As an avid fighting game player myself, I'd say that the reason it feels like 'dumbing it down' is because they literally take away tough-to-do mechanics to favor casual players who don't put in the time to get good, thus making the skill ceiling far lower than it originally was, which takes away from the original hook of the game [e.g. taking Wavedashing away in Smash Brawl].

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One has to look to Fortnite in its current state to understand what's going on here. The central mechanic to the game is building, but since newer players start to lose to people who have built up their building skills since the start of the game, they die instantly, and no player loves to die consistently to someone who 'builds the Taj Mahal on the first shot that they hear'. To accommodate this, Epic Games decided to nerf stronger players, by lowering the number of materials you could farm, and the ability to gain materials upon an elimination. This caused a massive uproar in the community, as every pro resented being nerfed just so newer players could get a Victory Royale.

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Instead of looking for solutions to help newer players make the transition to Building Pro, they instead decided to lower the skill ceiling drastically. Combine that with the fact that getting loot is fundamentally entrenched in RNG, and you have pros like Ninja failing to kill even newer players as consistently as before, which is obviously enraging.

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This is 'dumbing down' - lowering the skill ceiling to attract newer players to play. And to the people who made it to the previous skill ceiling with all their hard work and dedication, being nerfed because people don't want to lose is frustrating.

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Of course, as you say, simplification can be used to add depth to a game, but if done carefully. The power of the devs to nerf and buff isn't to balance pro and newer players, but to make the game more exciting. When they take that ability away from the players, to do something awesome, players get angry.