Interesting twist. Our group would never have agreed to play open-handed resources. We were all bastards. IMO one of the best parts of the game was that opponent's hands were secret unless you went through the effort of keeping track of their hands. That information imbalance opened up many underhanded and shrewd trading strategies. We also would allow dishonorable trading, like offering a trade you couldn't fulfill, to goad your opponent into revealing whether he would take it, valuable information. We also allowed making side deals, like "trade me two stone and two wheat as a protection bribe and I'll never put the robber on you."
Did you also play with the development cards open-handed? That would be a twist, too, because a lot of the end game is about wondering whether or not your opponents' cards gave them points advantages, whether they were going for largest army, and so on.
One reason I stopped playing games like Hearthstone was because everyone brought a bot to the game to track cards, and I found the experience was a lot worse after using one.
I don't see why it would be. You can easily determine what resources a player is likely to have, and what they need, by looking at the fully public board.
I'm not, really; the normal mode is that you offer to buy something and you get it or not. But if you want the information, it's publicly available in high but not perfect fidelity, making tracking hands even less valuable than otherwise.
Did you also play with the development cards open-handed? That would be a twist, too, because a lot of the end game is about wondering whether or not your opponents' cards gave them points advantages, whether they were going for largest army, and so on.