Open World Games: yay or nay?

It kinda depends...? personally I play genshin and find it fun, but sometimes exploring for too long get tiring

I love them if they're done right. Bethesda and CDPR do it right every time. I do really enjoy Ubisoft's open worlds back in the day, such as the old AC games (Rogue and before), Watch Dogs games, etc. Of course, RDR2 is also a masterpiece in this design. You mentioned Days Gone and I enjoy that one too, it's designed in a way that doesn't feel exhaustive.
Problem is, because of the scope of the games, it tends to take too much time. If the devs don't make the exploration and side activities fun and worthwhile, it's easy to lose steam and get burned out.
I do find some of them great for killing time, though. I'll sometimes load up Watch Dogs 2 and free roam, do multiplayer activities, hunt down collectibles as I listen to cybersecurity podcasts. Same with RDR2 if I'm listening to podcasts about America or traditionalism.

The first time to experience it, it's amazing. Each time after that, it's a disappointment.

Used to be my thing, but not really anymore.
Haven't been super interested for a while. Occasionally I'll find one that stands out, but I'm not out here looking for it anymore. I'll take a tightly crafted linear game over that any time.
Usually, if I play open world games now, it's a "point A to point B" situation. I don't explore the entire world unless I'm really taken with it, and even then I'll lose interest after a while. (And if there's no fast travel or some equivalent in-game method to traverse across the map instantly, I very likely won't bother.)
What I do enjoy, though, are kind of "open zone" games.
A lot of immersive sims fall into this category of "wide open levels, separated by narrative chapters". Think Dishonored or Deus Ex.
I like that approach as opposed to "here's everything, go anywhere".

if its well designed to utilize openworld concept. For example, kenshi is very well designed for openworld. Kingdomcome games are well designed for it too.
Being lazy and not feeling like doing every single thing in openworld game is good thing because it will make replaying it sometime later nicer by leaving content untouched. But if the content is just finding one more collectible then its just awful gamedesign.
I dont necessarily seek out openworld games, just good games that fall into the slots i like. Unfortunately things have been very barren regarding that to the point i'm starting to lose interest in games.

I can't say one or the other globally. It is very much game dependent for me. There are open worlds that are just wonderful and it's joy to play them and there are others whose world is empty and useless and that sucks.
One of the best executed open wolrds is old Gothic IMO (Gothic 2 is great too). Sure it's probably ugly and bland by today standards, but the world is absolutely amazing. It's completely open from the start, but player is so weak it is probably good idea to play semi-linear at the beginning. But nothing (except for tough enemies) stops you from exploring whatever and whenever you want. And there are tons and tons of things to explore. Hidden cave with loot? Shortcut connecting two roads? Place with very rare alchemy ingredient at the end of narrow valley? Shadowbeast lair? There is so much love put in there I still have cravings to play it even though it's like quarter of century old game... Quite the same can be said for e.g. Morrowind which is another absolute gem from early 2000s.
But there are also open world games where open world either simply sucks or serves no purpose. I'd have to think about which games fall in there, because once it's like this I tend to uninstall and forget the title...

Is the openworld meant for exploring, like pre-Starfield Bethesda game? Yeah i love those.
Is the openworld crafted only for wasting player time, like Ubisoft game? Nah.
Is the openworld crafted as a backstage for the main story but also can be explored, like GTA franchise or dying light? Yeah, those are nice.
Is the openworld only used as a backstage for the main story that doesn't encourage exploration because it conflict with player urgency, like Metro Exodus? I'd rather not.
- In my mid-40s and this is more-or-less what I think as well.

As long as it's a bit of a sandbox: hell yeah. But there needs to be stuff happening, things to do. I love games like GTA, Cyberpunk, Just Cause, Stalker, because you can just go around the world and experience random stuff happening. Sometimes I don't want a goal, but just a sandbox to create my own stories.
- Yeah I find that open world games are only as good as their sandbox capabilities.

