Mischief, the changes that took place at least made you (hopefully) realize that something is wrong with your way of playing the game.
The game has not become significatively more expensive, but u do have to make longer runs.
What worries me more, and a friend of mine is how much money is leaked off the game through all the land taxes. Allowing permanent ownership of a land area was probably not a smart move by
MA in the long run, but it is ok if you're only planning the game not to survive another 5 years for example.
I agree with Sirc: if you're a non depositer, it doesn't make any sense to complain about increasing costs in the gameplay, lol.