Insane Mechanic Creep. What the Hell is Going On?

I am not a beginner. I played Paragon. I played Smite after that. I have played Pred since the closed alpha tests, but I took a long break. I come back after almost a year and every new hero has 2-3 paragraphs to explain what the hell they do and multiple augments. Plenty of items have 2 passives. There's new crest upgrades. Why the hell is there dramatic music and maniacal laughing (that's honestly really distracting and annoying) just to place some new rocks that fling you around? (I didn't even know what they did until I accidentally ran into one in my third match). What the hell is the Seedling? Or the Shaper? Is getting them important or should I focus on other farm and objectives first?

There's enough information in just the 10 characters, their abilities, their augments, their 7 items, and the PvE enemies in a single match to fill a book. I was playing against Adele for the first time and apparently the pre-game time has been reduced so I didn't have time to look at her abilities on the wiki (nowhere to do this in-match). I died twice before figuring out which of her abilities had CC (and I still never realized the spin and slam were two parts of the same ability).

This game isn't friendly to returning veterans. I can only imagine what it's like for new players. This is maddening levels of mechanic creep and Predecessor is not even very old. Is it even possible to play this game casually? I was not having fun because I had no idea what is going on half the time. JFC, Omeda must want this game to have a very niche audience because I did not expect coming back to require me to do several hours of pre-game studying just to know what the hell I was supposed to be doing. Feel free to disagree, but I think the developers have chosen a poor direction to take the game. Rant over. I am genuinely curious to know if the existing players enjoy this level of complexity.