The people upset at the turn-in reward modification were upset when they announced it. Then they were also upset when they discovered what the modification was.

The turn-in rewards were the bottom of my list. And the modification was tiny. It wouldn't have mattered if they HAD tripled the turnin values though. I'd still be upset because I wanted them fixing the favor system. The turn-in rewards, in my case, barely register on the list of problems. The boost doesn't make enough of a difference to really register, because that was the LEAST frustrating part for me.

If SE makes changes to the favor system and they turn out to be less helpful then the community theories, then yes, the community will be upset. Because we want FIXES, not placebos. 1/3 time triple spawn would be a net 0, just cutting the time investment down to 1/3. I personally would rather they rebuild the entire system into something interesting. It's unlikely. Making it not consume all my game time is a poor second.