There are of course other variances that help and hurt the story once it begins. Like all of the other storyline cliches that soaps have had trouble managing lately, a major problem is isolation. All of these umbrella stories soaps are trying fail on basic levels, but even if they had that straight, they are still missing the crucial interaction necessary to make it work. Some soaps try to create interaction, but because it clearly wasn't planned for these characters to naturally fit into the cast, it ends up being as contrived as it is on GL.
For me personally, a big sticking point is how these criminals are treated. When these characters are around short term, soap writers have less trouble maintaining that character. But when they end up being integral to the canvas on a long-term basis, writers rarely reevaluate. The point of why these characters are around suddenly change and writers don't adapt to that change. Of course the obvious example of this would be the aforementioned Sonny, but Days' Victor has suffered from sticking around after he was no longer a Brady nemesis. The man who had a tender love for Caroline but forced her daughter into having sex with him then became the victim of Kate, Vivian, and Nicole.
Once and awhile he was still pretty nasty and they even had a story about four years ago when Victor went criminal again but then dropped it when the writers changed. Writers didn't work hard to keep Victor's paradoxical personality in tact and he's suffered because of it. In fact that was probably part of the reason he was written off for a few years.
I'm personally tired of a few types of storylines because they've either been done to death or just not my cup of tea, but I've found any story done well gains my tolerance. It seems soap producers just can't grasp that the basics of storytelling that they've abandoned, is exactly what makes any story whether mob, science fiction, supernatural, or comical work. If they leave that out and then try to do that same type of story over and over again, in the case of these violent criminally based stories, all you're left with is blood, gunfire, and gore.
You give a soap audience too much of that and soon producers will be praying that nose diving ratings is their biggest problem.
