To me it is making travel rewarding. People focus on "too big/small", "not enough to do", when I think it comes down to how fun is traveling?

To me if the traveling is just an interactive loading screen, don't have open worlds. Go back to the traditional style of making smaller focused levels. Odyssey literally had auto travel... Ubisoft games have auto travel now. They are functionless loading screens.

Traveling should be fun. It should have value. To me Zelda BotW did it perfect. World big enough to warrant a mount. Riding the horse was fun to do. Getting on and off was quick. Fighting on horseback felt good enough. You also had plenty of other options because the environment was its own challenge. You can glide, you can slide down a hill on your shield. Travel was a lot of fun in BotW.

To me assassin's Creed's travel is pointless

Bonus: Ross from game grumps shares a similar sentiment about where skyward sword went wrong.