I have friends who are convinced this will all be terrible, but when you talk to them it's pretty clear that their fears are based around a distrust that CG will get it right, not that the fundamental ideas are wrong.
Since they make mistakes at everything that they do, I'd rather have them try for something good and mess up than try for something worse and mess up anyway.
I am bummed about the simming rule; that should be the reward of being able to be done with that raid.
Now the rewards are that you get the gear without even having to sim it, just by increasing the rewards for the next raid to include all the rewards from the previous raids.
it's as good as simming without having to actually sim. (As long as CG implements this correctly.)