Two other clarification questions to aide in my understanding.

1) Are these tests primarily designed for running against live backends or guarding against internal code changes? 
2) Is every step and object created within the before_suite a necessary component for each test? I ask that given that tests can serve as documentation for how to use a method, or in this case how to accomplish an entire workflow. In the case of workflow (or end-to-end) tests, I feel that the tests should clearly indicate what entities are needed, what steps are being taken and then desired outcomes throughout the workflow (the latter two being covered although I wonder if each test shouldn't be accompanied with the steps documented as you have in the test below this comment).