If you want to deploy a site using FTP, why not do it? Why does it matter what people think of your deploy process?
It's only that as the web grew up, and websites became less a bunch of static files and increasingly an application, or more commonly a pile of application-like messes run by many different people at the same time, involving a bunch of dependencies between files, whether organized code or haphazard things piled on things piled on things, doing staged releases comes to be the more sensible option.
At a certain level of complexity, FTP can become a liability and cost you business.
Not knocking down the many brilliant developers who work this way, but it seems the simple approach sometimes is the best approach.