Its like Oda just does nothing with these characters. 90% of the stuff that keeps people watching one piece is lore and hype, I swear to god. And like its fine if you like that, I like that(to a degree) as well. But looking back on the timeskip, I just find Oda's writing off these characters to be insufferable.
I feel like Oda almost always fails to give them compelling story arcs. If I do look forward to a straw hat moment, its entirely because of fights. And I think that's true for most people here. When you see a zoro fan on this site, how often do they talk about zoro's character? Its almost always a wankfest of how many feats he has and how strong he is. And its not even just him, all of the straw hats fall flat post skip. Oda doesn't want to take risks, he doesn't want to shake the boat too much. One piece is a best selling series and so he likes to just do what he's been doing for the past 20+ years.
After a point, its just not interesting.
I honestly feel like Luffy is something of a mary sue. He faces no real struggles as a character. He doesn't have flaws, he's overpowered, he learns high level techniques with utter ease. He's a chosen one who is blatantly portrayed to be the next joyboy/Roger. For a guy who wants to be the world's greatest pirate, I wish Luffy would honestly act like an asshole sometimes, I wish he'd steal something or occasionally kill someone. Just add anything to his character that stops him from being "perfect".
And like yeah, kaido's much stronger than him. But you know he's going to keep coming back until he beats him, possibly with the power of plot on his side.
Ultimately, I feel like the repetitive arc structure is wearing down the quality of the story. Whereas pre-skip, you had a story intimately connected with the straw hats, post skip just doesn't seem to be that anymore. There are so many side characters that more often than not, these side characters get a bigger spotlight than our main cast.
