Increased award availability requiring connections is the happy spin on married segment availability now being applied to awards. This obsoletes the cumbersome but effective method of segment by segment award construction that people have employed for years. Clearly it's going to make changes more difficult.

MSA has been employed by US legacy carriers on purchased tickets for decades. Dave Noble's explanation is concise and lucid. You don't need to like it but AAdvantage redeemers do need to accept it. BTW, Delta and United use MSA on awards, too.

This doesn't, a priori, make miles less valuable. We will see examples both ways.