I actually agree with the OP on alot of the stuff, except the scions. I like the scions they have been my brothers in arms for a long while. Yes there is long periods of time where they arent doing anything Alisae for almost 2 full expansions to name one. But I dont mind them that much I wanted some of them to die off but they were not courageous enough to let them die or the main villian for that matter.

The Abuse of the Four Elemental Archfiends is disturbing to me tho. Not only did they get the order of their power completely wrong on Barbariccia and Cagnazzo just forcing 2 of the 4 into dungeon fights was worse enough for me. It leads me to believe they intend to have us either fight Golbez or chase him into the next expansion. Also the Moon thing where he is at is just foreshadowing of a Zeromus fight thats planned. Its not a hard read. We will get a new lunar subterrannae dungeon in 6.4 or 6.5. But Its just feeling like they have a direction but dont know how to push the further.

Lets take Gaia, I really didnt enjoy her because I hate angsty teenager story lines as it is. But Thanks to Ryne being a well written character for ShB MSQ I was able to tolerate it. Zero is just written as an edgy teenager again and done badly without balance. We also see that she is forcefully being rushed as well with her failing to protect a villiage all alone as the reason that she see's herself as not useful. No one else bothered to protect that villiage. We have no backstory as to why she was alone.

Lets be real here. The Writer for ShB is either working on two projects at once, or is washed up. Which is hard to believe after ShB was so successful and one of my favorite expansions period. So I think we are stuck with this lackluster expansion until FFXVI is released and Yoshida gets his full team back because we know its the main driving factor for why the content has been so little and problematically written. I love this game so much but I am just dissappointed with how everything turned out. The slow paced ShB set up for Endwalker with Lunar Primals(Very lackluster) and the mess of Pacing for the Climactic ending of the saga mixed with a jumbled mess of lore for the 13th that should very well be its own expansion as it is. I miss the old ff14. It cant just expect ShB to keep the hype going people are getting tired of it. I read more and more each day.