The curve change is part of the package as it will mean that smaller accounts will have a say on hugely over inflated posts - a downvote will have more impact on a post worth 200 than 2.
It is hard to say if people will change - the people pushing the changes for 50/50 and a slight curve, but what we have at present isn't working at all.
No argument from me about "what we have isn't working", Last year I crawled up to minnow and a 4 cent or better vote for a little while, now with 3 times the SP, I still have not gotten back to a four cent vote. I still do not like the free downvote idea, but they can always try to fix it if it goes awry in another year with another HF.
I have a feeling the call will be to offer more free DV's - It seems to be currently being stated to be 25%, or 2.5 full downvotes.
It will be interesting to see the results, I still believe it will be the Stanford Power experiment all over again with the jailers and the prisoners, or the blue eyes brown eyes, or any of the other test where people are given power over other people. I do not you tube or facebook, but I hear about the downvotes and abuse there, I have seen on a daily basis the abuse of downvotes here on steem. People will take advantage of it and the abuse will intensify. We already have McCarthy era style blacklist, and the abusers meaning well can say what ever they want but when you down vote a comment that was pertinent to the post and in line with other comments, that is abusive behavior no matter how they want to justify the action. An individual should not be punished for life unless they committed a capital crime. Most civilized groups of people believe that tenant, the flaggers on steem do not.