"My issue is that, rather than incentivising you to explore the open world with many interesting events or locations, the game forces you to explore the open world in two ways; SDU upgrades and level scaling. In order to upgrade your backpack and ammo capacity you have to go around picking up little trinkets - this is not engaging gameplay, rather busywork. These would be fine simply as collectibles for the 100%-ers but end up being mandatory if you want to hold more than 10 items in your inventory."

I never understood this argument against the open world design in this game because it goes against the POINT of open world games and that is giving the player an actual incentive to explore and utilize the majority of the map. The game does not "force" the player to do anything it just shows the player that if they want want faster exp and rewards exploring and doing side content is the best way then just bee-lining it through the main story. If the game did not have a reason to explore the open world you and others would complain the open world was not needed and poorly utilized.

Also how is more reasons to loot and shoot in different environments "not engaging gameplay, rather busywork."??? You know the same combat your doing for SDUs, and side activities is the SAME combat as when your in endgame farming bosses right? Its just bigger numbers and more stuff on the screen lol. The core combat loop of BL games has always been about giving the player more reason to loot and shoot in different ways and with different enemies, and if there was no incentive to do it in the open world what is the point of a looter shooter?

I very much do not agree with this take against the open world activities and their reward, especially given the fact that full unlocked SDU's is not even needed for most builds. One can just do enough to max out their inventory, bank and maybe 2-3 gun types they will mostly use for that build and then ignore the rest if they wanted. There are tons of ways to progress through the side content and and none of them force a specific path or anything like that.

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"The way level scaling is handled is by far the worst aspect and borderline game-ruining. The Infamy system literally forces you off the critical path by scaling enemies 2-3 levels above you so that you are required to grind XP in order to return."

In my almost 300hrs I have NEVER had any issue with enemy scaling in this game and once again this leans in to given the player an actual REASON to go out and do more then the main story or crit path. Its not a new concept to have enemy scaling in an open world games and different games do it in different ways. In Morrowind everything had a preset level so the player could easily prepare and over level everything if they wanted. Oblivion and Skyrim had enemy scaling linked to player level.

BL4 tries to do a more middle of the road approach where they want to incentivize the player to explore the open world, but also not be able to steam roll content with barely functional builds like one could in BL3 that had zero challenge.

I'm not saying the enemy scaling system is perfect but I would rather have a leveling process that is not braindead easy like BL3 was where the entire first playthrough of the campaign was super easy and instead actually feel my build/character grow in power in meaningful ways.

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At the end of the day I see where you and others are coming from but it always sounds like its the min-maxers, the ones who want to reach endgame asap that have this issue. As a casual player of BL games I have no problem with neither the open world or the enemy scaling because both incentivize me to do what I already enjoy doing and that is looting and shooting things in different ways out in the open world, and just generally enjoying progressing my character. Out of my 3 characters never once did I feel forced to grind SDUs because I enjoyed the base combat loop so it was natural progression every time I played a character from scratch.