Ehhh, if you go back to the archives and other sources for Sochi, people were bewailing that the free skate then would be utterly damning and mark a massive decline in in the men's discipline. And instead the winner and the guy who came fourth went on to pretty much preside over one of the most brilliant and memorable quads in recent history.
It was. We were lucky to have good quality skaters remaining still after Sochi, but the scoring very much did start going awry after it. Just four years later, it did get caught up into a steep downward spiral. Quads were already affecting skating too much in 2014 with the expectation that two quads and two triple axels are a must to win, just (most) skaters doing them made sure to jump them huge so they ended up having impact in the quadrennial after that. The LP timing was still longer, so skaters could afford to jump more with that slight bit of resting time. Even if you say the effects of this will only start with 2030 - that's not a good thing.
Sochi also wasn't as bad as this Olympics. We still had a skater who'd won the GPF win overall and he had fantastic jumping quality usually (and showed he had performance chops with his first world medal). A person with legendary skating skating skills finished second. Ten and Takahashi had strong presentation. Fernandez to me was the weak link there, but he still did so many transitions and constant movement in his programs back then that he deserved quite a lot of credit. Most importantly, the most talented overall skater still won! So people emulated him, instead of others. Notice how someone like Jin, who went on to fuel the quad revolution, names him as inspiration, and happens to be one of the few here who jumped properly despite being severely broken down.
None of the men here display the skating qualities of Hanyu or Fernandez or Ten or Chan or Takahashi - not in basic skating, not in spins, not in jump quality, not in transitions. Kagiyama really only comes close to Chan on basic skating, and Cha and Siao Him Fa really only come close on presentation to any of them (and to me are worse than all of them). Not one of these men has particularly big jumps. All of them apart from Malinin have less than ideal technique. All of them are bogged down by much worse rules. Shaidorov also happens to be the OGM since the IJS began to have pre-rotated jumps (Plushenko's 3F and 3Lz weren't ideal later in his career, but the rest of his jumps were big and done properly).
How exactly does one expect this won't affect the sport in any way?
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