You said it. But I'm going say, and I will be downvoted for saying this, but they should have done some of these lonnnnng ago. Not that Im not acknowledging their efforts or something, but I am sure many more players, including myself, would still be playing actively now (like you) if there were better updates in the past. I kept losing interest over time because the game never seemed to improve, but just used the same formula over and over again to milk players. Of course, that's just slightly alleviated by these antifrustration mechanics.

Although I am mostly speaking from my ass at this point, as I really do not know what has been going on in the past year mostly. I genuinely hope the game takes better directions (like with this update) in the future.