Let's go point by point here and talk facts.
The new tutorial: I believe this was rebuilt in order to alleviate the problems that were seen when new streamers came to the game. I saw a few people get confused about what to do and just never come back to the game. The idea is that forcing people to go through the steps means they'll *have* to do the actions to learn the actions. However, this only works for a certain kind of person and most of the people who have already played plenty of VotV *aren't* that kind of person. The "locked in place" bit of the tutorial is only very specific steps which you *can* skip if you know ahead of time not to click on certain question marks. In the end, I agree that a "I know how to play" version of the tutorial is needed though, tbh, with the amount of things to learn in this game, I don't really know what the best way of building a tutorial for this game is... and I say that as a game dev! Shit's hard. I don't think the current tutorial *is* the answer but I don't have much of a better one.
I don't like having to do stupid puzzles when before I just pressed a button: This is why there's a toggle on the save to turn the puzzles on or off. Personally, I got so fast at math (sub 4 seconds!) that I find the new puzzles refreshing but I also love that there's an option to turn the ones you don't like off. That'll be me and pipe game. It's easy but the controls for it make it a slog to play.
I don't like buying fuses that die immediately: This is a bug and I don't think the gameplay aspect of it is very interesting in this version. I assume something more interesting about the fuses will eventually get added in.
I don't like paying for batteries to drive my ATV that breaks down and needs tires now: This seems to have come from the fact that the ATV upgrades add so much QoL... I think MrDrNose may have wanted to rebalance the starting point of the ATV to be more detrimental so the upgrade path was longer and felt more rewarding. I, too, think the ATV battery is in a bad state but I could see it *eventually* being something more fun and interesting if, say, neutral-rolling the ATV recharged it or some other method of recharging it was available. Early game, 150 points for a replacement battery feels like entirely too much and I say that as a guy who sells all the trash on 2 floors of the base for 2k points. As for tires and other maintenance, I could see this stuff becoming interesting down the line but if you're a heavy ATV user early game, it does need rebalance work. Maybe if it comes with a spare and you've got a couple more in the utility closet alongside some ATV batteries (like how 8.2c added a bunch of stuff to the upstairs utility room) this could all be resolved as "feeling bad" to "feeling like something to prepare for in the later game."
I don't like spending forever triangulating a signal only for it to vanish: This is a couple of things. First, you gotta realize you can't fail signals anymore, which means some other bit of this has to be the failure/challenge. That's where "if you're too slow, it disappears" comes in; it is the new challenge which can also be upgraded via multiple pathways as you get money and pay for the upgrades. Secondly, signals sell worse than trash in the early game. I believe you're not really supposed to do signals until you do the *other* things you can do to make money, use that money to upgrade your stuff, then get signals rolling. Also keep in mind that there are bugs related to those towers breaking too much.
It isn't more skill based its just more annoying: It's annoying early on, I agree, but it does feel more skill based than the previous method because you're balancing "which radars do you drag vs call to your location" as you're balancing out actions against the cooldowns. It's a game of speed that you can fail but at least when you get it all done on time, you're guaranteed a signal instead of an RNG failure like before.
I don't like having my floppy drive fail 100 times in a row to gather the hash codes: This is another one that I think is supposed to be upgraded-related. Stability discs seem to not be present anymore but I could see their return if they were multi-use and prevented the hash code failure. Turning the management of satellites from "up or down" to "maintaining a health that lets you do your work faster" greatly interests me and I believe is the direction this is going... but once again, the starting point is simply too much to wait for. I think this little bit could easily see some rebalancing before the stable 0.9 release.
Most of all I hate hate hate HATE the new controls. They're insanely clunky and are a massive downgrade. What was wrong with the ALT key giving me ALTernate states of action? At the very least the game NEEDS a legacy controls toggle: I'm with you on this 100%. I completely understand why the new scheme exists (it's because of user testing and seeing people be unable to understand the ALT method on top of seeing constant problems trying to interact with multiple objects that have a different # of interaction choices and how it resets your interaction choice) but for everyone who has played for a long time or prefers to not have to hold keys down for single-shot actions, we should have been given the choice to revert. Personally, I think the true answer is adding "hold" "double tap" and "modifier" key bindings, which is a massive undertaking but one I always champion in games that have more than 5 controls to worry about. If I can just replace "hold R" with "T" I'd do that in a heartbeat. That being said, this shadow drop seems like the perfect moment to see "hmm, is this really better?" With the outcry over it, I'm curious to see how the stable release responds.
In any case, the point of all of this is (hopefully) a reasonable explanation for why things ended up the way they did and a hopeful outlook in where it means the direction of this game is going.