I've played many types of adventure games; some of them open world, some not. In my experience, games with open worlds have an inherent ~and so far insurmountable flaw... or at least I've not seen it avoided. An open world game will present the player with [either] nothing to do but walk the landscape, or they constantly stumble upon unlikely ~and contrived~ encounters. Or the player will encounter a location that looks currently inhabited, but no one is there; (spawned with the start of the associated quest). Or worse [IMO] a find a place that is inhabited and they are currently there ~but they ignore you or can't talk, because you are not on their quest ~you've found them before being told to seek them out.

In Skyrim there is this mage with a pit trap before a huge treasure chest. The idea is that adventurers run to the chest and fall into a water-filled cage. When I visited the location, I had not discovered the chest, or the heard of the cave it was just there, so I went inside. I walked around the mage's living quarters ~while he was there; went through all of his shelves, took the books; looted all the dead bodies in the pit cage... Tried several time to speak to the mage ~he ignored me. I left.

Later I discovered the chest and pit trap; I did not fall into it, but I did return downstairs ~and then he went on the offensive.

There is in Skyrim some quaint little cottage with a garden next to a mountain's edge. You enter, and a reasonably high level mage kills you ~or at least my PC.

That's rather annoying... Most open world games that I've played do not give you the option of knocking on the door; you cannot meet the inhabitants without breaking into ~or simply opening and peeking in to a location. The encounters appear to be designed with your assumed intentions only. I can guess that the garden mage is someone you are sent to kill and return with something he had.

With the M'aiq the liar encounter ~and many others, you can sit at a distance and watch them stand there for hours doing nothing at all but waiting for the player to approach on a "chance encounter". This is symptomatic of open world games. Additionally... The game sets encounter locations for events that perhaps cannot be completed when found ~but it's awkwardly done. My character found a burnt farm with dead farmers and a note with the location of a dragon lair ~but there aren't any dragons in Skyrim [after the first one] until you start a specific quest. This means that you could never find the lair; how would you ever know it (without the quest compass)?

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On the opposite side of design, there are the games that present the adventure in an enclosed range of free movement, and that area changes over the course of the game. Some areas only open up when the PC finds out about them ~in Fallout 2 you cannot discover Myron's Drug lab, Sierra Army Depot, or Golgotha cemetery [or the Bridge Keeper] on your own... and IMO there is no reason to. But when you do, you are there for a reason, that's for sure. In the case of Myron: What would be the benefit of allowing the PC to stumble upon the drug lab ~and either kill everyone or be killed? *Would anyone accept (or actually want) Myron to say [in the end], "Well there is nothing left for me here... Okay, I guess I will join up with you, thanks for offering".

In Witcher, you start out at the school, then make the long trek to Vizima. The game does not bother with the road trip ~same as Fallout 1 & 2 in a way... though in those games, you could find encounters along the way; or be ambushed. With Witcher, it's not important to the plot, or the game that it depict the horse ride. When you reach the outskirts (of Vizima), you then have game-play goals, and objectives. Another aspect of this style is that once you've done whatever it is that an area held in store ~you move on. What would the point be to be able to go back to the school (for instance), and wander about aimlessly ~or even (if) fight a few stragglers or recent intruders? Why should that be considered important enough to include?

I get the impression that some people won't give a game a chance if it's not an 'open world' design, but I don't understand the desire for that, as IMO all open world games that I've played have been less believable for it, and come with significant down time for having to trek across the empty lands ~or suffer additional loss of credibility if the lands are packed with encounters; or they allow useless access to areas that have long since ceased being important.
[* Like Helgens Keep.]
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So... What are some other opinions [different takes] on this? Why prefer open world to a more focused one? Is it for just 'open world' sake, or does the lack of focus [IMO] not matter to some? Or is it "immursion"? Or am I wrong? And if so, in what way(s)?

In most games (including all Bethesda games) there is a boundary which you cannot pass; in some games this boundary is far more restricting ~but the game is centered within it, so why does it matter? In Witcher for instance, I would not want an open world (though CDProject seems to have caved IMO; Witcher 3 will have one; and probably all the downsides to it as well. I'm not saying there won't be pros, to the cons); but I like it when some content is merely implied and you are free to imagine ~without the game later proving you wrong; possibly [likely] with less than you'd envisioned. IMO not every part of a gameworld is important ~or needs to be seen, or explorable.