Great post, spot on in all these questions. I do admire how constructive can you stay during all these moves; for me, and reading all the comments I'm definitely not alone, it is just frustrating at this point: we have an awesome game, a "new player experience" is taunted as the priority, and it seems almost every change seems to go the exact opposite direction.

-I'm very worried about our ability to attract and retain new players, to me this is the only essential factor to determining our success.

Do hope we have a REAL change of focus. I wouldn't mind a new mode at all, even though this one will unlikely do anything to atract new players; even so, I would see it with good eyes, more diversification is always better... but seeing as welcome the automation that nearly ruined the game (and in my opinion, keeps ruining it), is a straight NO from me.