Isterio said:
There is some foreshadowing in those lines that the Spriggan mean nothing to him, a Koopa is still a Koopa, they are in the way towards the final boss, but they don´t differentiate too much.Fairy Tail started off as an episodic series with an adcenture like tone and narrative, like One Piece. But since the Oracion seis arc and actually tbh since Tower of heaven everything can be tracked back to Zeref. The story is a consistant thread leading the cast towards this guy.
He´s the stories greatest asset but also it´s greatest weakness. He´s such a well rounded character that everything pales in comparision to him.
It also gives off the feeling that Hiro didn´t really plan out on everyone else, most villais motivations feel shallow and boring because they are just empty vessels to look/behave cool and relate in some way to Zeref. The Oracion seis mostly got their character development after turning good.
Hell I bet Hiro even came up with their history after they were turned in and even invented Yukino just for the sake of giving Angel an identity, outside of that nasty bitch that doesn´t value her spirits.
True,though that's only because of his curse, the more he loves something the more active the curse will be, so to be able to control it for those around him he needs to think of nothing about them, but even then he must trust/respect the S12 powers to make them unique I mean he gave 0 fucks about Precht and Mard Geer and those 2 were pretty strong.
It looks like he created Alvarez/Spriggans to battle Acnologia, I mean we still don't know the whole story behind it but Zeref created Alvarez way before Fairy Heart became something, hell, we don't even know why he just wants to extinguish humanity and it's clear that Zeref isn't that of a chaotic evil guy, so he clearly has a reason to do want that.
But yeah exactly like you said, some of the villains motivations are very boring, not because of Zeref, but the way it was developed,which is why I would love to see more background information about the S12 and their motives to follow him.
In the end we really just need more time to see how this will be developed and try to calm down with the expectations here.