There wasn't really any way to avoid what v6 did though. v4 can't handle addresses that are bigger than 32 bits, and that's the end of it.
v6 also has pretty much every backwards compatibility mechanism that can work with v4. It's hard to see how it could've done any better, and nobody I've ever talked to has managed to come up with anything that a) would work and b) isn't already a thing v6 does or can do.
I've seen plenty of proposals that don't satisfy those two conditions (like, "just add an octet" or "just make the numbers go up to 999")...
v6 also has pretty much every backwards compatibility mechanism that can work with v4. It's hard to see how it could've done any better, and nobody I've ever talked to has managed to come up with anything that a) would work and b) isn't already a thing v6 does or can do.
I've seen plenty of proposals that don't satisfy those two conditions (like, "just add an octet" or "just make the numbers go up to 999")...