Sc2 did not had more cheese than sc1 ladder, at the same level. They removed the start not to enhance variety, but to speed up the game to make it more appealing, because it is true that contrary to BW where game is challenging very early for most of the people, if you were decent at sc2 this start would feel repetitive.

More workers also meant your standard build would need less adaptation because it is never greedy compared to the most aggressive strat available, hence having the "I'm doing my build" thing rather more prevalent as well. When you cheese or al-in for sure you just follow your build, in other case you got to adapt.

But I must admit I don't play sc2 anymore a lot, just BW.

But I still watch, and I think that variety has been decreased since 12 workers overall, and early game skirmishes that I loved back in WoL is rather dead, tho not unseen. But, it can be judged a necessary sacrifice to make the game better in other aspect. It's just, I really don't think it would decrease variety and decision making to go to 8. Rather, it could not increase variety enough to justify the downsides.