We've always had differing types of action rpgs. I mean hell, look at Ehrgeiz, that was a fighting game with a dungeon crawler/rpg as a minigame.
People want more interactability with the systems, so its natural that games developed to have progression that tracks. Especially for the pure fact that endorphins are released as numbers go up.
It is kind of annoying that action rpgs are getting ragged on by traditonal rpg people just because devs are trying to expand the market (and the fact that developers have kind of edged in that direction when tech improved over the last 10 or 15 years).