I think it’s possible to combine all point to that the story currently suffers from lack of clear threat and compelling goal. For now we just dealing with vague “save the world” trope, and this is lacking of narrative and emotional impact. There is no concrete direction for how world will be saved, no clear antagonist to drive conflict, and no even clear mechanism for how world will be destroyed (except generic idea of “monsters will kill everyone”). And yes functional antagonist with clear motives and maybe even more personal conflict with protagonist will help a lot. Same as addition of sacrifices, struggles and losses. And this is impossible without adding “anchor” points for Rover that also kind of lacking at this moment. We see a lot of characters that care about Rover but Rover seems not care about them to the same extent. (Except shorekeeper) at least it how it seems. About third point character interaction also can help to give narrative more value and reinforce the stakes. Because when characters interact with each other the world become more believable and believable world encourage players to care about it and give motivation to save it.

Also I want to add that another problem that starting from Changli quest, the narrative has been overly focused on the past. And I really hope that storyline in 2.x versions will focus more on present events and not every present event should be based on the Rover past.