If we're talking F/TPS open world, I'm of the opinion that the games won't improve/reach their potential until they basically shed 90% of what they purport their "RPG" shell to be. There's nothing stupider than having to sword somebody 50 times in the face because "they're a higher level"/"your sword is cheap"/"your Long Sword skill is too low", at least in beautifully rendered, high definition 3D. And it's worse gameplay than a Meet n' Fuck game.
They need to respect the fact that the games are inherently skill-based and not placate players with stupid concessions like leveling up small guns turns your bb gun into a bazooka, actively making action gameplay worse just to have a RPG sticker on the cover.
Leveling should be a binary affair. Your character either knows how to fish or not. How good a fisherman depends on how skilled the player is at it. Or at least a none/basic/advanced/master- tiered affair, where the different tiers offer new gameplay mechanics (or just access to better equipment) but don't make the existing ones redundant.
About the game that makes the best compromise in this sense is Mount & Blade. But then, the majority of the skills in question are insubstantial (as in, numbers that increase other numbers). The ones that are, the weapons skills, make absolutely no sense in their implementation. A 402 (out of 500 or 600 or whatever the cap is, but then that's just a sign the turks didn't really think the endgame through) bow skill character is no more "the developed character that I made myself through my choices" than a 3/4 bowman. If you're playing a skill-based game, you shouldn't need a chime and some sparkly letters every 5 minutes telling you you've gained the ability to improve skill X by 0.1% like some idiot playing a shitty mmo. The gameplay should be enough. Equipment should matter, sure, but in a M&B way, where it has tangible mechanical differences (at least the weapons, shame the armors don't) and most of it isn't rendered completely obsolete.
If we're talking 2D/iso/TBS, Fallout pretty much did it right. Bigger, prettier, more detailed- sure. But the foundation is there already.