Rvalue references et al are a valuable addition to the language if you're trying to avoid gratuitous copying. The performant alternative is a messy variety of functions that have the same effect as move semantics, except with ad hoc (or no!) compile-time checking. Using them correctly does requires a lot more background knowledge and conscious decision-making from the user than the rest of the language.

Templates are not that bad as a user, but as a template author, they're a completely different programming language that makes it much harder to express even simple ideas. (Concepts may have changed that, but I haven't had a chance to use them.)