Congratulations to Alysa.
I myself would have loved for Ross Miner to go to the Olympics.
But certainly Adam Rippon preferred for selections to be made based on the fields (plural) of war (i.e., multiple battles) -- as opposed to the field of one battle, which is what you are talking about.
And I would bet that quite a few athlete-friends of Adam agreed with his preference.
Ditto re Ashley in 2014.
I just don't think it is so easy to make a generalization as to what skaters would prefer.
The USFS Athletes Advisory Committee (which includes a number of current skaters as well as very recently retired skaters) signed off on the body-of-work selection procedures.