The rewards are turds, bokoblin camps, another mini dungeon or another small village or camp… what’s rewarding about that?
the gameloop is about resources.
the way to go about the game imho is to just point as direction, explore, and gather whatever resources and minidubgeoin you find on your way, rinse and repeat.
if you play botw as a checklist, browsing through your requests and pointing directly at what you need, i think you'll get bored quick..instead it's better to just explore and "oh, just found a field of bananas, do i need bananas?let me get this anyway, point it on my map in case i wanna more and head elsewhere"
botw is basically about mastering, well, the wild around you and making sense of it all, it might not be for everyone, especially if you play it like the usual ubi open world, full of checklists of activities to do and icons to get rid off.
I do agree that the game could have used a lot more special places though, truly unique places and vistas are few and far between