Fair enough. I fully agree with that.

Isn't this what gaming is about: spending time in a fun way? Games aren't work that you have to finish as much of them as possible in the shortest timeframe.

Sure and I'm not saying that I'm against it. But when open world games have possibly hundreeds of side quests, making all of them puzzle-like will make them unplayable, at least for me anyway. But I don't mind some here and there, or like people here say have the option to turn markers off. It's good to have options for both sides.

In Gothic 1 and 2 most sidequests give you neither markers on map nor exact locations, but their worlds are quite small and each location is well characterised, you won't end up wandering cluelessy. OTOH, Morrowind has a far larger world, the locations in the ashlands have a quite uniform, barren look, and, due to XBox limitations that affected the PC version too, indoors is separated from the outdoors, and there are just a few types of doors, without markers at all it would be very difficult to find a place. Anyhow, even in Morrowind, if a sidequest location is a well defined place, like a town or a fort, the quest will just mark them (or the quarter, in the larger Vivec City), if they aren't already marked, and you'll have to search around: doors of each house and shop will have its name also on map, visible, after you entered the zone at least once, if you point it with the cursor, but the quest won't mark the exact right place with a red X for you, and if you're looking for people or organisations that act secretly, clues people give you will be vague, you'll have to look for the few right people that will be a little less vague, and even when in the right zone, the right place won't be easy to find.

Legacy Of Kain: Soul Reaver... good ol` PS days :D

It was close to an open world game, but it was limited by poor hardware :(

And yeah, nowadays games, even being M rated, are made for like child-minded adults...

Well, they are side-quests, so they are per definition optional.

haha maybe you would, besides getting lost is part of exploring right?

Clearly not everybody is able to appreciate good game design on open world games, some prefer going from A to B all the time and that's it, thankfully the market is flooded with games like this so they are not gonna get hungry, meanwhile I rather discover things on my own by looking the hints on the envoronment and talking with characters.

No, they're not much, which was my point; trophies are used by developers as cheap padding to extend the life of games, especially open world ones. Things like collecting mugs and figurines, feathers, notebook pages etc. is not exactly stimulating gaming in my opinion and "rewards" are either crap or simply a worthless trophy. I guess I don't care about others seeing my gaming prowess.

As for difficulty; yeah, I've heard about it... But games overall are still a lot easier than they used to be, only a decade back. I played through Horizon: Zero Dawn on Hard for my first playthrough and was absolutely shocked at how simple it was save for a few hours in the middle section of the game (first flying foes were a bit tricky when you meet them the first few times), and now I started one on Very Hard, and it's still way too easy. Not just the combat; the resources, money, available gear and upgrades, it just comes flying at your face and I find myself having to sell off or simply dump resources all the time for clogging up my inventory (and I had like 48.000 unspent money at the end of my first playthrough).

The "broaders audience" and the PS/Xbox brand have gradually and unmistakably changed mainstream gaming and there is no denying that the average game is easier to beat today than it was in the 80's, 90's and early 2000's, and for me, that's not a positive but I understand the market reality and wishes none the less.

well back on carts they made the games stupidly hard because they were very short so they needed more life.  I like difficulty with checkpoints so I don't have to replay the same easy sections to get to the hard ones over and over.  Horizon may not be challenging but there's certainly very difficult games out there especially on the indie scene.  Some games get hyped up for difficulty and then they just don't have checkpoints but most enemies are fairly easy so I dunno different people find different things difficult.