I'm kind of impartial?
I'm fine with Zoro's treatment with Lucci on some levels, Lucci needed some legitimate hype, but Sanji's treatment in Kamabakka Kingdom and PostTimeSkip has disappointed me a lot, not just in terms of combat, but in terms of Sanji regressing in terms of his behavior towards women.
In terms of the Straw Hat's success, I'm looking purely at Luffy's goals in the narrative. His goal was to escape with his crew and the Vegapunks alive, and he's failed.
I don't think the Straw Hats will lose here in terms of losing their own crew, but will lose in terms of their original goal, getting the Stella and Satellites off the island alive.
I believe the arc will end with Egghead exploding, Kuma teleporting everyone but the Gorosei off, and the world believing everyone died until Kuma's Paw Paw Bubble touch down a few days later. SO, for a few days, everyone will think the Straw Hats lost, but they really just got sent to islands in the New World to regroup soon.
So, kind of a bitter victory, I guess?
I think the Gorosei will kill the Stella, but he'll survive through technology, Edison and Atlas will die, Lilith goes to NEO MADS since she's Evil and fits right in, York goes to the Celestial Dragons like she wanted, and the Straw Hats go to Wano and Elbaf for Pluton and to set up Elbaf.
Maybe Lucci needs a little hype too, but it shouldn't happen in such a way that Zoro is pushed into the background so much. Especially after Wano. This is also the problem with Sanji, that against Queen he awakened very strong abilities, among other things he had his speed, so I would have been especially curious to see what he would do against Kizaru, but he didn't get a chance to do that, because he had to throw it again for Luffy.
The problem is, the way the story progressed, the goals did change: to protect Labophase until Vegapunk's video message reaches the world. If it's only halfway successful, it's successful. Besides, I have a feeling, that it wasn't for nothing that he emphasized that it was a VIDEO message, I think it might even have an important role, for example, to show the whole world who really make up the Gorosei, what kind of monsters they are.
And at the same time, I also think that Gorosei's goals have also changed: They can screw the Mother Flame and Vegapunk's research if the secret (or only certain parts of the secret) for which they wanted to kill Vegapunk reaches the people. Therefore, their primary goal and their most important goal is to prevent this from happening.
10 minutes. This is an important detail. That will decide everything. This is where the irony of the entire story arc comes into play: They manage to kill Vegapunk and even all of his satellites, but what they had to kill him for ends up being revealed to the world anyway.
So from this point of view, the Straw Hats didn't lose anything at all, of course Vegapunk was a good friend, but let's allow the story to have a little consequence sometimes.
If you think about it, it shows the danger of the Straw Hats and the failure of the World Government that all the members of the Gorosei had to show up. This has never been done before, and I don't think they really wanted it either.
By the way, if Vegapunk is dead, then die properly. If he survives through his technology, then he's not really dead, and then it really wasn't the Straw Hats who failed, but the World Government.
No matter how the story arc ends, I think it clearly has to happen this way, otherwise if Oda baits again and nothing comes out of the whore, then screw himself. Announcing in the Final Saga that rough things will be revealed here, and then not, is already very tiring and annoying. Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if, after the story arc, Luffy gets the biggest bounty among the pirates. Even after Wano, he should have received much more, but there we know that the World Government had a reason why he only received that much.