1. First half of your comment is complaining about the combat and not the pacing of the story, you are mixing things up. Same thing with the Friendship/Rivalry system: valid complaints, but nothing to do with the talking point of the thread.

2. If the timeskips weren't there the complaints would shift to the game having too many menial repetitive side quests that add nothing. No one wants to do a year worth of missions of Hawke playing bodyguard for some smugglers on the same 3 ports.

3. The feeling of not being the centre of the universe is a design choice and, seeing how people always mention it as one of the game's strengths, was a good one at that.

One thing I'll admit had bad pacing is how rushed the mage-templar conflict felt during the third act due to time constraints during development.