well, my take on "shrinkage" would have been, if we tell a story, that is 1000 years old and we still have the same "characters" - but we have our focus on the Skywalker family, so everything they touch is kind of orbiting around them ...
if one wants a "bigger" universe, just don't tell a "family saga", go BIG and turn the wheel of time back to the origins of Jedi and Sith ;-)
I am ok with a prototype of the Falcon, even if we don't recognize it on first sight.