Another problem is the ratings. Everything there seems way overrated. You'll see a ton of 5-star or 4-star ratings for things that are barely readable.
Wasn't the case before, but RR allows banning readers from rating author stories. So, usually authors have become smarter and immediately ban readers whose review history looks critical. You cannot rate a story from which you have been banned.
Of-course readers have also gotten smarter, many now leaving 0.5 stars for all new stories. If they are banned later, you can still adjust your rating. So now many new stories get a surge of 0.5 ratings.
When you've spent many a year reading machine translated chinese xianxia then indeed many stories on RR are 4/5 star worthy in comparison.
Royalroad is not a place you go to find objectively good stories, it's the place you go to enjoy your particular blend of delicious trash because in the end you'd rather read chapter 1600 of the long running braindead litrpg than you would whatever just won the hugo's.
