Someone pointed out YoshiP's detachment from what the players are actually interested in; this I think was the root of the story's downfall. Shadowbringers wasn't a hit because of the high stakes, it was a hit because of how well it was done. If they had gone with the original plan of resolving Garlemald and THEN taking care of the ultimate Final Days threat then the story would've been a lot more fleshed out, but I feel YoshiP thought we wanted another lore-heavy high-stakes battle with godlike figures and a grand conclusion, so as soon as we had gotten out of the frying pan of shb it was straight into the fire of ew. And because they thought we wanted that, it just became a good vs evil shounen anime in the end hence the problems with trying to portray Venat's actions as good even though Hydaelyn was set up to be Maybe Not That Good since, once again someone else pointed out, way back in 3.x.