I completely agree with the OP, because I came to this forum with the same idea.
After I tested them with an open mind, I could not get used to the sliderticks and removed them completely. But this was even worse for me, so I had no choice but to accept this new animation.
I loved the old slider ticks because they indicate speed changes, when reading far ahead.
When I am playing with tablet, I tend to read further ahead than when I play with mouse, where I have to keep track of the cursor always, so automatically when playing with mouse these ticks are not too bad, but still too close to the action, not too much ahead. Playing with tablet is now simply annoying.
After severely testing on more difficult than your average hard/insane maps, these new ticks are not helpful at all, they look nice, so a toggle would be cool, also to make transition better
I bought Sim City the other week, it was tested but still there are major bugs, because they only gave pre-purchasing beta testers 1 hour to demo the game before launch. Nobody noticed spectators can build airfields and train-stations and destroy your city with parks all of which using the money of the player that is being spectated. And now EA is giving me a new free game to dry my tears.