First I was offered to try the new "path" home page about a month ago, but I turned the option off through the settings. But a couple weeks ago it was only "path", and, while the option to turn it off is still available, it doesn't want to save. Sigh.
I only had 6 skills left to get my German tree to L1, but now I'm stuck somewhere in the middle of the path which is, btw, significantly shorter than the tree: it had much more than 200 skills (I don't remember exactly) and the path has just 114 units. Yes, I'm aware that 1 unit has material of 2 or 3 skills, but the general progress, judging from Duome data, is 1 skill per 1 unit, however the path forces us to get up to L3 (red).
Before the switch I had about 50 skills on L1 (blue), and the "path" skipped 14 of them, and all the rest I have to do from zero! I.e. I get no new crown for finishing a new step on the path if this step maps to the L1 tree skill. In fact I didn't lost all my crowns acquired on L1 skills, but in order to progress on the path I have to repeat them all for nothing. (And while I'm doing these L0 steps on the path, my crown counter flips back.)
My other trees, which I climbed from L4 to L5, suddenly became fully completed paths, with nothing to do except the Legendary level, which I find useless for the learning.
Thus, according to my observations, the "path" has only 4 levels: L1 to L3 (blue, green, red) and "legendary", while L4 and L5 (orange and gold) are skipped, thus discarding more difficult exercises along with a significant chunk of the tree, and all the contributors' efforts invested therein.
Meanwhile, playing with Duome progress page, I discovered a workaround: if you click a skill name which is not mapped to the "path", or at the level L3 and higher, you can do a lesson from the tree, even from the skills missing on the "path". I'm sharing this tip freely, being sure that nobody from Duolingo staff reads our forum.