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Rules stability is the most important thing, and that's something that's lacking the past few years. These are similar changes to those that doomed sportscar racing in about 20 years ago (changes that required teams to spend tons of money, and benefited only the big factories). Of course, what would be nice are stable rules that benefited all. But is there really a balance between cutting edge alternative technology cars that factories like Audi and Toyota have presented, and off the shelf customer specials that can't realistically be able to compete with them on a steady basis. Ironically, LMP900/675 gave us that. Yeah, there were no diesels and hybrids back then, but you had a factory team that was being challenged by customer teams with the same car, and a team with one of the most unconventional LMP1's of all time--of course, I mean the famous Panoz LMP1 roadster, which was front engined and powered by a fuel injected aluminum version of the Ford small block NASCAR V8. If we had a formula where we can get back to that, that would IMO be a savoir. Because the irony of these supposedly "open" rules is that you see teams doing more of the same, as far as similar cars with similar engines. And the cars under the LMP900 rules were cheaper, even taking in account inflation.
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You raise some interesting points there, but couldn't it be that part of why the privateers were competitive with Audi back then was not the rule set, but rather that Audi wasn't pushed to the level they are on now by another serious factory effort? After all, Audi was winning most of the races anyway. So why push harder and spend more money for only marginally better results?
Someone raised a similar point in another thread, saying how a P1 class with Mazda, Nissan and Honda on limited budgets and customer cars might be more interesting than what we have right now, if on a somewhat lower technological level.