@Nisemono:
Incredible there are people who prefer some filler over the original manga story. Well, this is the world we live in, no sense at all.
About the anime, One Piece is by far one of the worst adaptations ever (maybe only the ones that CHANGE the original story are worse; i.e. Fullmetal Alchemist, Soul Eater… Fortunately, FMA: Brotherhood came to fix the first one :D).
Back to the "pacing" issue... One Piece was "not bad" at the beginning of the series. Goes to "very bad" about Skypiea and became "the worst thing ever" afterwards. Usually only 1 chapter per episode (WTF with this joke!) or even worse (half a chapter or less per episode). TOEI can't troll us more xD
Oh, well. They decided to use this kind of filler (EXTENSION) and the adaptation will never be good again.
Not sure if we can hope for a future remake, ala FMA:B... One Piece is damn too long xD
But you can keep your fingers crossed ^ ^
fma isn't saved by fmab it just continued what the other left unfinished because without fma we would have boring character introductions plot twists revealed in the first episode and important elements being glossed over (fma is only a good adaptation if it is combined with the first 20ish episodes).
one piece only suffers from pacing after the timeskip and at skypiea (but many passing issues in skypiea were also in the manga) and it didn't become terrible until fishman island (that would be completely ignoring water 7 and enies lobby).
some people might prefer the anime only episodes because they prefer short stories over a long narrative which is what one piece focuses on.