They did lower the amount of gym fights
Obviously Niantic has lowered the amount of necessery gym fights to defeat a pokemon. You don't have to fight 5 or 6 times anymore. After 3 times a fully motivated mon faints.
That's good news because it was so boring to fight against the same weak mon again and again and again...
Answers
And how about this...gyms placement is based on when they are put in the gym, rather than cp, but motivation can cause them to drop to a lower spot, which causes them to get kicked out first. Basically those feeding berries to their pokemon are able to maintain higher spots, while those losing motivation fall lower in the gym. It would be kind of cool to see the lineups change from battle to battle too.
"Basically those feeding berries to their pokemon are able to maintain higher spots, while those losing motivation fall lower in the gym."
It is better reversed. Because you want the stronger ones in a gym protect the weaker ones. If some mon is not motivated to fight, a team will not send them first!
That should prevent spoofers from continuously feeding them and be safest in the gym.
If you keep your mon strong, it will fight first. If you do not want to be fought first, do not feed him, but he will lose some strength.
In reality the position does not matter so much - in the old system you could defeat 4-6 in a row and the ones at 7-10 were safe for a while. Now the whole team will need to fight anyway.