I think in a way that feeds into my perspective on the community. This incessant need to just complete everything, and just consume it for the sake of being able to say you completed everything. The second friend I mentioned literally spent a day messing with the rag doll mechanics by setting up mines and blowing himself half way across the map haha. Has that sense of completion in games become too large of a focus that we are beginning to miss out on the enjoyment of the game?
My hunch is that it all hinged on minecraft. With minecraft there came an entire genre of true sandbox games that didn't have stories or missions or any real goals outside of creating. As that niche grew, we started to see games as true sandbox games and story games. Sandbox games don't have a real point other than to play for pleasure, story games have a narrative drive. I think fallout was trying to blend the two. So you have this sandbox in settlements and with the modding community, and there's a story that you can follow, but the point isn't to focus on one or the other. The point is to try to blend the story into the sandbox so that you can mess with your environment through physical building or emotional interaction. It's not the best game ever, but after playing Ark and Rust and a couple other building games that don't have real stories, I think it blends the two in a really novel way.Has that sense of completion in games become too large of a focus?