Now that you mention it, I find adding RPG-like elements to a game can often take away from a game rather than enhance it.
Assassins Creed is a good example of this. In the older games you didn’t have to worry about getting better loot and the like, so you didn’t have to worry about if you had enough number power to assassinate someone. If you could successfully sneak up to them, you can do it.
You did get new tools and unlocked new abilities but these were handed out at set intervals which meant that missions could be more easily balanced and designed around what the player could actually do and thus meant you as a player could focus more on planning how to strike or doing some side activities to give you an advantage such as having an area of thugs now hang around in a spot who will go after guards that are chasing you.
Where the newer ones that have adopted more RPG staples, while they still can have their moments, feel more derivative and I find it harder to get into because my brain feels like its played this game already several times before.
And its all well and good having a massive world to explore but if you just fill it up with uninspired quest design and just a ton of filler content, is it really all that worth exploring it?
I just feel sometimes games try to do too much or try to check too many boxes, when it could really shine with a more focused and linear design instead. I get people want to get as much content as they want out of a game though, especially nowadays.
Not only does this apply to trade lanes but with regards to where you could go via jump gates or with jump holes.
You could think of jump gates like a space highway, often placed at the edges of systems connected to the rest of the important spots (or at least the important/civilized/non-criminal locations) in a system with trade lanes. Want to go to another system? You used the jump gates to do so.
This works fine for a good majority of accessing the systems in the game, but once you start getting to the more undeveloped, frontier systems, your ability to travel is also affected, like if you had to drive down a rough, dirt road as opposed to a tarmac highway.
You may have to forgo the use of trade lanes entirely in some places that don’t have them and some systems are not accessible via jump gates either, with you needing to find jump holes instead to reach them. In fact, to get some of the best ships in the game you’d have to access the Outcasts factions home planet which you can only do via said jump holes.
I thought it was really cool how they did that, was an effective little change in gameplay to show the development of a location and made exploring and going off the beaten track super rewarding!