It depends. I like Open World games that feel like there's a purpose to them being Open World.
Like the Elder Scrolls. The point is for you to feel like you're living in Tamriel. There's a point to it being Open World.
Or Far Cry (which I admittedly haven't played), where you're supposed to be lost in some place, deep in a place that is hostile to you.
And I might get crucified for this, but I honestly feel like the first Breath of the Wild game had no real reason to be Open World. The second one? Yeah, they figured it out. But the first one feels like it was OW just to be OW.
Tl;Dr, the game has to have a reason to be OW. Otherwise they're just aiming for quantity of content and poitnlessly hurting the quality.

If an open world is just there for collectibles/unlocks or just feels otherwise unnecessary to the primary selling feature of the game (like story), then yeah its a hard pass.
Otherwise, if the open world is actually a core part of the game like in most MMO's such as Old School Runescape, then it can be quite enjoyable.

I hit a wall recently with Star Wars Outlaws. The open world is cool until you realize that every enemy base has two or three possible entry points, complete with yellow-painted paths. There's no room for creative infiltration - either you do it Ubisoft's way, or it isn't possible in the game. The NPCs in the open world just drive around aimlessly. It doesn't feel like anyone in the world is trying to achieve anything besides you. It makes me realize how far we have come with modern open world games like the recent Zelda games. Without room for emergent gameplay, an open world feels like little more than a framing device for a game that is actually linear.

open world is great if the world is interesting to explore

Mostly nay. I am not against open-world in premise, but most open-world games do it poorly. I think that a lot of studios make their games open world because these types of games are popular, but don't give a thought to what that means for their specific game. They want their worlds to seem expansive and think this is an easy solution but it isn't.
If you make an open-world game, it needs at the very least two things: a compelling method of traversal (mechanics of interacting with that open world), and thoughtful, intentional design (not just large stretches of trees and rocks between towns). I think Breath of the Wild is a paragon of good open-world design.

Ni!
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I tend to agree, open world is becoming just a box to tick off for AAA developers, which means it just gets put in as filler basically. Halo Infinite is the worst example I can think of. However I do think there are 2 ways open world can be justified: if the world is just packed so full of interesting stuff that the game just gets huge, or if the way of traversing that world is fun.
Category 1 would be games like Morrowind, Skyrim , Fallout 4, or even Mass Effect on a smaller scale. There's just so much to do that it becomes an open world on its own. Category 2 would be games like the Arkham series , Assassins Creed, or Forza Horizon, where getting from point A to point B is fun on its own.
Open world is great when it's done right, but since when has Ubisoft or EA made a good game in the past 10 years?

I like the idea of open world games. In practice it depends entirely on the execution, and amount of free time I have. I enjoyed the hell out of Cyberpunk 2077, but have zero desire to play GTA6 or the latest Ubisoft snoozefest.

I find the opposite. I love video games, always have, but these days my time is more limited, I might go months without touching them, and I just play to relax. So over the past 10 years or whatever, things like GTAV, Fallout 4, and AC:Odyssey have worked out really well for me. I can pick them up whenever I want and either settle in for some story or just waste time exploring, doing side quests, finding collectibles.
Like what would I rather do in real life? Work toward a single goal day after day, or see what's on top of that mountain over there just because?

I like open world games when the time I spend simply being in them without any explicit objective is enjoyable. If I’m thinking “I’m bored, where’s the next task?” then there’s a problem. If I’m thinking “I wonder if I can make a boat that operates by paddling instead of using a fan…” then we’re good.
(Tears of the Kingdom’s physics don’t work that way, I’m sorry to report. Thing flailed around like it was drowning.)

I like them, I prefer sandbox games over linear ones. I think it's the sandbox nature of the game that matters more than open world though.

I only really like STALKER I think, because it's generally compressed and dense rather than stretching out over nothingness. It's technically multiple levels than being overworld I guess.
I didn't get Breath of the Wild.

