Next, the whole RCI balance mechanic has been the core of SimCity forever, and that's completely gone. Residential areas are supposed to need Commercial areas so people have a place to buy things (or work). Commercial needs shoppers, workers, and goods. Industry provides jobs for residents and goods for Commerce. They broke all of that, because sims, it seems, can live on love. All they need to not move out of their homes is "happiness," which can be obtained from shopping (commerce) but can also be obtained from city parks. So people have made 400k+ population cities that are absolutely nothing but residential high rises and parks. The people have no jobs and no money and no food, but they can still live in gleaming skyscrapers because I guess they're urban foraging in the parks.
Sounds like they were trying to create a game where cities could be genuinely different and still successful and functional. With the strong emphasis on multiplayer and shared maps, a game where people didn't have to follow the same rigid template as everybody else to create a viable city was probably considered a vital feature.
Older SC games really only had a single "optimal" strategy. I think this was what they were trying to avoid.
Unfortunately, it seems that in trying to make it more free-form and less rigid, they inadvertently weakened the "Sim" part of "SimCity".
It's a different game. People used to RCI balance as the core mechanic are going to find it different to what they expected. Whether that's better or worse is probably a matter of opinion.