@Agvar : The new Tech Tree is KP-light but Coins/Supplies-heavy, and the new [main] Chapter Quests also give fewer Coins/Supplies; almost every new City I see now asks for MH/Coins in their City Name (for NH), and there is also a LOT more 0*/1* and cross-Tier Trading, too, done by genuinely new players (not only Spire farms, as one would expect). New Cities also grow much more slowly now, if not abandoned. I feel this indicates a shortage of the two most basic Resources, even though the new Chapter Quests award more types of Resources than previously.
On top of this, and because Seasons have replaced the old repeating/cycling Chapter Quests, new players can no longer 'farm' Coins/Supplies from those, either - so those players will probably find the Toolbox and Groceries Season Quests just as tiresome, but for different reasons : (a) longer vs shorter productions provide far fewer Supplies, and (b) the early game is now more limited overall because FS membership, Tourney, and Spire have been moved forward in the Tech Tree, so I'd imagine that there's now really not much to do in the early game other than collect & reset Resource productions (and go through the Build Menu waiting to be able to afford the Coins/Supplies to build things) - without having enough CCs/Spell Frags to Craft to pass the time, for example, or enough Time-boosters to speed up longer Season-demanded production runs.
That said, the short Workshop runs (and Toolboxes) are a nuisance to me, too. I've started logging in as close to 12.01 am as possible and then rushing through the Daily Season Quests (+Event Quest(s), where possible) as fast as I can, and I find myself generally irritated and not even in the mood to log in throughout the next 24 hours because I end up trying to juggle my usual gameplay choices around Seasons (and Events, now that they & Seasons inter-relate).
IF Inno was trying to create/increase engagement and/or add interest to the game for
established [not newbie] players, it seems that in my own case, at least, the opposite effect has occurred.
This attempt to railroad us into playing by Inno's time schedule rather than our own is NOT working for
this player; I'm playing less, not more.