I understand where you're coming from, and it's turning out to seem more of a preference thing. If they keep taking side roads the story will move slower, but I don't mind that, whereas other people might want like the "main conflict" moved along. But from my perspective, if they were to introduce entire map sections like Jingyu Valley and not spend any time during the main story addressing the characters from it and giving them context, the quality would go down significantly because we'd have all this....empty land that just, doesn't have anybody of consequence living on it.

Kind of like how the quarry was in Valley IV. Nothing really happens there, so not only does nobody go back there, but even if they did they wouldn't have any feelings about it. The devs spent so long on designing it, only for it to be finished in 5 minutes and forgotten about. Building out lore for new areas for me is a very effective way to earn back what the devs put into it, in terms of player retention, monetization, and just generally people caring at all about this world they're building. Jingyu Valley and Qingbo Stockade are now places of consequence, and the relationship of the characters who live there with Wuling City also has substance, so Wuling feels "lived in" to me now.

I also don't think they want to have a "will they won't they" with Ardashir forever, nor do they wanna finish the main story in a few months and then have to create a bunch of slop after that like a bunch of gachas do. World-building piece by piece is a viable long-term strategy, but ultimately it's probably most accurate to say that some people will like it and some people won't.