Man, I’m sorry to break it for you, but it’s not about petitions… Epic engineers didn’t remove it because they’re lazy or ignorant. There must a serious technical hurdles that weren’t possible to overcome. If tessellation already didn’t work on some platforms… it means it’s not exactly proper technology to support in the following years. Love it or hate it 
Epic doesn’t remove stuff until it becomes a blocker for technological advancement. Matinee from UE3 lived through the entire UE4 generation, although it was primitive and generally unusable.
Rendering tech is always a set of compromises. You can’t always introduce new features or introduce entirely different renderer (when almost nobody in the industry has sth similar) and keep all older elements intact. Especially if the engine supports various platforms.
This new approach was developed over the span of a decade. If it would be so easy to support feature X because someone from community petitioned, they would support it already