But the main reason Ric has gone on as long as it has is to facilitate King's Batman story. King shot Dick for shock value and then wanted the character out of the way to drive Bruce into madness for his whole story post the failed wedding issue as part of Bane's plan. That is the reason they isolated Dick to Bludhaven and wrote him out of all the ongoing Batman stories by giving him amnesia. Sure, Lobdell stupidly campaigned to have the Ric story last longer then bailed after one arc, but in the end King pretty much just ignored everything that happened with Dick and made his whole reason for shooting him in the first place kind of irrelevant. You could completely remove the Dick getting shot by KGBeast story from King's run and it wouldn't read any differently because Dick's character was completely ignored in the dozens of issues after the shooting.
Honestly, give me the super fan that kisses the character's ass for a run. It would be something different. Give me some stories where Dick is a badass and doing amazing things and is actually enjoying being a hero. I'm so sick of writers coming on and deciding to tear down the character and then build him back up to where the character started from and calling that development. It's exhausting and repetitive. I feel like nearly every Nightwing story is this. Part of what made the Grayson series so good is that Dick actually got to be a fucking badass for a change and felt capable. It wasn't them just beating down the character over and over and having him struggle through every encounter. Even though I wouldn't say no to a Priest he would probably do the exact same thing with beating down the character that we've read so many times before.
Then again Higgins is the biggest Nightwing fan and his whole run was basically seeing how much he could torture the character and how miserable he could make him. So I guess in the end it won't matter.