>>26981074I don't think so. People just wanted it there.
People actually playing through it in 3rd and fourth gen were rare. PWT got an influx of people actually completing it because by doing so you could face more opponents like Blue, Red, etc.
But actually playing through the Frontier was uncommon. Hell, when did you saw people suddendly playing through the Maison? When injecting appeared.
tl;dr: people wanted it "there" because having a thing close to you even without using it means you're content with it.
>>26982850A character that speaks to you a few times and you fight once doesn't affect the plot in any way.
Crystal changed basically nothing about GS. Crystal only adds things like Buena's password, animated sprites, etc. Only influential thing it did was creating the Battle Tower(where the HGSS one ironically plays differently from the one in Crystal itself) in Emerald changed some places, how the story played and WHO you faced, the trainer's teams, etc..a ton of things. It was basically a new game, not as far as BW2 did it but close enough.