I did say there wasn't anything inherently wrong with the concept and that there are good examples of the genre, the issue of why I think most people are not exactly thrilled to hear it is may stem from the genre kind of exploding last gen to the point where many people may have been burnt out by it, especially when some publishers *cough* Ubisoft *cough* were being kind of lazy and unimaginative with it. The game concept still works, but I feel fans have dealt with so many apathetic attempts at it in recent years, that they would rather just ignore it at this point and wait until a review comes in to save it from the bargain bin rather than take a chance the concept wrapped around the sandbox will be enough to keep them interested.

As for my personal feelings on open-world/sandbox titles, I love the idea of having a massive breathing world to explore, but have been disappointed in the past by how developers handle it as I'm not the type who necessarily feels a world needs to keep my constant attention with "stuff to do" as much as I just generally like to explore, and wish more emphasis was placed on that. I also prefer having focus in a main narrative/objective which is where most of these games tend to lose my interest cause often the "main point" is not anymore interesting than the dozen of "non-important" things the game gives me to do, so I quickly lose interest in resolving the game. I'm well aware that there are likely dozen upon dozen of games that fulfill these requirements, but I also have thousands of other games of different genres I can be playing as well, so I'm not exactly in a rush to find all those great gems that get it right. I've played games within the genre that do the concept well, but again, I'm not in a hurry to play the rest of the gems to change my less than stellar views of the genre either. There is sadly just not enough time in the world to play every good game that comes out.