I'm fine with it aside from the way they screwed with the notification system. It seems like it could work pretty well once you get used to it. 

@@Shoboni, The previous commenting system wasn't that good, but they did SOME things right, such as the character limit (which prevents spam) and letting people who don't want the broken Google+ accompanied.

But there are many problems. Read these three posts from Hogfather in the SSMB. He explains the problems perfectly.

If I need a Google+ account I'm already done with it.

I deleted that thing because I didn't want it in the first place, don't shove your nonsense on me.

ahaHahahahahaha

Seriously though, I was fine with changing the channel layouts but this is poor functionality. Plain and simple. The comments section EVERYWHERE on YT looks like a total mess now, the reply feature is a clusterfuck, and there aren't even any voting options for comments (which was one of the more attractive features of the site, to be frank). Why fix what isn't broken?