> Our APSi includes HATEAOS links and I have never, not once, witnessed their actual use (but they do double the size of response payloads).

So your payloads look like this:

    {
        "id": 1,
        "href": "http://someplace.invalid/things/1",
        "next-id": 3,
        "next-href": "http://someplace.invalid/things/3",
    }

And rather than just using next-href your clients append next-id to a hardcoded things base URL? That seems like way more work than doing it the REST way.