Maybe the Touchbar was just a "clever" way to prepare all of us for sole touch-based input, which is going to be included in the MBP in 2020. ;-)
P.S.: I don't even think touch-only input is neccessarily a bad idea. All Apple has to do to make it work is to implement some kind of really good haptic feedback which also allows to feel individual keys. I even expected that for this iteration of the MBP for the Touchbar.