I also noticed that it was very hard to figure things out when I first started playing. I had to search through forum posts and try different things, and hope someone somewhere had provided good advice, or figured out and described the game mechanics and its formulas. Some parts of the game (manufacturing, logic) I completely ignored for about a month.
Of course I started playing years before "power 2.0" was being considered. As far as I can tell, "power 2.0" hasn't made it harder to learn - the game has always been hard to learn.
Sure, if you're lucky and the wiki and/or in-game tutorials happen to be up-to-date it'd makes things easier; but every piece of the game has been redesigned and replaced at least 3 times since I started playing and nothing is ever up-to-date for long. I think that (too much obsolete information floating around to confuse people, rather than no information) might be the only thing that's actually is making it harder to start now than it used to be.
