I have a question, How many people in the Arc team, and are any of them related to any members of PWE senior management as that would certainly explain a few things. I do have a tinfoil hat you can borrow if you'd like to answer it without any "outside influence" ;)
Think you might find NO is more appropriate to at least 2 of the points above looking at how this thing 'actually' works or is supposed to work...., not sure about Steam Wallet, I use Paypal as I've used it for years and like yourself, don't see any reason to change.
Also helps if people from Cryptic stop assuming people don't make backups with a statement like "you WILL need to install ARC if you get a new computer", as well as thinking people will be happy being 'forced' to install something that serves no real purpose, other than wasting resources on the PC and internet connection.…
Sorry to burst your bubble Brandon but I just built a new PC yesterday, reinstalled and can launch STO perfectly fine how I always have without ARC or even Pando Media Booster being installed. Used the standard installer so no workrounds to bypass it either.