I actually agree, too much fodder, too many characters talking, although almost all of the time the speech bubbles are clear, sometimes the aren't. But mostly too many randomers, way too many. Especially this Colosseum arc, we're seeing characters fodderize other characters, only to be fodderized by another character, only to be fodderized by a side character who'll probably have some level of importance. Like, why not just shorten the chain by having any characters who may play a part fodderize them all? Why drag it out so long? It's annoying, you're a long running manga, not a long winded long running manga.
Because it's natural that random people, from all over the world, would join a big event like the one in Dressrosa. Characters have come to participate, to fight and to win, and it's important that we get at least a glance of them, fodders or not. I'm not the one to speak for Oda, but I'm sure he wants to show that this is a battle. Not some one-sided fight where one or two characters beat the rest.
You don't say? You don't have to use an excessive amount of panels to show a vast amount of people. Also, all of the fights have been 'one sided' to a certain extent, just in a different persons favour. Eg the latest chapter was some seemingly Giant raping everybody, until Luffy finally started to rape him. Lastly, as already said, there's been way too many panels dedicated to fodder; for instance, in this latest chapter, there's been just shy of 20 panels dedicated to the giant Harudjin and the audience cheering to him, only for him to get pwned right at the end. For previous chapters it's been more or less the same, or even worse. If some manga's fall victim to 'hollow' chapters or pages, One Piece falls victim to spamming us with an absurdly large useless cast, providing bloated, filling but not fulfilling pages or chapters. It's just that in general, One Piece fans 'godinize' it, and if there is ever a person who says otherwise, they say 'Go read something else then, One Piece hater'. Or 'All of one piece is wonderful, you need to read every bit of it, as every line, no every word is of importance, and if you can't see that, or you don't like it, don't read it.'
I must disagree. While developing random characters can make the story slower, it makes the plot much richer. If kishi did half the developing that oda did, naruto might be the number 1 manga instead...(as kishis weakness is developing random characters....that is why people complain about there being no deaths in the war arc. There were plenty of deaths actually, just not of the limited main character roster.
