As some of you already know, I am not that the "I want to explore for the heck of it" kind of guy. I want to have the purpose of exploring and exploring to just explore doesn't really fulfill my purpose of playing the game. If the game forces you to explore the world I think it should do the following:
1. make a clear purpose for why I should explore (other than just exploring for fun)
2. Have story development after you do an event in a game to make the game more interesting (it also gives me a reason on why I should explore the vast world)
3. Have a bunch of sidequests scattered around the world(something like Majora's Mask's sidequests) It would be cool if some of the sidequests gives you some sort of power ups that make you and your weapon even stronger.
The three points I just showed you are the things I'd like to see in Zelda U, but I'd also like to see this in affect for other open-world games that I find interesting.