Hi,
1) About the displays, no plan, but checkout this forum http://forum.notebookreview.com/ maybe you can find the answer by yourself (as i guess in the US stuff is already released).
2) Thinkpad Y700 - i would wait (or look for) any reviews, as Lenovo sometimes did not have the "upper class" displays in their devices (means more the not so good ones), usually ThinkPads I´ll prefer for work (means workstation style / docking station and stuff, office notebooks) as they´re pretty good and durable there, but for gaming i never had one (and never seen one, and never found any review about great devices from Lenovo in that focus). Yes they have some out there, but those stuff not reaches goal in focus of any Top10 or high ranking in any reviews, most complaints about the displays ...
ASUS - looks okay, if it´s not available - wait for it. What i ever complain at ASUS gaming notebooks is the I/O port on the right side (where usually your mouse is) seems they´ll never catch that. SSD Question: i guess yes, but if theres an NVMe SSD inside it´s the 200 bugs worth, if not you can buy a cheap m2 2280 SATA device (thats what i guess - i don´t know or can verify for this particular one, but usually such devices will have an 2.5" SATA slot for HDD or SSD, and an additional m2-2280 slot (or NVMe some newer ones) ).
3) What about MSI or different other manufacturers? In which country you wanna buy that thing (so in germany we have also Schenker which got nice portfolio) What about device in general - so you prefer an 17" model which is portable?
aVa