`our payout should be the same regardless of what others do.`
this is not a curation system - it is a braindead staking system.
the ordering of votes was supposed to reward curators, and the reverse auction would diminish overall % of post payout into  curation rewards on larger accounts as more and more people delve into those first 30 minutes (originally) then 5 minutes (after people forgot the point) and now 0 (possible aneurysm levels of misunderstanding) I do not think this solves any problems of the systems that came before it other than to offer the sentiment of "something changed" to anyone that didn't like or understand it, but again, I would love to be wrong about it, since if I'm wrong it could only mean good things - currently I see nothing positive about "we deleted one of the smartest innovations of the entire blockchain instead of improving it"

This is exactly my thoughts too.

sure, they are "lucky" to get 10% back as curation rewards if they are not curating. 
meanwhile it favors the exact opposite of what you describe - smaller votes are easier to gain much higher % from curation than larger votes, which is why most of the best curators never use 100% votes unless the post is really worth it. Now they can just dump 100% on basically anything and have no incentive to spread out to vote on the little guys, because the reverse auction was THE ONLY THING that prevented everyone from piling onto the same giant accounts for curation rewards - as is exactly why it existed in the first place.