I'm one of the people who has long advocated for this and even with the issues people have with a couple of entries, I'm still into it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Nobody has to agree with me, of course, but my personal philosophy is I can accept a few rough around the edges submissions to get some new blood among winners and to boost smaller artists' confidence.

That said, I agree you can't have it both ways. People in my camp will need to accept "lower quality submissions," as you said, winning. I do think it's silly people have complained for as long as I've been on FR salt communities about MV winning everything, and now that we have other winners whose work they like less, they're complaining about MV losing (note: I don't know when MV's last win was, this is my first fest back since returning from hiatus).