I'm not quite sure why Deferreds + @inlineCallbacks is more complicated than Futures + coroutines. They seem, at least from a high level perspective, quite similar. You mention that you can both attach callbacks and use them in coroutines: deferreds do pretty much exactly the same thing (that is, at least there's something to translate your coroutine into a sequence of callbacks/errbacks).
If the arcane part of deferreds is from people writing ridiculous errback/callback chains, then I understand. Unfortunately people will write terrible code.
cheers
lvh