I have a touch bar. I find it kind of neat and occasionally useful but I would not pay extra for it.
The keyboard is fine. I don't have a strong preference for it vs. the older Mac keyboard or vice versa.
My speculation is that the touch bar is a toe in the water of software defined keyboard interfaces. In the future they could make the entire bottom panel of the Mac a haptic software defined interface. The touch bar API and chip/platform would be the basis for that.
On the rest of the machine I agree that "thin and light" has become a cargo cult at Apple. I'd like more battery, more RAM, and a faster process more than thinner and lighter. But the machine works for me and it's still overall better than most alternatives.
I also heard about the keyboard problems, but so far I didn't experience any, it works well, but yeah, the feeling is different and you can dislike it.