It could just be that the episodes where they follow the map only come up occasionally. Like the episodes where they find rift keystone fragments in season 4.
Yeah, which is why I said it remains to be seen how representative this is of the whole season, versus the premiere, the finale, and about 15 minutes of content in between, lol.
An actual season-long progressive narrative would be neat (and I do enjoy slice-of-life as well, so it's not like I have a preference), but I'm still skeptical if they'd really go all in on that. But if it's even 1/4 storyline, 3/4 slice-of-life, that's still a big change from even Season 4, much less Season 1 (the only other season to a narrative thread run through multiple episodes - 2 didn't have that at all and 3's Crystal Empire was a setting, not a plot thread).