For me it depends very much on the hotel.
The guaranteed club is a plus where the rule requires it.
Some hotels are worse than before:
IC Saigon before upgraded to Suite Club, now they say a club room is a two level upgrade from a basic room and you get: a basic room plus club. Still gift and extra water. But I am not going back for now because of the drastic cut backs in the club.
IC Nha Trang use the same logic and increased the upsell to their big executive suite (still somewhat reasonable priced).
IC Cairo Citystars was still club+proper suite, but not sure if this is normal. No gift, extra water.
IC HK was still junior suite + Club, no change. Gift was still a tiny box with tea, also water but no more bottle of red wine.

It seems that some hotels play more with the room categorizes now to make the two level upgrade pretty useless, unless you know their categories and book two levels below club.

My sense is taht the room upgrade is not as good as before, but my sample is relatively small.