Put a complete noob to play this game before FTL change. Within hours they have crap tons of fun, they are drawn to this game and they make eveyrhing possible to make it even further. Everything was simple, you knew what happend when you put (drag unit) someone to mine or to work with energy. Everything was shown right there with numbers. Simple, easy, understandable. If you needed more energy turn that mine to energystation and boom more energy (even not efficient). Simple understandable, FUN!
Why exactly should we benchmark how fun a game is by measuring how simple it is and how easy it is to pick up for new players? Don't get me wrong, it's very good if a game can be easily learnt by beginners, but I feel we shouldn't prioritise that over giving complex systems and demanding gameplay for people who are already familiar with the game.
Paradox games have a reputation of being relatively hard to pick up, and much more harder to master, but that's exactly why they are so fun. You can have a game with a massive depth, complex systems, a lot of options, with replayability so great you can easily sink thousands of hours into them, or you can have simple. You can't have both. Or at least there's a tradeoff.
And what was exactly fun about the old pop system? You put pops in a square grid cells that have numbers in them. If a cell has food, you put farm there, if minerals, you build a mine, if energy, a power plant. Repeat the process until your grid is finished.
I feel like was simplistic, unengaging, boring and absolutely didn't fit in a 4X game like Stellaris and was glad to see it reworked, despite the new system still having some issues and room for improvement.
Put noob to play this game as of now, and they have not even after 10h frekking idea what is going on! I with 1000h games played (quit, cause had seen it all) without updating coming to this version, even as I understand FTL change, am so baffled with how far and bad has this game gone from what is was.
Yeah, 10h in other Paradox games like EU4 or CK2 was not enough to be even somewhat proficient in these games. But comparing Stellaris to CK3 and HOI4, which are easier to pickup for new players, I feel like your "even after 10h not frekking idea what is going on" is an overstatement.
Who the heck think this is fun, understandable or anything even close to those, has lost their head to somewhere where sun doesnt shine. WTF! Happend to this game? How something so fun, easily to adopt and hard to master turned to crap show, where even veteran, yet noobie it seems, doesnt know whatta heck is going on!?!?!?! Planet screen doesnt tell anything anymore, earlier it was nice screen of blocks, mines etc, no more. You as empreror, ruler etc. cant anymore order people to their place you must "make vacancies". WTF!
Well, the game has more than 10k daily players, so unfortunately some people still find it fun. Try asking them if they lost their heads.
And was how exactly the game hard to master in the past as opposed to now? As I mentioned before, you just moved pops on a grid, made trivial decisions about what building to place on which cell. There was no concept of urbanization, population density, overpopulation, you had like 5 or 6 jobs max, and the concept of strata was not clearly visible, you had to manually hover over each pop to see it or remember which jobs correspond to which strata. Now it's clearly visible and there's movement between strata by the pops. The old system was so basic it didn't fit the game.
And contrary to your claims, people do understand the game and some even find it enjoyable. Try projecting and complaining less and maybe being more constructive instead.