RebE, Rav Steinsaltz was not trying to improve readability for an experienced yeshiva student, his original audience was less-observant Israelis for whom Aramaic was the barrier, as well as way of thinking. As he mentions above, he tried different formats and did the one that worked. I frankly did not use this edition much myself, but from seeing how the Rav was able to engage people, both Jews and non-Jews, who would never open Vilna Shas, I can project how his Shas enabled people to learn.
This was an individual taking on a huge and important task – and succeeding, so “avoiding him” due to other considerations is like avoiding Rambam because he wrote in Arabic and did not refer to sources or avoiding Rashi because of the annoying script (that, of course, he did not know himself). We just translated Rambam and added references.
Note that you are not defending “Vilna” page tradition, but rather Soncino and non-Jewish Bomberg who created the look. A lot of good and bad decisions about what and how to have on a page was done by publishers, who were not always Talmidei Chachamim.
And Koren Noe edition seem to combine Steinsalitz and traditional pagination, so debate is good …