100% agree with OP that every one of the items they mentioned is a fucking stupid idea. (can I say that here?). But it doesn't detract from my enjoyment one bit. In the PfH when Swen mentioned respecing, and don't recall if he said it would be free or if he said it in a way that makes me think it would be free, my gut was "why would you do that?"
But then he answered the question. It's an enormous game, and he'd rather not have people give up on it if their choices are give up, start again after maybe dozens of hours, or continue playing as something that's not fun for them.
The other changes are harder to justify for sure, but yeah, as others have noted, they all float around this idea of wooing folks less familiar with D&D and/or these kinds of games in general.
Would it be cool if those things were locked behind a harder difficulty mode? Yeah, 100%. Does it detract from enjoyment that they're not, not in the slightest.
If there are achievements eg "did such and such without respecing or multiclassing," that would be cool, but I'm not fussed in the slightest.
Really, if this is the stuff that's grinding your gears, I'm jealous of you. I've got stuff in my life that is way way way out of the normal for stuff that sucks, so a poor design decision in a fun game I can just ignore? Okay.
