Has Er Gen's writing style changed in quality for the worse?

It is about choice. I don't at all see him as a really good author and most of his work is hit and miss. In my opinion, he is a favorite because of Deathblade who is a phenomenal translator and the high quality translation work done by WXW with regards to his novels.

I personally think Renegade Immortal is his most unreadable work, even if it has some good ideas. I tried reading it five times and never got to actually enjoying it other than the period where he received the inheritance of the 5 star race guy, it is a pretty poor novel to me.

Pursuit of the truth, another novel with the same fate. I was never able to get into it.

I personally enjoyed A Will Eternal and I shall seal the Heavens. Nothing has peaked the alchemy arc in iSSTH for me when it comes to his work. Haven't read his other work which is on webnovel, but it sounds ok to me. I feel he has gotten better over time, Renegade Immortal is his most unpolished and unreadable work 

Every novels has its unique taste, even though many have same cliche and Deus ex macina 

I stopped reading ergen's novel after issth. Somehow he starts writing generic xianxia after the success of issth. And there are CN authors out there who are better than ergen imo like wang yu (author of rmji), chen dong, cuttlefish, and xiao ding (author of zhu xian).

And tbh ergen is overrated 

I agree with you there. There is a reason why I claim that PoT is my favorite cultivation novel.
Just before making this post I checked my reading lists and see that I have read about 350 novels on NU. 100 of them completed. Most of novels I read were cultivation novels.
Though I like the genre, but I do admit there are tons of problems with them. I would list these 3 as main ones: lack of actual plot, cliche power systems and trash characters.

Lack of plot - lets admit it. The vast majority of CNs plot can be summarized as "a - You dare! I am [flashy name], b - MC random travels, c - get girl arcs, d - tournaments". However, most of the time there is practically nothing what could be called a main plot. I would personally list only PoT, Reverend Insanity, maybe Grasping Evil and Mao Ni's novels, though, Mao Ni didn't really focus on cultivation. That is why PoT felt so fresh. That is the reason why I think that novels like Lord of Mysteries are so popular.Cliche powers - when you pick up cultivation novel, chances are that you will get sword or spear wielding MC who trains in fire and/or lightning with body training secondary. In addition, it will be full of random OPed sounding or unknown name techniques that MC picks up as cabbages and completely forgets 1 arc later. Only exceptions more or less are "Dao Comprehension" novels, but that's again pretty much only 2 authors, one of whom is Er Gen (though that nonsense he did in AWE makes him more and more unqualified).Trash characters - in vast majority of cultivation novels side characters have 0 IQ, MC has 1. In most cases, it is not even worth remembering them. If I tried to name novels which have broken this rule, I once again would have to mention same novels I did before. That is another reason what made PoT great. It had enough side characters which WERE IMPORTANT to the plot, not dumb or forgotten.

 

I remember hearing there was some disagreement between er gen and QI....maybe that is the reason? 

What are you trying to say? I didn't even say anything about any novels being good or bad. I just told some people that the genre itself isn't completely bad or perfect.

Sure, good stories can attract readers, but popular stories aren't always good, and good stories aren't always popular.
What about when you called ze tian ji, world of cultivation, and pursuit of the truth trash? You also called others who read tragedy to be crazy and masochist. 

Lohp is so good ....

I still wait for the stack chapters ...

Only read 1 chapter is not satisfying 

Time to spell it out for an idiot. Meh.

I'm lamenting that there's no consistent cast of characters to grow and develop and have interactions with each other in xianxia, due to various limiting factors of which the power scaling you seem to love is one. Not the only, one. Another is the main character living so long that secondary characters die off. Another is multiple realms, leaving secondary characters behind.

What you're saying about LotR isn't relevant to the discussion. None of my 4 main gripes with xianxia concerning secondary characters apply to LotR. I used it as an example of a book that's better due to the coherent cast of characters.