You observations are correct. However the plan as I understood by reading Evans posts is to soft fork the payments of the masternodes and later on, well prepared, hard fork it in. In this case it is a short term and long term win. Short term the masternodes get what they deserve (with no pools cheating that is), later on it is guaranteed for all because it is then hard forked in.
Maybe all the to FUD, attacks, etc. in the last month have left me skittish -- but I wonder even in the short term what might happen to the coin if there is an organized effort to hurt DRK based around pools cheating.