I think a lot of people critical of the story's current trajectory would be more in favour of a filler expansion if not for Endwalker artificially taking many of the more intriguing elements of the setting and rushing to end their storylines prematurely. At the very least, perhaps Endwalker's patches could have been devoted less to filler and more to properly wrapping things up.

Dawntrail is still quite a way off and if the expansion itself is filler then that means...another three years until the expansion after that. I don't think it's unreasonable, then, to raise an eyebrow in concern. I know that various posters - myself included - have politely requested more variety in terms of themes and characters to better cater to a broader variety of personal tastes. For as much as some really like the Scions, they're wearing rather thin for many others - incidentally even amongst some of those who like them. I know quite a few fans of G'raha, for instance, who would prefer that he acts less like a clingy fanboy of the player character and instead a bit more like the Crystal Exarch.

I'm fairly easy to please, though it's hard not to notice that in terms of both PvE/PvP and the story itself a lot of things are being streamlined. Dragonflight in World of Warcraft is a filler expansion but that doesn't bother me because there's a great deal of exploration and interaction within the overworld. The same cannot be said of FFXIV, which sadly doesn't offer very much in terms of exploration. The closest we've gotten to that is a throwaway hidden quest where you can hand over a potion to a specific NPC to unlock two secret minions. There's also Eureka and Bozja, of course, which I enjoyed - but we didn't get an equivalent this time around and though it's stated that we might get one in Dawntrail it probably won't be until deeper into the patch cycle.