I'm also a new player, I started in September and am currently in Silver 3, but I think the recent reward changes actually help new players who are invested in their own long-term growth in Splinterlands. In the short-term, the recent changes look like they kill the rewards for new players and I'm sure a lot of newer players have left because of them, but this is due to a short-term outlook on their investment in this game.

The new reward changes greatly increase the amount of time investment needed to grow an account without any monetary investment, but it will also make profitable botting without monetary investment much more difficult. This will prevent bots from inflating the markets, which would make the assets new players gain worthless over time. Over the long term, these changes will help assets appreciate along with the game's growth and new players will see their account values grow.

I agree with you that renting is the best option for new players but I disagree that such a large amount of DEC is needed to get into silver. I have purchased some cards and have received some rewards so I own about 4,500 power in cards, but I'm only spending 26.441 DEC/day to rent the rest of the power needed for silver. This is a fairly small amount of DEC and I'm able to easily make this back in a few matches each day.