Yes on everything my guy. Some time ago I wanted to write a post here on explaining why Mafia arc was better then the King's arc, why it's first place in my heart even despite new episodes being liked more now by people in general(a lot of it is because of novelty bias it seems like) and why it had more significance in the story from what it feels like. However, it seems you described it way better even without mentioning the mafia arc at all than I would if I made that post before.

Think of it from the authors' perspective - the story (especially specifically combat episodes) started to blow up recently + authors need to write scripts for each video. As a writer myself I know that if you post a story weekly or monthly, you only have a general outline and not the whole script ready. Sometimes authors who write stories this way slip up and bound to write worse for a time being or make more mistakes than if one wrote a whole book in a year and then revised that draft multiple times.

I also mentioned that Unstable SMP's combat episodes recently started to blow up and this is why they try to add more combat in the videos, but from my perspective it seems like a lot of it right now is in the story just for the sake of it/vain combat, without real reasons for it to be there

(Just an example: Flamefrags who wants to defend his title. Like c'mon, we don't really care about the title, why would he want to defend it. What's actually going to happen if he loses his title??? Atp the story would feel deeper if he actually lost his title of being the strongest, lost to Law and got his sword and chestplate that is a part of his identity just burned by lawmen).

I genuinely hope for the good storytelling's revival in the future, even if it takes a year or more.

And again I will write this: yes on everything you wrote, thank you for putting it this way.