You can no longer get to the “brief” view from the bottom of the page. So you have do to another click to restore that view.
This restricts the number of recent posts you can quickly see on your monitor because it’s a default to the more extensive “comment” view.
I don’t like it.
I don’t want to view the comments on a thread I’m not interested in.
The default to the comments view will be discovered by trolls soon enough. In fact, how fun it was just a second ago, to go to the comments default (I had no choice, as you note) and see an image of a man with a gun in his mouth. That’s mild compared to other vile stuff I’ve seen get posted on threads.
Maybe someone can make up an obviously fun riff on the problem and make a silly poster that we can keep posting on threads until the idea gets across. Heh.