I love an open world game that is done well - Horizon: Zero Dawn, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. But so often it is just done because thats what they think is the hot thing, and it does not work
- It's a bit awkward, because I liked HZD, I completed it, DLC and all, but I don't consider it a good open world. I learned after a few hours that exploring is almost never rewarded, and you'd way better follow the few very obvious threads the game is setting up for you.
  Going into a hidden path before you're sent there by a quest is just wasting time, you're going to struggle a lot, you'll get nothing at the end and you'll often even have to go back the way you came. Going outright off-road, even a little, spams you with "turn back now or I reload your save" messages. Which is baffling, I've never seen a game trying such a bad way to keep you inside the playing area. And I don't think I've ever seen a game border that's such a mess to begin with.
  Great story, great characters, fun battle mechanics. But as an open-world game, I don't think it works.
  
  Yeah, Horizon’s big issue is that it only rewarded exploration with materials. The only reason to actually explore was to gather more crafting materials. Which is fine in a game like Minecraft or Terraria, where the game is heavily focused on crafting… Materials unlock new things to craft. But HZD isn’t heavily focused on crafting; You simply need to find increasingly obscure parts to be able to make stronger end-game weapons, which largely do the exact same thing as your current weapons, but slightly better. And once you have the better weapon, there’s no reason to continue gathering those materials. Which means there’s no reason to continue exploring.
  There were only a few quests which could actually be discovered through exploration… And even those were just short fetch quests, kill quests, or were close enough to the main story’s locations that you reasonably would have stumbled across them during normal gameplay anyways.
  The issue with HZD is that virtually all of your exploration-related unlockables happen via the main story. It means you can unlock every single new shiny exploration aid without actually exploring.

it depends on the content. a linear story should absolutely not be open world.
A survival sandbox literally can't be anything else.
- The only "open world" game that's been a linear story survival sandbox that I've seen do it well is Raft. And that only works because of the medium of it being an open sea where the players can wander, then move through the story at their leisure.

You don’t have to do everything in an open world game. Just go from main mission to main mission and you’ve pretty much turned it in to a linear game.

Nay, but I have a few exceptions:
FFXV really benefits from the open world and never felt copy pasted like most others.
Outer Wilds (if that counts) could obviously only exist with a continuous map.
While I dislike most open world games, I don't think it's an issue with the open world itself, but with how shallow the games end up being as they all copy the same formula and they all seem afraid to hide "content" from you, so exploration gets trivialized.

Yes for good games like stalker with it's incredible, unmatched alife or arma where the large world serves a purpose or gta and red dead with it's detail.
No to terrible checklist games where the formula is copy pasted across series and not backed up by good ai or good worlds, only with timewasters and checklists, eg ubisoft.
Personlly ive ended up dropping witcher 3 and elden ring thanks to open worlds but for some reason cyberpunk works for me.
- Arma is an interesting example. I'd say that it is only an open world game in some scenarios, and often times is a linear game that happens to have a big map and sandbox.
  In any case, I'd agree that it having a large world with many possibilities is important for the gameplay and ability to mod/create content across the maps.

Open world games don't hold me, because ironically, they tend to feel too small. When you can walk from one side of the setting to the other in real time, it all feels small.

Days Gone is well designed and balanced. The map isn't overly large. If you just follow the quests you pretty much go everywhere anyway. I highly recommend you just give it a go. It's a great game!
- Thanks! I think I will. I just need to get over myself on this.

If yet another game comes out where the core mechanic is climbing a tower to reveal the area, I might scream.

Depends on the game. I'm still a very long ways away from completing it, so please no spoilers, but Sonic Frontiers? They added enough to the open world that it's fun to run around and do side stuff in. Pokemon Violet? The charm wore out quick enough, making the region feel way too empty compared to most other gens, so no. No clue on the DLC, but I imagine they're similarly as empty and devoid of NPCs as well. Games like VoxeLibre on Luanti? Wouldn't want it any other way!

