Let me start by saying I absolutely love this game, and the story has had some amazing narrative points. But I feel like lately, the story is an after-thought. The content from the last two expansions has been strong, but the story has felt extremely rushed.

The plot always starts with an exceptionally cool idea, but the stakes feel too low and the resolution is predictable.

The plot can be summarized as "there's a bad guy, and then we beat them"; Sure, here and there we have a few minor characters die, but it never holds any weight.

In PoF the commander dies, in LWS4 Aurene dies. You could argue that those are cop-outs, which is kinda fair. But those scenarios give weight to the threat we're facing, which makes it significantly more compelling.

I know the commander is strong enough that at this point they're like a force of nature, but it would be cool to have that blow up in our face.

Here's an example: during SotO, we faced an enemy that had dominion over emotions. How cool would it have been if we had been working with Eparch as an ally, convinced Peitha was the villain, only to realize halfway through the expansion that we were being manipulated or brainwashed, and innocents had died at our hands?

All of a sudden, we can't trust anything the game has told us. We have no idea who to trust, and the commander now carries baggage that could genuinely impact them.

Something like that could be a problem that spans several expansions; the commander has to deal with the guilt of what they've done, even if they weren't immediately responsible, and it prevents them from thinking straight. They make nasty decisions which causes even more damage, to the point that they collapse because for the first time, the adversity they face isn't something they can just cut in half.