Doesn't mean all those people complaining were wrong. As PT Barnum used to say...
What doesn't make sense to me is that Inno could have made more diamond sales if they had made the Dining and Freight cars equal to other options. They didn't even need to be better, just equal. The Sleeping car was fine, and I don't think many thought it needed changed.
I would never put any of those cars on my train (other than the sleeping car if I had a Blue Galaxy), since there are better options out there that have more versatility. If they would have been equal to other options I might have considered it. Luckily for me that freed up my stars for use on other days.
As the evil queen said, "mirror, mirror."
It may not make sense to you, but it does make sense to Inno, and to me. Inno knows their long term plans and know what balances they want to maintain in the game. As much as it may appear to those of us who play the game, Inno understands it's not all about the diamond sales from a single event, it's about increasing diamond sales event, after event, after event. You want to show your investors steady incremental growth. Each quarter, each fiscal year better than the last. Inno delivers that in spades and has done so for many, many years. You may not understand, but Inno does and that's what matters.
You personally would have shelled out diamonds for more powerful cars, but Inno didn't want that. They wanted the average player to buy diamonds, 2995 at a time. I somehow suspect the actual bump they're getting from that far outweighs any imagined loss you have in your mind.
EDIT:
I'm now wondering if the issue may have been programming related. In order to create the best balance between engine and the dining car, the attack boost would have also needed to scale for age. That me be something the chain programming can't do currently. If they were stuck with the cars having a static value, then scaling the dining car to be attractive to higher age player would have meant too large a boost for lower age cities. As a result, they went for middle of the road.
In both my LMA and CA cities the Dining Car gives more attack boost than the Royal Marble Gateway with the same footprint. Add to that, I don't need it to touch a road. That's pretty good for me, right now anyway. I can also see for SAM players with already stratospheric attack boosts, 4% in a 2x3 ain't no big thing.
The more I ponder it though, the more I lean toward programming limitation. I like the chain ability. Scaleable cars would be something to to see in a future iteration.