data point
As a reader, I like worldbuilding, even (and sometimes especially) the expository parts. I read SFF because it’s the genre that most delivers that. It feels actively annoying when I have to sit through Plot that I’ve seen a million times before to get to soak in a world that I haven’t, or even to look at (say) extruded D&D fantasy in fine everyday detail with new eyes.
I feel like this should be obvious, but I still see, pretty regularly, appeals to authors to stop so much worldbuilding and focus on what obviously really matters to presumed readers, the story. I’m sure there are plenty of readers for whom that’s true! Good for them! But it’s not universal and we’re living in a long-tail world. Unless you’re right on the edge of being able to write full-time and writing to market means the difference between having a day job or not, don’t let The Average Reader become a sort of imperative-issuing Big Other. I would guess there are many more readers who love baroque expository worldbuilding than there are people who are really into, I don’t know, mpreg werewolf fanfiction, but there’s a thriving audience for that and more power to them, so don’t let them hog all the fun!
Amen.
This can be applied more generally to showing-versus-telling, I think. If you’ve got something that’s more interesting than the beat-by-beat progression of your yarn, you should tell us about it, rather than slicing it up into little pieces and embedding those pieces in the unfolding plot.
…but then again, I read splatbooks for fun, so maybe I’m not the best person to ask.
…but I’m probably not the only one who does that kind of thing.