User blog comment:Hawkinz340/ I love One Piece, but.../@comment-24769684-20141007232747

Well, if you think about it, Oda could have just made the Dressrosa Arc a hit-and-run where the Straw Hats quickly proceeded to destroy the SMILE Factory and beat up Doffy in just 20 chapters.

But no. Oda gave us one of the best stories in the One Piece series, complete with a fully developed story, new characters that you actually root for, and fully developed villains. Doffy alone is what sets this arc above the previous New World Arcs. Unlike the other two villains, we actually get a full knowledge of his means and ends, and that knowledge only made him a better villain. Hody and Caesar were mostly, just, well, psycho. They did have a purpose, sure, but that was to show how Luffy and co. had become stronger. (I guess you can say Hody also has the purpose of dealing with the human-fishman tensions, but given his revelation that he hates humans for no reason it's not a very strong purpose)

By the time we got to the Dressrosa Arc, we still really knew preciously little about the current state of everything in One Piece after the timeskip. I felt this was a great place for an exposition on everything's new state, because Doffy is the first major stepping stone to power that will prove whether the Straw Hats are ready to take on the New World. Think about it. It was only after Luffy defeated Crocodile in Alabasta where we got a bigger look on what the World Government was like as well as got a glimpse of how Part I would conclude. You gotta be a big wig to play with the big wigs.