Well, there are quite a few new user facing features and refinements.
http://www.iphonehacks.com/2013/09/ios-7-features.html
To name just a few -- Background Refresh (allows apps to intelligently do more things in the background), FaceTime Audio (better sound quality than a regular phone call), better camera app, better photos organization, and I really do find AirDrop useful.
The majority of the changes are probably more developer-focused, but that is a good thing. It's not so important for the OS to have a ton of new user facing features, but it is important for the OS to enable developers to build even better apps. I definitely spend more time using apps than I do playing around in the OS's UI. So all those technical improvements in iOS 7 are going to enable more powerful and versatile apps in the future (at least, that's the hope).
Fear not, though. I've read that there's a jailbreak ready and waiting for 7.1 to be released. I'm sure you'll be able to customize iOS exactly how you like it afterwards.