Completely agree on #1. It's turned into just blindly walking around and hoping you run into something. My SO and I played this past weekend and saw a porygon on the "sightings" list. We covered as much ground as fast as we could but never actually saw it. Where's the fun in that? I'm still playing for now, but catching new things was one of my favorite things about the game and now it seems to be almost entirely based on chance as "sightings" are pretty useless.
Another thing that bugs me is uneven catch rate. Having something break free 7 times in a row then running away (even when using razz berries, ultra balls etc.) seems to be in place purely to annoy you. Then other times I catch a stronger pokemon the first try with a regular pokeball. Why???