Autocrat

If compatibility was not their intention they would have remapped and replaced the old blocks but the edge cases that would cause would be a pain so they decided not to because of the completely different behavior. In fact I suspect they first tried full swapping/remapping it in old worlds and saw things break. They tend to avoid trying to break blocks in existent worlds, thus I do not ever see them purging the old bush types from the game on the basis of them being tiny blocks with a tiny footprint in terms of size to keep compatibility with old worlds. It's literally at the top of survival challenges for your first example then slightly below that... Loads of geology options as expected from the world generation tab

If they intended to remove the old bushes from the game I am of the opinion they would have done that with the new ones, they were explicitly left in for compatibility sake. Considering the scope of the settings is to allow the vanilla game to appeal to varied niches of people with various behaviors far more impactful being settings (eg, turning temporal stability and/or storms off outright) set on world creation, I believe it is perfectly reasonable if not ideal for what amounts to a single setting called "classic berries" off by default which, when on, simply puts an old bush wherever it would gen a new one. None of the mods at present do this. The scope of the suggested setting is small and very much inline with the vanilla worldgen settings which already exist in my opinion. But I do not enjoy the new system, and have friends who can say the same, who would be delighted if we could simply press a button on making a world to have the system that we did enjoy.

the old worldgen setting would not be default - it would be a new setting for new worlds which generates old bushes instead of new bushes. Which, considering old bushes still exist in the game... The old system was not a problem, because I enjoyed it. I don't want it to mess with your world or your preferences, I just want a setting when I make a world which generates the old bushes as they did previously. In fact given the old bushes (and thus behavior) still exist, if anything that would make implementing a toggle at the level when you create a world to generate the old bushes easier if anything. With zero impact on new worlds with new bush settings.

I saw that but really I just want a worldgen option for the old behavior, that doesn't really change the making berries a pain in the stone age thing that irked me, I just want to be able to make worlds with the old behavior without having to change the new behavior for people who want that

I decided to play for the first time in a while, saw the berry bush change while exploring my new world, when I asked why the berry bush was depressed a friend told me what happened, and then I entirely lost interest and closed out of the game. My early game historically consisted of mass gathering berrybushes and putting them near where I settle while I get established - this being too annoying in the new system, in a world I created with intentionally relaxed setting to just chill, it killed my desire to play. I really just want a setting or toggle for the old behavior - with all the various settings, options, and toggles and customization/varied preference accommodation, I believe this being an option to be within the ethos of the game.