Putting IC aside, IHG used to compensate the lack of hard benefits (breakfast, club, ...) by having a great return in terms of points. But gone are the days of the promotions stacking like crazy and I've found accelerate promotions to miss my travel pattern. Since I am usually better treated as a Hilton Diamond or Marriott Titanium/Platinum than as a Spire and the point return is not so biased towards IHG any longer, I can therefore understand the negative feel.
As for IC, Ambassador provides a great set of benefits for a reasonable price, even though the possibility for hotels to get around upgrade / late check out for 10k points was quite a disappointing change. I would have preferred the fee to increase but maintain guaranteed benefits.
I have been a Royal Ambassador for a couple of years and I quite enjoyed the treatment at most hotels, much better indeed than as a Diamond or Titanium. So I was of course disappointed to lose it a few years ago. While I can see the point of being a "by invitation" tier, visible thresholds would probably have pushed me to spend a bit more to maintain it.
Having clear goals helps with the "gamification" of loyalty programs, if I were a loyalty blogger I would also prefer such program to keep my readers entertained. I'll grab more attention with "spend 15 nights however cheap and get free club access and upgrades" than with "spend 200usd for ambassador then 20,000usd in hotels and get free club access and upgrades"