For how many, exactly ?

We don't have any serious data at all regarding the sum of players preferring a certain playing style.

Exactly. This was part of the Gothic 1 fun for me.

And everywhere else.

In the Larian forums, I even developed my own ideas of certain "forgotten times" in which creatures mist have existed looking like these giant statues which look like a mixture between a lion and a giant rat.

And these catacombs and temples … At least [i]someone[/i9 must have built them.

This is the "mystery factor".

For some, it is just fun musing about this.

Others just go through it, like in Blizzard's action games, where hacking & slashing was everything, and I believe that only very, very few people ever wondered on how these catacombs evolved …

to me it just breaks the immersion, believe it or not. Here you are, with the mega-evil Magaladon about to kill the king, or the mega-lich Colgatest on his way to necrotize the whole kingdom, and I'm the only one that can do something about it! oh, but maybe I'll take a 7 day detour to the southwest to see what color of flowers there are. That's what I mean by having a reason to go places. If the Sword of Justice, which is rumored to penetrate Colgatest's black aura, is hidden in a cave to the southwest, then it makes sense for me to go exploring the area. Now, if it's a game in which nothing is happening, in which I'm not 'the chosen one', then ok, whatever, let's catalog the colors of the flowers in the whole region.

I don't think that will be a problem, because if and I say IF there is something urgent going on, you'll be in trouble if you don't deal with it. However while the world is relatively calm you can spend some time exploring.

That's the key right there and a lot of times developers don't understand this. It has to be interesting. Either with a story, some bauble that you can't find everywhere else or even just a challenge.

Two Worlds missed this by a mile. They had all this wonderfully huge area to explore and there wasn't anything in it. There was a cave thrown in every now and then or a monster village, but that's it. Nothing that enhanced the story. No awesome loot or even a good challenge.

Fallout 1, 2, and NV (a little bit with 3, but ever since I played NV, it just looks sad in comparison)…..had an interesting world to explore. Sometimes cool loot was to be had, sometimes a sidequest and sometimes it was just a little detail that added a little background to the setting.

There is no good way to autogenerate an interesting area to explore. Maybe with Rogues, but that's a whole other type of game.

You're missing out then. If you play the main storyline quest by quest two things will happen. You'll finish the game very quickly and you'll miss out on a lot of things.

I wasn't joking about linear games. They are fun and I have no idea why people knock them so much. I prefer certain styles of games and can have fun with any of these like RPGs (obviously), action, FPS, Adventure, strategy RT or TB and throw in a horror game every now and then.

I don't really have a preference over which of those styles I play at any given time, but once I start a certain type of game I do expect certain things. I expect a sandbox to be exactly that, a sandbox to play in. I expect my action games to be choc full of adrenaline pumping action and I expect my puzzle games to be annoying as hell sometimes ;) Oh and I expect to DIE A LOT when playing rogues.

You can't expect a style of game to be anything than what it is supposed to be. Like I do not want in any way shape or form a MMO style quest system in which they tell you where to go and what to do all the time. Keep that crap in the MMOs and leave my SP games alone.

I think this has also something to do with the urgency, the "urgency factor" of a quest.

If the urgency isn't too high, okay, then it would be reasonable to make a detour.

Maybe then someone even finds something better, then ? (Let's say a quest requires a special item to heal a person. It's not very urgend, because it is a non-lethal, but nasty illness, like … let's say a simple flu. On the way, however, fetching this herb, IF you do a detour, you might find deeply hidden deep within the wilderness an even better herb … One the herbalists had nearly forgotten about … And one that is only noticeable to you if you have a high botany skill … Or is only mentioned by the town's herbalists if you ask deep enough … )

There's urgency and urgency with REAL time limits before something catastrophic happens. I don't like the latter… Not fun.

I personally do not like the huge, empty expanses of the Elder Scrolls games.You don't have to include the entire world into your first game, an entire series of events can take place in a small valley, a single large city and it's surrounding environs, or even in a single labyrinth .

At the same time, if you can't take two steps without running over another NPC, then it's a bit crowded.

This reminds me of the principles of short stories vs. novels :

short story = limited time & space
novel = rather un-limited time & space

Small & full of content by miles. I can readily suspend my disbelief that a thriving metropolis in game lore actually only takes a few minutes to walk around, an easy trade off for the benefits of not having to wander through emptiness or randomly generated content.

I prefer big and NOT empty myself but if you feel constrained to only those two or three options then perhaps the middle of the road option. Small worlds, even when they are masterfully designed and everyone you meet is important, = smaller game and is less interesting to me.