Look we can discuss with history and developer statements, or we can argue with YES SUH and NUH UH. No meaningful conversation ever happened from people saying THIS IS MY OPINION AND I WILL NOT BE SWAYED AND I AM ENTITLED TO IT. So do me a favor and stop dancing around the fact that developer statements hurt your nostalgia goggles. Nobody ever said you can't like SC1-4 because the developers consider it flawed; what I'm saying is, if you don't understand the REASONS why they consider it flawed, you will not understand why SC5 is the way it is.
tl;dr: when you know how and why something works, you come off like less of an ignoramus when you talk about it.
Side notes:
SC2 tanked in sales in Japan. TANKED. The game sold poorly in Arcades, and did not bring ARC ops the kind of return they were hoping for. This was cited primarily as GAMEPLAY FLAWS among the tournament players in JPN. In US/EUR it did well only on the gamecube console version. I can fill you guys in on the history of these things if you would just stop being so goddamn defensive. Maybe you will learn something.
Game designers are not publishers. A game designer is an artist, they make things because they want to make the best thing possible. Being in the field myself, I can tell you this is true. A game designer wants to constantly improve and innovate his product, and game designers who don't love what they do churn out terrible games.
A publisher is the one who cares about the money. Namco is the publisher. The publisher funds the project and expects a return on investment. PS was not paid in dividends, they are paid in salary. Namco controls things like release date windows, and can have influence on a product.
So, lets see if more pants-shitting NUH UH comes this way, or you children begin to sit down, shut up, and open your eyes.