Wind Waker's map becomes fairly systematic once you get a look at it.
This is what I dislike about it. It's just a grid. One square means one island. The rest is almost always just empty water. And when you're in water, your very limited to what you can do. Sailing is just kind of boring and for me, it just started to feel like I was passively sailing the same blue water texture until I found the rock that belonged to that square. There was just so much empty space in between everything and a lot of the time, like you said, you couldn't even do anything or there was hardly much to do.
I preferred Hyrule Field in TP because it was much more condensed. It's not really a huge mass, in fact it's smartly divided into smaller parts and the variety in landmass, altitude, environments, etc. allow it to be more interesting and varied than the same old empty ocean throughout WW.
It was cool how, for example, you could get to Lake Hylia a number of different ways: Ride the river down from Zora's Domain, come through the mountain pass in Southern Hyrule or approach from Castle Town. With Castle Town as the central hub, everything fit together interestingly and funneled into one another in a more organic way rather than just having a grid and putting one main point of interest in each grid. It wasn't flat in the way the Great Sea was, there were levels to things. At least with Epona, I had to consciously steer her around obstacles and through environments. Horseback combat was really fun too. In Wind Waker, I would set the direction of the wind and let go of my controller as I passively sailed to my destination. Even when things like sharks would appear, it was humorous how often they wouldn't even touch me. It wasn't even worth trying to deal with them because using the cannon was boring and cumbersome and used up resources compared to horseback combat.
Also, people really tend to undersell how much there is to do in Hyrule Field. I would argue there is almost as much extra stuff to find and do in TP as there is in Wind Waker. What Wind Waker has in Pirate Outposts and submarines, TP has in hidden grottos and caves. TP has hidden mini dungeons and environmental puzzles that require the use of your dungeon items. You need 5 pieces of heart to get a heart container which means there are more to find and more places to find them. There are bugs and poes to collect too so it's not like there aren't any collectibles like korok seeds. I think it's unfair to compare shrines in BotW to what TP has when TP has 9 full dungeons, a lack of which is what the shrines in BotW literally compensate for. Exploration is much more streamlined in TP but I think that's a strength not a weakness. Exploration in WW easily became boring and too dragged out. The Triforce Hunt was the ultimate limit.