Skyrim fatigue: five ways to make open worlds less boring

OXM's Log writes: "When developers show you an open world, it's a slice of cake that they've scooped all the icing onto. "Oh god," you think. You couldn't possibly eat a cake with that much icing on it. You'd die of delicious." You briefly suppress your rationality, and assume that these people aren't misleading you. That technology must have made a massive leap forward while you were wasting your life eating cakes and taking cakey dumps."

[Lord_Sloth]

A better combat engine's a good place to start.

[dirigiblebill]

Damn straight. Skyrim combat is bloody awful, on consoles at least - attack, backpedal, attack, two minute pause to browse quick select menu, attack...

[h311rais3r]

Aside from combat....

More small settlements with characters.
More to do in the wild (fish, collect lumber, set traps and plan ambushes etc)
More usable obstacles (proper rock climbing and tree climbing? Build a home)
I could go on for hourS

[Mutant-Spud]

That's all good as long as it means something, say if items and upgrades are made really expensive, I usually find I have thousands of gold and nothing to spend it on, when I finished Dragon's Dogma I had about three million in the bank and due to my high level and over powered party I had no need of consumables or upgrades. The crafting and upgrade system and even the skill trees/perks were not central to my Skyrim experience, to be honest I pretty much ignored them.
I can see the attraction of something like a homestead simulation in TES, where you hunt, farm, fish and raise a family, it'd definitely be cool because farmers and frontiersmen often did go off to seek their fortune, join a bandit crew or fight for the local Lord .

[Qrphe]

Definitely better combat. I would played this game longer if the combat were more entertaining and a more challenging game would be nice. Quests were too generic for me.

[Tonester925]

Better combat and Couch Co-op/Online Function

I would love to play Skyrim with my brothers