I can't speak for everyone but I was much happier with the old pref bidding system, mostly because I could work a 30 on/30 off type schedule. That's pretty much impossible now for someone with my seniority. Dealing with gateway travel and starting/ending patterns 4-6 times per month is much worse than just doing it once a month in my opinion. I realize I am probably in the minority and that most people don't like the really long trips, but I loved this place when I could get home and know that I wouldn't have to think about work again for a solid month. Conversely, when I was at work, after about 2 weeks the trip length didn't seem to bother me at all. At about the 15 day mark you just kind of accept that you're living at work full time for awhile and it becomes routine, in my experience.
Basically, with pref bidding you could bid for individual trips and it was esay to back a 17 day pattern up to another 17 day pattern the following month. Now, you pretty much need to be able to hold 30 day lines for that to happen, and 30 day lines tend to go very senior (at least half of the lines seem to be 60 day lines, and almost all of the 60 day lines have 3 - 4 patterns of different lenghts, not 2 long ones).