TL;DR: Facebook is tightening its filter bubble around you and getting more in between you and your friends.
Ignoring the new features that were added, there is one feature that has disappeared -- the full list of your friend updates in the News feed.
Previously you could click on "Most recent" and get a list of all updates. Now they are filtered and it is totally inconvenient to get around this: you must explicitly check "All updates" from every friends context menu (by default it is "Most updates").
It may seem like a feature until you realize that you may miss the news that your friends are OccupyingWallStreet or criticizing Facebook or doing other twoplusbad things.
Now I am not against filtering and ranking most news (as in media) automatically. I think it is a great achievement that we are able to do this. However I am strongly against anyone deciding for me what is important for me and my friends. There is a line that should be drawn somewhere and you should not ignore this.