How to assess quality of suspension How does one measure the quality of the suspension of a bike? In other words, what feedback would I be looking for when riding the bike? Is it more than just happy thoughts after landing a few drops off some ledges? The answer is undoubtedly "it depends", but some elaboration on that for some different scenarios would be nice.

After doing dupe due diligence, the closest thing to a duplicate question was this: How to test-ride a full-suspension bike? and at the top the question was about how to know if a frame fits. I could have missed a dupe. If so, I'm sure I'll hear about it forthwith.
This is a hard question to answer without narrowing down the question.  The question is very similar to "What's the best bike for me?" There are several different designs (frame) for doing suspension.  Then there are several different types of suspension (coil, air, elastomer, oil, material, etc).  Just like the different frame designs have strengths and weaknesses, the different shock/suspension types do as well.  Finally there is riding style and preference. None of that even takes into account the vastly different feels than can be accomplished on one bike now through suspension setup (tuning preload, return, etc).

If you took a very small travel suspension setup designed to be extremely light and responsive for XC racing (for example) and tried it off some drops and ledges, assuming you didn't damage it, you'd probably be disappointed with the feel for the cost.  Just as a good bike should be designed with a set of riding circumstances in mind, so should be suspension.  That XC rig might be worth $10K and worthy of a World Cup XC race, but if you decided to try it as an urban progressive bike or downhill rig, you are going to (likely) break it and/or be disappointed.  Similarly, if you took a $10K World Cup Downhill rig and tried to commute on it, or ride it on a XC style trail or course, it's going to feel like an unresponsive pig and wear you out.  

In short, the best that you could hope to do was test a suspension setup on a trail, course or conditions you plan to ride and see how it feels.  Even then you'll likely need to make adjustments and such to get the setup right for a particular trail/course/staircase.