APRS is almost exclusively source routed, and depends greatly on sensible path configuration by each and every user.
This is one of those cases where individuals acting independently and rationally for their own personal behave contrary to the whole group’s long-term best interests by depleting some common resource (the tragedy of the commons).
Increasing the available WIDE path length does expose a station’s packets to more iGates, but the average effect of everyone following that strategy is to literally exponentially increase channel busy as the available hops is increased. Continue reading APRS: how many digi hops to make it to APRS-IS