Are these the "knobs" you were referring too (sorry can't find where I had read it) that would allow miners to have more control what transactions are included in blocks?
Yes, partly.The most important change is having miners sort transactions by fee-per-kilobyte, and prefer higher-fee transactions to lower-fee transactions. That way users that want their transactions to get confirmed quickly can pay a higher-than-average fee. Today, most miners are using the reference code which selects transactions based on priority, not fee.
Still todo: give better recommendations to users about how long it might take their transaction to get confirmed if they send it without a fee, and recommend an appropriate fee.