Nothing has changed in the Sim.
What has changed is WGs level of cares...
So basically, what you're going to want to do is buy $25 worth of flex to cover your 3 free dots. If you want more dots, just do another account and buy $25 more in flex for that account. If you don't have a metric ass ton of flex, don't buy one on any single account, and don't pay for boosts, just the Custom EQ.
Actually building dots is still the same slog through a year and a half of your life, so to break it up, you'll want to start new dots every season or 2.
As far as team ownership goes, there's only trained professionals left. Of course there's also whoever is dumb enough to blow the flex trying to make their own team, just to be fodder for the pros. There's only haves and have nots.
If you get really bored and still feel the need to hang around, you can always just create one dot and find a new and interesting way to game the system, like this guy
http://glb.warriorgeneral.com/game/player.pl?player_id=4721883&playoffs=0Or this team
http://glb.warriorgeneral.com/game/team.pl?team_id=77No one will stop you from doing all of the stuff that used to get your account banned. You just have to bribe WG to look the other way with flex purchases.
Good luck, have fun