at kids, not architectural models or whatever) but are over twice the size and came with like a dozen minifies and horses. The per-piece price may not be much different on modern sets, but there's been some serious size deflation.

The new ones look better (I'm guessing they sell better, too, for that reason, especially to adults making the buying decisions). The old ones were much better LEGO.

[TedDoesntTalk]

Just fyi, there was a time when lego kits and minifigs did not exist... just lego blocks. More than 30 years ago, so before your time.