I do actually agree that a standard food and beverage credit is much simpler to administer, use and understand for the average consumer than the DDP, which had its own set of rules and restrictions about how the various credits worked.
However, for families of 4 or 5 in particular, Free Dining was a much better value. $50-$100/day doesn't get you very far in WDW. A room only discount would often save you more than that.
Disney clearly knows how popular the Free Dining promos were. Their website would crash every time it got released. This current offer looks like they're trying to come up with something similar that doesn't cost them as much potential lost revenue. We'll see how well this works for them (probably will), or if Disney tries some other promo later this year.