If you want to give specific feedback on ongoing development, please use the corresponding developer.blender.org tasks and topics here to state your opinion on the changes in a clear and concise way.
This is not the place for long discussions about how industry standard Blender should be or what that means exactly, so I’m closing this topic.
I’m reopening this thread for now, but as a reminder please try to communicate in a way that leads to constructive discussion and understanding of each others viewpoints.
Thanks Brecht
Personally for me it’s not a problem, and as you say it’s more logical from the point of view of nomenclature. But if what you want is for new users, especially professionals coming from other software, not to take a blow against blender, to get frustrated and abandon it… what you have to do is completely eliminate the source of frustration that blender generates the first time you try to use it, which are the four settings I mention at the beginning.
I, surely, if you made this change in the default configuration, the first thing I would do would be to return WER to SRG. But I’m talking about how to make the change to blender comfortable without destroying its essence.
Of all of them, the only one that perhaps would not be the movement of the camera, because blender is also a program of sculpture and painting, the tablet is necessary. And its current configuration, if you put the left click of the mouse to select, is much more convenient than other programs where the use of a tablet is not even contemplated.
This is propably suggestion out of your space. Im mostly Modo user and I`m impressed by hard work of Blender dev team, HQ and whole community.
In Modo by default you have possibility to select all polygons/edges/vertices on current mesh by double click on it (in Modo its LMB but in your case it would be RMB on Edit Mode). Again one click is deselect all polygons/vertices/edges and select one polygon if you point again on mesh or stay deselected if you pointed on empty space. I think it`s quite intuive (IMHO).
My wired mind tells me one more solution which may be less intuive. Triple clicking. It would select all polygons/edges/vertices except current selection 
I think that I would see creepy smiles on some faces after that second suggestion but it would be quite fast selecting solution for mouse users.
One thing more its dropping the current selected tool. As a basic Blender user after choosing accidentally some tool on few selected polygons/edges/vertices I would like to drop it off. Ive selected few polys and hit scale tool. Im trying to drop it off by hitting: LMB,RMB, MMB, Esc, Enter, Space Bar :). Maybe it`s my fault, maybe there is some hidden shortcut to drop it without accepting changes. Other thing is accepting changes in clear way. I had to change the tool to accept changes and ideally would be f.e. “Esc key” to drop the tool without accepting changes and “enter key” to drop the tool and accept whole changes made by this current tool.
Some subjective thoughts on this matter:
Few other observations, pseudo feature requests:
This was not the subject of the thread.
that would be to destroy one of the basics of blender these days. I don’t see any reason to add thousands of extra clicks when you have the toolbar in the big toolbar.
And I don’t see any reason to ignore the repeat transformations. When they’re usually the main repetitions I use.
@G,S,R. Proposing dual functionality. G,S,R > activates manipulator. If manipulator is already active, default blender behavior as you have. While manipulator is active you can use it as in Max, Maya, Lw, C4D, Modo, Maya, Houdini, Zbrush… name your app. After all, the idea is to appeal to widest possible audience? This happens to be one of the things that is hard to get used to them. In other words it offers best of both with no overhead, not taking anything away from experienced blender users.
For example currently to rotate in desired direction, you currently press “R” then constraint “X” then realize you chose wrong axis, press “Y” and maybe even “Z”. That’s 3+ actions. With manipulator you press on arrow and that’s it. There are of course circumstances where opposite is true. Both are beneficial, both are good to have.
In nutshell to argue against ideas as such, is to argue against your own thread as you’re asking for openmindness yet exhibit opposite.
I know games and softwares that after trying to appeal to the wider audience ended destructing itself because of inner audience conflict.
I personally dont think blender should appeal to a audience, The 2.8 project is not a product, is a tool, and should be taken as that.
I dont like the manipulator idea because adds uncescessary extra complexity, why activating a manipulator when you dont need a manipulator at all?
and about the axis, its just a matter of practice, you get used to keep track of the orientations, RGB (RED, GREEN, BLUE) > (X,Y, Z) its a standard, seeing the color of the axis automatically resembles the associated letter, just press that letter.
One thing is to remove the user’s wall and another thing is to affect the modal blender system of all tools.
