The problem is default bombs are insanely limited in what they offer and what can be done with them. Serverside bombs are the simplest way of achieving alternatives, and the only person who has ever made the claims that Downsider has made were Downsider. I doubt you'd find many other scripters other than him that when presented with the problem: "Hey, I need to make it so players can place bombs that explode and sync with other players" wouldn't say "putnpc2 and join to a bomb class(serverside)."

I'm not saying Downsider is wrong, but he's been the only person I've ever seen make such claims to such techniques and even the best scripters around tend to not come to the same conclusions... so I don't think it's right to claim that it's bad scripting to use the method used.