kind of a noobish question but why not sort of raise the number of blocks instead of increasing their size?
Raising the number of blocks alone doesn't solve the problem of global usage. Litecoin already has 4 times as many blocks on average over time as Bitcoin, meaning it can already support more users than Bitcoin with its copied 1MB limit. But it can't support global usage either without raising its block size, which could very well happen, regardless what the Bitcoin community does.