And " f " for Frame/view selected instead of numpad .
F for frame selected is used at least in Maya,and Zbrush,
Personally I would expect such big changes, as described in this thread, to scare away existing Blender users. We’re not making Blender to draw away users from other software. We’re making Blender because we want to use Blender. I really don’t see how changing keybindings to whatever some other piece of software uses is beneficial to current Blender users. I’d say that if someone can’t even be bothered to look up some hotkeys in a beginners’ tutorial, they weren’t serious about trying out Blender. It’s not just “the same but free”, it’s different software, and IMO it’s fine if it takes a little getting used to.
Of course we’re open to improvements (and I’m sure there are many possible improvements). I just don’t see “because other software does it that way” as enough reason to change things.
Sure, I am being scared away…
I probably wouldn’t make tutorials out of 2.8 hotkeys also.
I find it a bit contradictory that the current blender interface is being “demolished” and that changing the left click may seem excessive and scare people away. I mean… for now.
And I think I could keep saying things…
None of these have been at the request or complaint of the users, as I at least have never seen such requests in eight years in any place, not even a comment. No one has ever asked for any of this, and when I say no one, it’s no one. 90% of these changes have been for fear that blender is blender and have been copied from other programs (Modo and SkecthUp mainly). It has also been justified as well, as the change of tab for the search bar that has been copied from Nuke (Only that reason was enough to change the main shortcuts of the program).
And changing the default mouse to left click, using WER and putting 1,2,3 to select vertex/edge/face is a drastic change that scares away users? When it’s the only three things users have ever asked for. What if some classic user doesn’t like it takes about 2 minutes to set up and one of the changes doesn’t affect any hotkey (1,2,3)
If you’re trying not to scare the blender users, reverse those changes that seriously affect the workflow and muscle memory.
I don’t know why developers are doing that also.
Okay, I agree with adding more laptop support, making a good renderer, removing support for a few old hardwares no one uses but changing the interface so abruptly is like trowing all the thousands of tutorials over the years in the trash.
Like @Alberto told, no one asked for such changes, I like the old UI, probably everyone, it seems like there are interface developers who didnt had experience with blender asking (How would I like this thing I never seen to be?)
My theory is that few people will find blender a serious software and will treat it like what its looking like: “a toy”
In my point of view, the old UI were much more clean and easy to get how work.
The only learning curve pain I had with blender ever was with rigging (which is normal).
You dont know how sad I feel for not having the programing skills to just fork blender 2.7 and start from scratch.
I found the current changes in Blender’s UI and related features rather odd.
First, the removal of layers and the related hotkey to access them. It’s a quite unique feature that I’ve only seen in Blender and have been fondly using for years. I like how convenient it is and the degree of freedom in visibility control it provided. I understand we have collections now, but…
Secondly, the re-assignment of number keys for mode change. Did they really removed Layers just for this? We already have a flawlessly working pie menu feature that IMHO is perfect for mode changes and a completely brilliant idea in how to assign hotkeys and macros for most of the functions we use in Blender.
Yet, Pablo just said it was “weird” to have pie menu to select modes in today’s Blender live stream. Why? I’ve been using pie menu for mode select for years and even with different object types, it hasn’t been an issue at all. But rather working extremely well. I don’t understand the change. The options for different types of objects, if they don’t have a “pose” mode, the option simply won’t show up. Which is just the way it should work, isn’t it? I can’t accept the change to use Number keys for mode select when we clearly have better options already.
Unlike the un-labeled shortcuts or hotkeys, pie menu shows the label for all the modes, too. Hold key, move mouse in general direction and release key will execute the command. Doing it fast enough and it is as quick as press of a button. It’s both more intuitive and more efficient than 10 number keys for mode change.
And then… Someone pointed out the use of spacebar as a modifier key. (I do, and I use spacebar exclusively as a modifier key). Currently, 2.8 use spacebar to call up a menu, and you can then press G, R, S to transform objects… Why do we need to press spacebar at all?
Nonetheless, there are quite a few good changes, too. I hope everything can come together nicely in the end, but definitely not how it is now.
Totally agree with @TeaCrab, pie menus are the best bet to solve the Mode change problem and all those keymap changes are worse than odd, are frustrating.
