Players should be having fun. End of story. Most player's don't like to be railroaded and it ruins their experience, but sometimes it is a better alternative than not having much ready for them. You just need to figure out how important the story you crafted is to you and whether or not it would...
When my players have no interest in following a specific plot, I take all the main elements that took me a lot of time to make, and I move them into a new plot that they could find interesting. I might have to change a couple cosmetic things like names, but it is a good alternative to completely...
Unlike in some of the other versions of D&D, I love how most roleplaying was left completely open-ended to the DM. Now I know good DM's just take liberties with what they do and don't want to do in game, but I think it says something that in 4e if you play by the rules listed, it does not have...
5e seemed to throw out game balance as there are several ways to play that are significantly more powerful than others, and it seemed to have oversimplified things that didn't really need it (but that comes from someone who loves complicated games). Other than that though, it's pretty solid.