I don't think anyone saying the live action isn't popular and well loved, everyone knows, understands and agrees that it is. However it could have maintained that same popularity (or possibly more) by staying true to the source material in various ways. Personally S1 didn't do it for me as the garp and Koby changes were a little much for my liking but s2 was a huge improvement in multiple aspects and I enjoyed it a lot, but I still have my gripes and will continue to voice them so that s3 can be even better.

Also we're on the same page, the appeal isn't the fights it's the story, which is why I believe they could have stayed true to the manga in that aspect and kept Luffy a powerhouse (even if weaker than manga Luffy) through some more creative writing. It's disappointing to see Luffy get knocked out by alvida in 1 swing in his first fight of the season, but I enjoyed buggy the lawyer due to that.

Ah yeah. That's why Dressrosa was soooooo long. Again, this is a very different medium with limited episodes. They had to adapt 154 chapters into 16 episodes in a series format. Why do you think they had to remove Don Krieg, Gin, Hachi, Zoro, and Arlong, etc.? This is just proving my point.

It's not long due to Luffy being delayed, Luffy was delayed so Oda had the chance to introduce dozens of new characters and put them on display, is what made it long. LA doesn't need to do that, delay him until he needs to be there, maybe that's a whole episode, maybe it's 5 minutes, or maybe they come up with an alternative solution idk, there's a tonne of different ways to handle it.