It's always been geared more as a "generate more fic for these fandoms and characters that have so little people will hopefully be delighted to see almost anything" event than a "produce fic very closely tailored to the recipient's desired ship dynamics and preferred tropes" event.

I don't think this has been any kind of consensus in a while. People can and do get their rare fandom fic outside of Yuletide, and in turn this means some of them are a lot pickier in Yuletide.

For instance, meme just had a massive wank about whether fic featuring two requested characters but not much interaction between them would be a bad gift.