An increase in the number of stories submitted already makes it harder for an individual story to get on the front page, since it rolls off the New page faster.
I think I know why you didn't like the story-upvote count, since sometimes there might not be any good stories available to upvote. But keep in mind that if story upvotes are the new "time", then "time" slows down for the existing front-page stories as much as it does for the new submissions.
