Quote Originally Posted by Board of Command
And I do realize it's too late now to start a big filler arc. I'm just saying they should have done it in the beginning. All this Naruto-hate is the result of what's not working right now, and that's the small filler arcs they've been mass producing.
Well said. It's too late to fix it now because they've already been fucking it up for over a year.

I think they're best bet for a long arc would actually have been the Mizuki arc. The idea of a bunch of criminals breaking out of a ninja prison is solid. And you could have different teams going after different criminals. Some even chasing them into other countries or not even being tracked down till months later after they're in the middle of some evil plot.