But the initial goal is to reduce the amount of guesswork. Stagger Escaping was almost a necessity at the time, and the biggest weakness stagger escaping had was using stuns that you can't stagger from. (Crumple, Feint, jab lean stun, Limbo etc.) If someone staggered too much, you use particular stuns to condition them to hold more often. To have stuns that stop stagger escaping was a pretty strong idea on preventing it as a crutch for everything. How can someone be against this? lol
Without stagger escaping, players could get hit with a sitdown into bursts (gone but besides the initial point) or slow launchers that are not guaranteed leading to bigger damage output with minimum effort. I get that manually stagger escaping was an annoyance for some, but that shit was pretty vital for DOA5 (almost entirely). I'd take the sidestep over the stagger system but it's extremely difficult to believe that people didn't like it lol. If the opponent staggered out from a particular hit, majority cases you are still plus due to still being at advantage with reduced outcome. Oh? you staggered from the low? cool, I'm still plus though, but you did plan out for a 50/50 rough situation than a high risk 50/50.