So there's a pool at launch, which pretty much guarantees little to no solo mining for the little guys. Great.
Your definition of little guy and mine must not be the same. At launch I get nothing with my combined 107kH/s without a pool. So by little guy, you must be referring to your meager 8xR9 290x space heater.
No, I'm talking about the piece of shit nvidia card in my gaming computer built in 2010. I've mined several altcoins at the
very beginning. I'm talking first 10-20 minutes, and if I'm fast enough, I tend to make decent profit.
That has been far more profitable than the pitiful amount I've gotten from the excessive launch pools of recent coin releases. I'd rather take my chances and hope I get lucky, instead of pretty much guaranteeing myself a truly meager output at best.