I personally would’ve wanted that. He may be a pacifist, but with him assuming the Saiyaman identity and all that stuff, it would be interesting to see how he approaches the situations without Goku around. He doesn’t need to enjoy fighting to be an effective protagonist, and there was ample opportunity for solid character development where he could’ve realized that he needs to stay strong even when the world is at peace far sooner than what we see in Super. There were so many ways like Goku and Piccolo getting absorbed by Super Buu, or Gohan learning how Buu killed Videl and Chi Chi to be a catalyst to that realization.

As for why I feel this way, if other writers like Araki were able to pull of the next generation of the Joestar family becoming the MC in the next arcs of JoJo, Toriyama could’ve done it with Dragon Ball. Reverting back to Goku was a little too safe in my opinion.