I've seen open world be used in a few games, both well and not so well. In elden ring for example I feel like the world is very dense on top of being large. It never feels like there are big spaces that are there for nothing other than increasing the size. This does lead to me getting easily side tracked. In warframe on the other hand the open world maps have almost nothing in them, almost everything is just placeholder for randomly generated mission steps.

FF14 falls somewhere in the middle of that. I dont think maps being "corridors" is inherently bad, it only becomes bad when the density of things to do is lacking. Many activities we do in the open world are "fly from the aetheryte to your destination". That being said I do think there are a few things already that can give the maps life: msq obviously, aether current quests, beast tribe dailies. I'd love to say fates there aswell but fates arent really doing it for me.