You can still play a decent lancer cav with the thrust of a War Spear, and the removal of Long Spear/Pike/Lance length poking weapons would leave awlpikes as the natural counter to that, only a bit longer than the War Spear, and nowhere near as long as a a pike.
I have not read Patricia's post completely through, or I haven't retained a lot of it, but I definitely agree with a lot of these proposed changes. Crossbows losing their readied bolt is a great idea, in particular, saying that as a crossbowman. The slot system you proposed, also, seems like a great idea, and is something like what I was hoping for when the slot system was implemented in the first place. The only thing I can say I would not like to see is the removal of jumping, due to the chaos/fun factor provided by it, plus the great platforming opportunities.. I would miss it a lot. I feel like M&B without jumping would lose some of it's oom-pa-pa.