.
It would be much more appreciated if Crawford spent his time on acknowledging and then solving actual gamer concerns...
That's not their goal, though.
I don't think the design team tries to make the best game based on their own talents/creativity/fresh ideas/etc. I think they are trying to make a popular game, and then make sure it doesn't dip in popularity. Those are pretty different goals, even if they sometimes overlap. It seems there would be a "popularity cost" to doing some things (Magic item pricing, for example), and issuing a brand new ranger officially seems to be one of them.
To be sure, the changes mentioned above are just that, changes; any talk of it being simple 'clarifications' is just doublespeak, IMO. They are probably what they thought they could do without risking any perception hit. Fortunately, people still have the UA Ranger.