I prefer when the "world" is smaller scale like the Yakuza series for example.
Otherwise, I will immediately get distracted and 100% will never even get close to finishing the main quest.
- I've never finished Skyrim because of literally this. Started the game six times, got bored every time :D

I think the term "open world" is mostly meaningless these days. Skyrim, for example, is called an open world game. But... It's not? At least not by the definition that "open world" originally meant, which literally was just a continuous game world with no loading screens between areas.
Now it just kinda means "game with big outside map." Unless I can walk into a building without seeing a load screen, I don't consider it to be truly open world.
Dark Souls is a true open world game, even though it's not big or has vast open fields, while, again, Skyrim is not because going into a cave, or a house, or even a major city, requires loading a new level, breaking up the world.
- I can't say I've ever heard your use of the term open world before. As I've known it, it's always meant a game world where you can practically go anywhere with minimal to no barriers. Such as GTA3 and that bloody bridge.
- I'd argue Skyrim etc have an "open world" above ground in addition to many "linear worlds" , i.e. the caves and houses behind loading screens. Open world games let you choose where to go and how to get there, as opposed to linear "corridor" games like Half Life or Halo where you literally follow a single path from A to B as you progress from one level to the next.
  Then there's games like original Fable which blurs the line, because technically you choose where to go and how to get there, but each loading area is so small, it doesn't feel like an open world at all. And also you can't go off the path.
  Btw if you don't like loading screens, have you tried Space Engineers? You can literally travel from one full sized planet (~40km diameter) to another full sized without a single loading screen. While flying you can walk around the inside or outside of your spaceship, no loading screens.

Generally nay I think. There are a few I enjoy like Minecraft or Space Engineers.
But in general open world is just more annoying to deal with.

I play them because I enjoy them. You can normally pick out the main storyline and just follow that.
Personally I just play a long game over the course of a couple of years.
- Indeed, I often times will play for a few hours and find all sorts of cool things, but nothing that moves the story along.
  Case in point, I have been playing BG3 for months a few hours here and there and I'm only in the beginning parts of Act 3. And before that I dumped probably 400hrs into Elden Ring, and then went back in for many, many more when the DLC came out.
  
  I played BG3, put over 100 hours, it took me 2 years. But I don't mind, it was an easy game to pick up after a break and continue with, and the quests were rewarding in themselves, you didn't need to complete the whole game to understand it.
  There are definitely games I have started played, then couldn't remember what I was doing after a break and wasn't enthused enough to return to it. I can't remember specific games but I know it happens.

They ol Ubisoft formula? Yeah - I enjoy sprinkling them in to my gaming.
Easy to pick up. Only got a bit of time? Go unlock some area or marker. Got a longer amount of time? Make progress towards the main quest. That with achievements gives me a list of short and long goals I can work towards.
Funny that you mention it. I usually play an open world game in parallel with a heavier on rails RPG/CRPG – and opt for the open world game when I want a more “brain off” session.

Nay. Too many distractions or boring tropes of open world games.
I am on a mission to go from a to b. I pick up all items or resources I can along the way. I encounter enemy x often and enemy y not so often. It’s ok for certain types of games but can become tedious after repetition.

I'm a huge open world and/or sandbox nut. Non-linearity is my jam. Kenshi, Rimworld, AssOdyssey/Shadows, Project Zomboid, Witcher 3, X4...
Don't get me wrong, I love a good story, but story takes many shapes, and not all stories are pre-written; plenty are emergent. I grew up playing with Legos (and still do), and me making whatever story I wanted (or that emerged along the way) was part of the appeal.
Honestly, apart from FF8 and TW3, and now Expedition 33, I haven't found many games with written stories that grabbed me. I read books when I want that fulfillingly-crafted linearity.

I only like open world games when I can really immerse myself into roleplaying. Oblivion and FFXI (if that counts) were perfect for this style of playing. Most open world games just don't hit the mark, unfortunately, and I'd rather play a linear game that feels like reading a good book.

@Azrael
Yay in my case (including Ubi open world games).
- Glad to know you like them ☺️

Nay, unless it's done by CDProjekt (The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077)

Depends on the game, but overall yay. Some of my favorite games are Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, and Red Dead 2. Open worlds really let you immerse yourself and get lost in the game, especially if you limit fast travel.
I recently played Jedi Fallen Order for the first time, and I was a bit shook at how "level-y" the worlds felt. I wouldn't say open worlds have ruined traditional games for me, but it sure is jarring going back to them.

Neeeeiiiighh