People had a "problem of not knowing where to go and getting lost?" That's half the ding-dang fun right there! It's not like SM64 levels, excluding the last two, were all that massive, either! But my own complaints aside, I suspected this might be the case. I have to admit, I was 100% part of the 3D breakaway faction until Galaxy brought back mostly linear level design. As entertaining as spherical world-hopping was, I couldn't forget how SM64 was more fun to explore. You know, thinking back, one neat thing about SM64 was how its levels usually had some sort of ascent or descent associated with them, a very "king of the hill" approach to fun. SMS often had that, too, although unlike with the caps, it rarely had anything that really shook up methods of movement. I can only remember a few mountain-climbing levels in Galaxy. But anyway...
...Now that I've lost interest in consoles, it's kind of a futile thought exercise in my case.