Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience doing plumbing/hydraulics/pneumatics for industrial equipment, the first generation of a new product always looks way more complex than later versions. But I'm not sure they're actually more complex, they're often using a smaller variety of more flexible "industrial Lego" rather than custom, unique parts that are harder to extend or modify. Yeah, a single welded tube of the right diameter that necks…
W7-X looks insane because its configuration was discovered by a computer pursuing a numerical optimization. We don't have any sound reasons to believe the next one will be simpler.
Yes and no. I think you are right that the plasma shape is going to remain very complex.
But that's not the only reason why W7-X looks complicated. It has a ton of diagnostics ports on the plasma vessel just for research. Most of those we can probably design out for a production version.
So I would expect a production version of a stelarator to be simpler than W7-X, but still remain very complex.