I think it depends on perspective/use-case. I love the decentralized network of relays. I just want to connect to it from a single point, in the cloud, on a server I control. this has a few benefits for me:
- not doxing my ip, no vpn
- less bandwidth 
- very fast 

 - better for offline/offgrid clients
- can even be interacted with over an ssh tunnel 

 Good point. I did not consider these use cases.