They shouldn't have gone open world. It adds nothing other than a whole lot of work since they aren't able to do anything worthwhile with it (unless this has changed in newer zones), and they clearly do not have the manpower/toolset to handle that workload.
I really wanted to like it and I have been following news on the side, but their entire release strategy remains mystifying.
Atm there's 4 open world regions, but with this ver.2 update the only things worth doing in the 32 player exploration sectors will be gathering mats and fighting the gigantix type enemies. No new region is being added with the ver.2 update, and only the first region's gigantix enemies are getting updated.
Other than that, only the 8 player combat sectors are getting updated for the new lvl cap (and only those in the first region, so yay going back to 2021 locations, just with a few new bosses), and also they're increasing the level of 2 of this region's urgent quests, while... removing the 3 other urgent quests (they'll only be accessible through triggers)...
IMO NGS really needed proper full fledged dungeons, plus a system not unlike FF14's roulettes (random dungeon matchmaking).