Actually, beacons, bosses, and quartz have really big uses in the game. Beacons can give you superpowers, bosses provide a new challenge to the game, and quartz is my new favorite building material (besides the new clay). None of these things are useless or they wouldn't add them to the game.
Yes, just because they add something new doesn't mean that you have to use it, but it kinda makes people feel that the game isn't the same anymore, especially after the 1.6 update where they added horses and mules and stuff. I definitily don't think that new updates make the game boring, and I (my opinion) really like new updates and playing around with new features.