Well it was GF's first attempt on a new hardware. Not that it means XY should get a free pass, but I will give GF credit for making the online experience in XY so seamless and natural. This combined with allowing people to train their pokemon for competitive battle in a simpler process and more fleshed out way make the games better.
That being said, post game content was horribly lacking. I still remember the amount of fun I had with Emerald's battle frontier. XY desperately needed something like that, especially because of how easy the games were, even easier than previous entries. I am also very dissappointed with the lack of very many legendary pokemon, who are the highlight and allows for a lot of postgame exploration.
As for story...well we've already established Pokemon has no real story. It's the same old dated tale of a trainer becoming a pokemon master by collecting 8 badges and beating the pokemon league. Funny enough, even though you were disappointed with BW, they were probably the games that placed the most emphasis on storytelling in any pokemon game. I think GF just doesn't want to create any proper story because of the demographic of children the games are aimed at. This is really sad because the Pokemon world is ripe with opportunities for great storytelling. Heck, the Pokedex tells more story than the actual adventure. Turning some of that stuff into in game story would have made the storyline even better.
