I would just give Nikon some time; they seem to recognize the need for compact and lightweight lenses along with those with the highest image quality (but not always in the same lens). I guess the users would like those two things to be combined. I recall reading something from a Leica rep or designer that one can choose two out of three of these characteristics: "small, high quality, affordable" but not all three at the same time. In the zooms, positive evolution has happened and the Z zooms seem to achieve improvements in compactness, weight and image quality however, they're not lower price than their predecessors, which could be due to general inflation and energy price increases in particular. Also in longer telephoto primes there is quite significant improvement in the hand-holdability via improved balance, lower weight and improved stabilization (although some say in-camera VR doesn't help with long lenses that hasn't been my experience and I find hand-held use of even the VR 300/2.8 G II which doesn't have the latest VR technology in F-mount is greatly enhanced by the Z6 II's in-camera VR, so much so that it's hard to get used to the lens-only VR on a DSLR). And e.g. the 400/4.5 and 800/6.3 are not unreasonably expensive (for the quality, focal length, and aperture), so in those cases all three things in one! My eye is on the 400/4.5 which I got to play around a bit and whose images I've been impressed with in examples I've seen posted online. Not as bitingly contrasty as some Z S-line lenses but somehow "classic" in appearance with beautiful out-of-focus rendering and a balanced look to the image.
I got all five of the S-line f/1.8 primes and really like them as they all produce high quality images even at the widest apertures and yet they balance with the relatively small (Z6 II in my case) bodies quite well. In my mind they realize the compactness and light weight objective compared to using e.g. D850 with the f/1.4 AF-S primes (I understand that the f/1.8 AF-S are lighter but their manual focus doesn't satisfy me, it's too fast and there is a bit of slack). With the new firmware, the Z6 II features user-adjustable manual focusing throw on the f/1.8 Z primes, so one can make it accelerated or non-accelerated at different speeds. In fact this is now a feature available on all my Z lenses (though not all lenses in the whole lineup). I mostly use AF though, but when I do use manual focus it is important for it to behave in an easy-to-control way. The only one of the Z lenses I got that I am not quite happy with is the Z 85/1.8 S as it is a bit too harsh side for head shots to my taste and I prefer 85/1.4 AF-S for indoor portraits as my first choice though not as sharp or contrasty, its images "look right" to me. ;-) However, for other purposes than head shots I do like the Z 85/1.8 S as well. In fact I like the 105/2 DC even more but as lenses in general have grown more contrasty and sharper my preferences have drifted in that direction as well, so I don't use it as much as I used to.
