On RPG's : Open worlds and multiple choices

Open world, free roam and shit like that.
Many of the latest titles boast with this kind of stuff, but is it really worth it ? Does it impact the gameplay and overall improve the game?

IMHO, No. I get that there's plenty of stuff to do in an open world, but most of it due to unrelated-ness to the storyline or the lack of player motivation are deemed meaningless and kinda stupid. Let me elaborate, explaining some of the features of an open world.

1. You can go to any place in the map. I'm not even gonna elaborate the stupidness of this one . Yay, i climbed the mountain/ i reached top floor of that building / swam to that isle ... Bitch please.

2. You can kill random citizens. Yes you can. I can go on a killing spree and after 10 minutes of repeated massacres, I start to lose interest. Okay, it's very much possible, but it lacks purpose. I can kill enemies and get XP, or i can do that without the XP/get significantly less XP. What's the reasonable choice here?

3. Various mini-games. There are examples mostly present in rpg's . Poker Dice in Witcher , Quazi-blackjack in Mass Effect 2 , and many more. With these you can get monetary reward in terms on in-game currency , but due to the repetitive nature of the mini-games i never spend more than 30 mins AT BEST. The monetary reward was insignificant.

4. You can collect various in-game resources and afterwards sell them. That sounds awfully familiar. Farmville anyone ?

Not to be hater and all, but IMHO the openness of the world has 2 real benefits:

1. The possibility of making an error (Kill the wrong enemy , go to the wrong place, etc..) which is inherent ability of broadening the number of player choices. But due to the map navigation and automatic checkpoint marking that most games have, this possibility is effectively suppressed thus eliminating the purpose of the open game world.

2. The reward for exploring the unknown. Yes I'm talking about the Super-sword you get after going off the map and defeating/solving the puzzle of Demi-God X. Many of the old games had these moments, but nowadays, almost every game rewards the player with the best sword of the game after dealing with problems along the main storyline , so basically you don't need to waste time exploring, since you know that you'll get the real deal "by default". So the only real benefit from this is achieving it faster/easier. That's probably the best motivator when it comes to RPGs but i often feel cheated when i spend hour and a half for a piece of shit gear.


So for me at least , the open world implementations of modern games don't bring much to the table. I'm not into completely eliminating the open world option, just some adjustments need to be made here. Some other time ...