cyberpunk's big "game is fixed!" update and starfield coming out within short radius of each other is useful for contrasting design approaches of making a big RPG progression treadmill world
at about hour 20 of the former, there's a good cadence here of doing 3-4 small tasks or 1-2 big quests and melting everything into enough money or crafting mats to get your next increment of some core weapon, equipment, or body mod. each cycle you'll level once or twice, getting a new ability that's at about an "oh cool" amount of impact: you'll notice it but it won't suddenly break the difficulty level
with starfield I felt like major advancements came at a very slow pace, beyond things like plugging modules into your ship (which is a textbook "why is this simultaneously so poorly communicated while also giving me such a massive benefit" bethesda moment). these are often mundane like "now you can put slightly better mods on your helmet" which is not exactly a big hype-driver. along the way it tries to give you little candies in the form of weapon drops with slightly higher stats
trying to make a Good skinner box in a single-player game that can scale into high playtimes is surprisingly tough. CDPR are a little better at it than bethesda at the moment
