I totally agree with you! I am also a very new player and am willing to pay some money for good cards, but it is impossible to get far in any tournaments. I didn't participate for quite some time, since I had the feeling, that my chances are low, but since tried to at least get to Round 2 or 3 in the cheap Tournaments (1 or 3 DEC ones), in hope, that these would meet the conditions you listed above.
But in the end, the chances to win are not existing. I have a full lvl 1 deck, while my opponent fought with a couple of lvl 2-4 cards, which made even the more unfavorable battles easy wins for him.
So I think I will abstain from tournaments as long as this doesn't get fixed. Just throwing DEC or SPS out of the window is nothing that makes sense imho and the chances of winning some DEC or SPS are so low, that it doesn't seem worthy.
I would hope, that they work on that, since even for ppl, who want to invest money and time into this game, it is not fair how tournaments are designed.