Having helped playtest some board games in the past, very few games remain unchanged by playtesting…for good reason.
this is exactly the point of a beta, and it’s not like they swapped out core narratives for strict mechanics. The fundamental game hasn’t change here, they threw a bone to the more mechanical oriented tables as optional rules…I don’t get the issue with that.
Now if they made the optional rules the default, sure i could see the concern that they were changing their vision in the face of the committee, but that’s a stretch at this point