Removal of the quick travel shit (until post-game) in the newer update really turns me off. Base gameplay is absolutely fantastic and with a beautiful little semi-interactive world to play around in, an absolute joy of a lewd sandbox (not without its faults, though), but I think the design philosophy is kind of getting messy. The dev says he will, but I hope he changes his focus back to breeding/customization soon. As nice as the world is, the game just isn't built, mechanically, for exploration.
Walking is fucking boring in basically any video game. The only exceptions are when you have to do shit, or you're actively exploring. Breath of the Wild is a good example of fun walking because the world is absolutely COVERED with cool shit and interactive physics and mechanics to fuck around with, and it makes exploring a joy. Minecraft is another good one because you're always looking at new randomly generated shit and getting more resources and stuff. The walking in these games serve a purpose, and the base gameplay was built with that purpose in mind. In this game, walking isn't anything except for getting from point A to point B slow as fuck for minimal payoff. If there's nothing to do and I'm purposely trying to break the physics so I can bhop faster because I'm bored as shit then I think it's poorly designed.
That being said, there's definitely ways to make it more interesting. Unpopularly, I'm actually a big fan of the new progression system, ignoring the walking shit, but it's obvious that it's in its very early stages. Here's to hoping dev keeps it up