This is too bad. I understand there is likely a ton of complexity in making this switch but I think it still leaves CouchDB with a frustrating problem which is

This is too bad. I understand there is likely a ton of complexity in making this switch but I think it still leaves CouchDB with a frustrating problem which is document conflicts within a given cluster. Client <-> Server conflicts are very understandable but when you might unexpectedly get a document conflict from two server instances replicating with each other, you're just bound to run into a bunch of issues. To have multi-master work properly you basically need Strong Eventual Consistency via CRDTs which most databases don't natively support (I think only Riak). Otherwise, you're better off switching to a single writer model.