Well yeah maybe it wasn't too wise of an idea overall but I don't think it's largely ruining many non-premium user's experience in practice. Plenty sure are complaining about it though. Moreover, the community was already "fractured" in other ways such as across different platforms or people that only like Rush, or Hardcore, and so forth.
Oh missed this earlier. I don't know; I sure have experience playing CS going back to some of the early betas but not nearly as much as many and I guess I didn't find it quite as fast paced as some of these CQ rounds so far. I feel like people kinda hung back in larger groups a bit more in CS and didn't constantly run around the entire map for the whole round (though maybe this will change a bit as people get to know these maps better). And despite the military theme and weapons I almost feel like the overall feel of the gameplay is more akin to, like, an Unreal Tournament release than to CS. Especially on that Scrap Metal map.
Though I have only played it for like an hour so far.