Have to say I kinda agree with both here. As someone not (currently) based in the US, we have to work out our travel a lot better to maintain EXP. After we've spent however many thousands of dollars to do that, I don't want to go spend some more thousands to buy RDMs so I can travel.
Buying tickets ex-NZ is generally a ridiculous waste of money - even in coach, you can usually buy miles for an award cheaper than paying for the actual ticket. I'm excited about the competition that is finally coming here - maybe it'll cost us less than $2k to leave the country now!
But, still bummed that we'll be earning less RDMs now - as they were a great perk and allowed us to fly in premium cabins for not much more than what we would've had to pay to fly economy anyway. Now all that's happening is that price difference is becoming wider, which means it's likely we'll be sitting in premium cabins less.
In saying all of that, I certainly wouldn't be doing MRs if I wasn't earning EQMs, unless it was a
really good RDM deal.