It has been my experience that the quality and variety of kits currently available have declined. Visit your local hobby shop and I don't mean Hobby People and see what they have to offer in the way of kits. Your lucky if you find more the three or four and they usually are .40 size trainers. The vast majority of model for sale will be ARFs and the selection will be diverse from trainers to semi scale.
Beleieve it or not the demise of kits was due to the demand of balsa wood by the airline industry and liquid petroleum tankers. Balsa wood is used in the construction of pallets used to move freight aboard commerical air transport aircraft and in the case of transport ships that haul liquid petroleum it is used as an insluator. This demand by these two industries caused severe balsa wood shortages
for the hobby industry. Most kit manufactures could not get the proper grade balsa for there kits and also could not afford the escalating prices for this wood.
Those people who used to build from kits either stopped doing so or became scratch builders. What filled the void, the advent of the ARFs did and the quality and variety of these models is growing astronomical. The last airplane I constructed was scratched built and cost me over $200.00 in wood alone.
Builders will never go away but there will be just less of them.