The math actually supports these observations. Adding 2 dice to a roll means adding an average of 7 points to the result: that's the maximum Attribute bonus you could get in 1ed, and on top of that you increase your chance of scoring tengwars.
Wrong.
You left out the impact of favored attributes in 1E. (+3/+2/+1)
High Elves can also hit 8 wits; rangers 8 body. This gives up to an 11 on a favoured skill - the high side of average for 3d, while 7+3 is 10 for the low side, and the high for a favored skill amongst the younger cultures, all of whom had one background with a 7, several having two backgrounds with the same 7.
Going from a dice pool of 3d6 to a dice pool of 5d6 means going from a 62% chance of success against TN 15, to a 95% chance of success. It means that your chance of actually wasting that point is just 5%.
What about rolls that would have succeeded anyway? Well, unless you roll a Gandalf rune on the Feat die, you'll never know that.
Wrong again.
If all of the dice result in a fail after the spend, you know you wasted that hope.
If adding 1d from raw hope, and any combination leaving out 1d would still succeed, and none of them were sixes, you can be certain the hope was wasted
if adding 2d from inspired hope, and any combination leaving out 2d would have succeeded, and none were 6's, again, you can be certain the hope was wasted.
I had ALL of those conditions happen multiple times last session... 8d6 (3d from skill, 1 from tool, 2 from inspired hope, 2 from being the fellowship focus of one helping),a nd the roll was all 3's, 4's and 5's, plus a 9 on the fate die, against a TN 16, any 4 of the success dice (the non-hope-fueled dice)would beat the 16 easily. both hope were, in the end, literally of no value.
And a roll with level 1 favoured skill,+2 for conditions, with an inspired hope, turning up a (1,Sauron)+1,1,2,2,3 against a TN15... All five dice was a failure...
In fact, any failed roll with hope is a clear case of "wasted hope"...
The point is not that now Hope may fail, because it could fail also in 1ed (if your Attribute bonus was too low). What seems to cause the most dismay (especially among old players, since new players don't seem concerned at all) is actually that it can now be wasted, but as long as the internal economy of the game supports this (which I currently have some doubts about), I truly don’t see where the problem lies.
It's the new players complaining most of my group... "... thoroughly pissed..." that the roll would have failed with any of the dice dropped
while inspired
In 1e, a point of hope was seldom wasted; the TN's were often known, and the decision was made only after knowing the original had failed.
And, for exactly that reason, I would only play characters with some kind of Magical success option, and thus never take any options that grant Inspired, which has absolutely no function in the game if you spend all your Hope on Magical successes. Which means, as a corollary, that if you have Magical successes your distinctive features also serve no (mechanical) purpose.
This is a concern I share, but I guess that as
Davi wisely said, the drawback of a Magical success may lie in the Eye Awareness rules. I mean, you may use a rifle to kill a mosquito, but a swatter probably causes less collateral damage, right?
Also, a Magical success doesn't let you roll additional dice, which may instead be more useful when aiming at scoring more tengwars as possible, rather than simply succeeding.
Depending upon the GM's view of the task at hand, and the way the player narrates the action, a magical success may even add to the Eye Awareness score.
From my point of view, personally, I dislike meta before the roll spends in any game; I vastly prefer "after the roll" spends, both as GM and player.
And I like the ability to look at a bad roll, and narrate, "You realize your effort is beyond hope of success. What now?"
I've played a lot of games allowing open ending via metacurrency spend; it's a great mechanic for the internal element leading to turning failure to success.
Before is "I will push hard"
After is, "I find my second wind"
As a comparison, in the old TSR Advanced Marvel Super Heroes had a "Commit to spend before roll, spend after" for Karma. A typical PC starts with 20-50 karma, and spends are a 1 point for +1 on a d100 roll; commitment to spend was a minimum of 10 spent, even if not needed. I can only think of twice that a player did so in any of my campaigns or 1-shots. When I abolished the commit before, but leaving the minimum 10 spend, most players would use up to the amount they thought they'd make for stopping that villain...
I'll note as well: AMSH was the first game with a metacurrency that I ever ran.