I think I'm actually not much different there - if I answer about my habits now, then I'm here for a mixture of the main site, pulse and the forum, I don't tend to use the DDLs much.
But back when I joined, I was a heavy user of DDLs, and the scheduler was allways full - I even remember a discussion with Daft asking how many can be put in the queue, as I actually managed to make it scroll off the page lol. I did torrent back then, but the most important thing for me was how the site helped me find the next show to watch - the sceenshots - because you can see the characters - and the reccommended / related animes.
As for changes, I don't really know, theres certainly lots of ideas and some have potential big changes in there, like moving away from DDLs and just using Pulse (so like some of the animes are now - without and actual DDL link basically). This would make it a lot easier if/when AnimeSuki drop their torrent listings, as if we wanted to keep the DDLs beyond that, we'd need to connect the Pulse system to also do DDLs - which at present it dosn't do, so that would need some work. As it stands right now, the DDLs still use AnimeSuki's torrent feed, so it would just stop if they axed there listings.
I partially got round that problem on MATV as the sub groups add their content into the site directly, and I worte a manual system to add in things. But at the same time, manually adding in every episode/file would not be an ideal long term solution on FTV (and I don't think it actually has a manual system), so the best way would be to use Pulse to do it, and/or create a path for the content in MATV from the sub groups to be brought into FTV as well - but that wouldn't bring in everything, although it certainly has the ability to give the anime req thread some super powers ('Can I have X?' -> Copy/paste torrent link -> 'Heres your ddl link, it will be auto ready in a bit' -> leaves the site to torrent it and make a ddl itself). Think 'MU' but insted of uploading the file, you just give it the url of the torrent on Nyaa / TT, and it does the rest for you, MATV already does that.
Either way its going to mean some more code writing :/
The other issue with the DDLs is that the anime companies seem to be closing in on Anime piracy now, just recently 30 people in Tokyo were arrested for using PD / share type tools. The DDLs shield you visitors from this, but it makes the site a big target. I'm starting to wonder if the danger level is getting to high to keep running DDLs (on both sites).
Note - Discussion of the Scheduler issue has been moved to
this thread.