While I see your point on (C), there are characteristics of ansible that have led to that point, such as zero-boostrapping and keeping things very efficient. S

While I see your point on (C), there are characteristics of ansible that have led to that point, such as zero-boostrapping and keeping things very efficient. So yes, I agree that's true, but it hasn't been much of a problem so far. (D) We're pretty big about backwards compat, so I'm definitely not going to be reverting any priorities. I think a lot of people DO like the way things are set up now. I'm open to including a 'defaults/' type directory in roles though and that's something we are exploring for those that want to ship defaults and don't want to edit their group_vars for whatever reason.