Awesome discussion on what makes for a good RPG. I agree with much of what you all are saying and disagree with some. But I am finding all of it really interesting.
Re. Skyrim, what I found was that about halfway through the game I got really bored with it because everything started to feel the same.
@Warlocke, the combat was the one thing I did not like in Witcher 3. But because difficulty settings are entirely about combat and affect nothing else in the game, I just set the difficulty to the lowest setting and that allowed me to thoroughly enjoy the game. But this only works with the main game and doesn't work with the DLCs because there you are very high level and the combat is super-brutal even on the lowest setting.
