There's good and bad, to some extent, though covid absolutely hit in-person play quite a bit. I honestly wouldn't say you joined Magic around the decline of the game in general - we're arguably in the golden age of limited, for example, with many incredibly well regarded sets being printed in the past few years. But you inarguably joined when in-person play was in an awkward spot, and Commander now being dominant has definitely changed the 'feel' of local play.
The current RCQ system has advantages and disadvantages over the previous PPTQ/PTQ + GP system, though it's largely analagous actually. Probably the big thing is that regional organizers have a lot more leeway in their approach, which is both good and bad. Flexibility is valuable, but can lead to not all players being served. Starting that road to the Pro Tour at your LGS can help expose the average player to this route a little better. We also started to see PTQs and cash Opens being run at MagicCons again, and my fingers are crossed for more larger tournaments as we get back into the swing of things - it does feel like they're slowly ramping up in-person play again, and I'm excited for it.
16 packs... it depends. Some stores have a very toploaded FNM payout, heavily rewarding the top ~4 players with the lower ranked players getting nothing or almost nothing. I think this might've been more common in the past - I remember a lot of "win a box" prereleases back in the day.
Blocks... god, don't even get me started. Blocks were to some extent a boon on the storytelling side of things. You got more time and space to explore a given plane and plotline, which definitely helped with pacing, but that went both ways - if you absolutely hated a given story arc or conceit or theme, you were stuck there for a year.
Moreover, block drafts were often a hot mess and sucked. It was hard to design for, for one, as either the sets didn't have cohesive mechanics, or they did and the second set felt like more of the first and not new. The sets you added to the block never felt quite as fun - triple X was often people's favorite way to draft a block. You're also stuck drafting the same or similar environment for about a year, since many of the block draft structures also only had 1 pack of the new set and 2 of the old, which could make the format get somewhat stale - and especially now with so much online play, that would grow old really quick. There were good block drafts, but there were a lot more bad ones.
AAB block drafts typically felt boring, because you opened and drafted the first 2 packs same as you always did, and tried to find minor upgrades in B - the new set's release didn't really feel significant, and sometimes the small set would just actually make the limited feel worse. BAA was similar to AAB, but you saw new cards first and were encouraged to stay open pack 1, but you still felt like you were just drafting AAA more than not. ABC could be fun - drafts were harder to navigate, archetypes were vaguer, but this could have pretty clear issues too, and was obviously harder for newer players to navigate. CBA played out similarly with similar issues. BBA was often kinda cool though.
Two set blocks were an improvement to the format, Kaladesh/Aether Revolt was quite fun, but still had some of the same inherent issues. While the limited environment was better on average and it wasn't as stale since you weren't drafting set A for like, a whole year, you still had similar design constraints and you still had that issue of people who disliked a given setting being 'stuck' there for awhile.
Anyways, thanks for indulging this long ass post I Have Lots Of Thoughts
