As a mandatory thing where the user has no choice I would say no to auto claim. If it was presented as an option, as a choice like the 100% power up or 50/50 choice I would agree with it. I have only been on steem/hive for a little over two and a half years, I still like claiming my rewards. I think a lot of the new users in the morning or when they first log into the chain like looking to see if anyone found their post, or what they earned.
The only people I can see the auto claim function really benefiting are those with a lot of accounts and that are still claiming via a manual operation and have not self automated the process or used someone else's script/bot to do it.
On other changes I personally would like to see in future Hard Forks:
A change to the witness selection/retention system, to where a vote is not a lifetime of account vote and that it decays and needs to be manually re-voted every now and then, every 12 to 18 months as a minimum. I understand some people feel this is a waste of time, and is easily worked around. I would also like to see that when a (dead)witness is no longer running a node that all votes to that account be removed. Plus a few other changes, but those are the two points of witness system I would like to see changed.
The other issue I would like to see being worked on in one of the upcoming hard Forks would be that of the down vote system.
A down vote system is needed, I do not care how people want to view it but a down vote even for the right reasons is a negative action. Most societies around the world require people to answer for their negative behavior, and negative behavior does come with consequences.
When a down vote is cast I would like to see a pop-up box like on the old steemit that gives the valid reasons, (as determined by the community), next to those valid reason would be a check box and one box would have to be selected, an auto comment will be placed on the post down voted under the down voters account name. Then the community can decide if the down vote was justified by down voting the down voter if so desired.
If it was possible and the down vote was for excessive reward I would like to see the highest name mentioned in the auto down vote. Example: 
That's pretty much the changes I would like to see considered at some point in the future.
RE: How do you feel removing the claim rewards mechanism ?