Didn’t know there was so much hatred for breath of the wild. I’m kind of surprised.
Nah, it's not that surprising.
Look around the gaming community and you'll see so many people ready to say "I don't understand why so many people like this" about so many games.
The fact that BotW is a much slower, less directed and more contemplative experience than a lot of games will not endear it to people who want the opposite of that. The design choices made in BotW were inevitably both bold and divisive.
It's like a restaurant that serves up only one very specific meal. The meal itself may be the most well considered and meticulously put together food available anywhere but some people simply will not like it.
The weapon durability mechanic is a good example.
This choice was destined to be VERY divisive simply because in most of these kinds of games the player will select a weapon that they like and will tend to stick with it.
Of course, this creates an issue where the game is giving players all of these weapon options and players are just ignoring them all.
BotW tries to fix a problem that maybe doesn't need fixing. Even though "we want the player to use all of the weapons and to constantly change up their weapon choice" is actually a well meaning desire.
It's almost like a shoot em up mechanic where your ship will get this range of weapons that changes as you take hits or grab powerups.
For more long-term Zelda fans the lack of dungeons is another choice that is bound to be divisive.
Again, the splitting of dungeons into smaller "shrines" and then having them scattered all around the world is a logical design choice. A massive open world with only 8 or even 16 localized dungeons is going to need to go down the road of FarCry and Assassin's Creed for content. So what if they took the traditional dungeon format but then broke them down into 120 smaller "bite sized" dungeons? It makes sense.
I just wish they would have done something like had a few different types of shrines with different designs and symbols or even just different color schemes. You could have ice, fire, wind, magnets, cryonis, combat shrines and maybe split stamina and heart rewards between them. Everything is too similar for MY tastes. However, it doesn't mean these were bad design choices.
Of course, you have to take a lot of comments online with a pinch of salt anyway. Some of the negativity will just be trolls and people looking to annoy folks and also some downright idiots.
When I look at a game like BotW and then look at some of the criticisms I do genuinely wonder sometimes if that person actually even likes videogames.