a whole sector's worth of Patrol's and breaking the pacing of the game to an insane degree

The problem is that this is the context you use for it. "A whole sector's worth of patrols" is a tiny fraction of the game content that took on an undeserved and insane level of importance to a tiny, but vocal, subset of the playerbase that wanted maximum spec points as fast as possible. If you want to play that way, more power to you, but it does place you in the minority.

"Breaking the pacing of the game" is also ridiculous hyperbole brought about from an ultra-narrow view of what "pacing of the game" even means. Are you talking about leveling 50-60? I did that through the new missions and doffing on one toon in about a week, and doffing alone on the other toons over the course of the first month of DR, with zero impact on my overall daily/weekly playtime. That, to me, is the correct pacing -- it's damn near perfect pacing, in fact. Are you talking about the 1-50 process? By all accounts, that's done nothing but get better since I started playing a number of years ago, and if the Delta Recruit mission set is any indication of how it's been for the last year or so (been a long time since I made a toon), then it's in fantastic shape. Or are you instead talking about completely filling spec trees, which is intended to be a gradual process that some players nevertheless sought to build out and complete in a matter of days/weeks? I don't have a lot of sympathy for that one; again, if that's the way you want to play, more power to you, but it's a minority view and isn't remotely representative of the "pacing of the game."