The Five Nights at Freddy's craze a couple years ago is the biggest example. Triple A studios put out a game that lacking in content and innovation they get dragged across the coals for it. But when an Indie dev does it, it's praised as "minimalism at its finest".
There's also all the Indie platformers that have come out that essentially just copy all the mechanics from Mario, Prince of Persia, etc. and yet somehow still get praised for being innovative, yet their Triple A counterparts get lambasted for rehashing the same tired mechanics year in and year out.
I think FNAF is a bit of an exception. It got the weird fetishistic cult following at the very beginning that helped launch it into fame.
But for the most part, I believe the discrepancy is mostly due to manpower and capability. You expect the best of the best from an AAA company (as you should), and often you get the bare minimum. Not only do you get the bare minimum, but it's so laden with paywalls that what little you
are provided isn't even the full deal. In the past decade you usually end up needing to force yourself into willful ignorance in order to truly enjoy most triple A titles. Otherwise you start to nitpick at things like day-1 DLC, content that was made before release but is paywalled, pay-to-win mechanics, and features completely missing from the game because of publisher oversight. Even a perfect triple A developer will deliver a crippled product if their publisher isn't on-board with their schedule (and often the schedule is determined by the publisher instead).
You don't face these issues with Indie developers and for the most part you (general 'you') get to contribute through playing their game and providing feedback. A lot of indie games get abandoned or are clear cash grabs, but then there are many titles that are made by a handful of guys in their living rooms who continuously make tweaks and changes based on what the people want. Even if the core mechanics are the same as a triple A title, the actual development cycle and the game experience is distinctly guided by the community playing it.
And if we're being honest, there is absolutely no reason why an indie team of four guys with full-time jobs should be able to make a better, or equal game, to a development crew of over a hundred people backed by the power of a publisher that can immediately deliver their product across the world to millions of people. That's the entire point of a triple A developer and publisher. They should be delivering a product that you ordinarily can't get through conventional methods. Instead we're getting delivered subpar products, being blamed for those products being subpar, and then encountering price hikes in the form of micro-transactions and further restricted content. Getting less for more feels like betrayal, especially when the companies themselves flat-out ignore your concerns or feed you a PR script.
Indie games are getting up there in costs to the consumer, but you still have that element of interaction with the developer and the feeling that what you think actually matters. Because, for the most part, it does. An indie dev solely relies on what the community thinks. A triple A publisher/developer can rely on inertia.
