Agreed. The best open world games are great, examples are like Just Cause 2, WB open world games (Mad Max, Arkham Series), Saints Row series, Mafia 2, heck I even like Mafia 3 despite the wokeness and I don't understand the complaints about how you progress the world in that game; to me it's satisfying. Almost every open world game I consider one of my favorites, like none are Ubisoft. I think the first Watch Dogs is excellent however, so they sometimes have exceptions. But I could go on with stuff like Fallout 3, Infamous, etc.

These are all amazing open worlds. Why? The open world plays to the gameplay strengths.

Ubisoft is just copy and paste. It feels like filler. When I'm 100% Mad Max, none of the activities feel like filler. It feels like I'm becoming the legend that is Mad Max. With Ubisoft, everything feels like filler. I don't know why it's such the case with them as opposed to others. Other companies also have many collectibles. Other companies also have repeating side activities. But there's something about Ubisoft where it all runs together and you feel like you're in gaming Limbo where other games pull it off somehow.