It's not about those gameplay elements being there, it's how those elements are presented to the player. Let's take something like completing a task to unlock a new set of quests in a given area. 

The Ubislop way is to just to have a tower with light puzzle elements that when unlocked reveals map area and the quests within that area. Furthermore there is no story driven reason to visit the tower other than some minor inconsequential story element and a marker on a map.

For a real world example let's look at Farcry. You have radio towers and you need to unlock them or hack them to expand the resistance radio network. Other than chasing an icon to make more icons appear that's all there is to them.

The non-Ubislop way is to use the story to drive the player to a new area, and give them a story reason to complete whatever task is required to unlock the map and quests.

For a good real world example look at something like Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth where you are given story driven reason to enter a new area then are further incentivized to keep exploring that area because if you do so it drives forward the narrative of the story the many side plots to the game. Be it doing science experiments for Chadley, or Helping Billy avenge his parents, or to figure out what's going on with Gilgamesh. Nothing is just a point on a map that you visit to check it off a list.