What's the point with that quite lackluster story in Endwalker?

[Skyborne]

The thing I'm most curious about is whether or not they're going to roll with another large-scale story arc that spans multiple expansions or if they're going to go the XI route of having smaller scale, self-contained stories.

Ascian involvement aside, HW was a largely self-contained plot, so I wouldn't necessarily consider that a bad thing.

Just from how they've been handling this, writing this by the seat of their pants, I do think the team is generally way better at smaller self-contained stories... without focusing on some sort of lofty Moral Lesson(tm) that takes precedence over the actual meat of the writing.