How many scrubs have you played this game with?
Every scrub I've shown this to has said that it's way better than Brawl, and a big part of that is the speed. A few of them complain about the Melee air dodge, though. Interestingly, all the ones that complain about it are the ones that think they can compete in Brawl, but can't, because they're scrubs.
For example, I was watching Zenith finals, and one of them asked how I'd go against PP. I said if he went Falco, I probably wouldn't be able to land a hit on him (I could be completely wrong about this, it's been months since I played him, and he always Ganon dittos me, so I don't really know how I'd compare to his Falco). Anyway, my friend said it would be easy, because he could use Lucas' PK Freeze. His logic was that if he kept spamming it while standing still, eventually one of them would hit, and then he could keep doing that until he could use Lucas' Usmash.
But those types of people are the only ones that complain about the air dodge. I've told them that they'd prefer it if they learned how to use it, but they don't want to do that. I mean, they're scrubs, so it's not like they can edeguard anyway, so they don't need it to recover.
Anyway, the point is, scrubs love this game because it's fast. Sakurai was completely wrong.