One of the aspects of CK3 that I feel is not so often brought up is how "easy" the game is, and more importantly, how easy it is to get claims.
In CK2 it could often take a lot of time to fullfill your objectives and it seems to me that the pace was overall slower (which isn't a bad thing)
In CK 3 whichever character you start with, you can generally, and very quicky balloon from a duke or small king into an emperor with a tight grasp on their vassals, or even from a count to a powerful vassal able to challenge his liege without any real problem, all in a matter of 20 years or so.
I feel like there is less of a need to meticulously and carefully plan ahead as well as be very keen to seize any opportunity that would present itself.
In summary, whatever your starting situation, it feels like you always have a quick and easy way to victory. And almost always a variety of ways to get ahead immediately.
Like I've mentionned the multiplicity of easily available claims really helps in that regard. Why would you spend time marrying your way into usurping your liege when you can easily inflate into a strong vassal and forge a claim with an almost immediately available forge-claim-on-liege perk ?
As a matter of fact you can easily do both at the same time, just to be sure, if you want.
The forge claim councilor mission is quick and reliable in CK 3 when it was anything but in CK2
The Focus system allows you to relatively quickly grab the perk necessary for your ascension and immediately put them to use, whereas the equivalent system from CK2 was less gamey, slower and more random, requiring time for your character to properly blossom into competence into whatever area you chose.
Vassals it seems are much tamer and don't really give you any trouble for being constantly at war. As long as you make sur to not anger anyone with tyranny, and redistribute a bunch of your conquests you can basically go on 30 year long unstopable expansion periods without any real protest from your vassals before you have to consider slowing down if you want to accumulate good will to be transferred to your successor.
Also seems like levies reinforce much quicker
In my opinion, CK 2 was rythmed by expansion or opportunity grabbing periods and slower times where you would more or less watch the time fly while you plan your next hit or wait for it to come to fruition, getting busy with other busy work and less important tasks in the meantime.
CK 3 gives you the opportunity to do pretty much everything you want, immediately and easily. And whatever your objectives are, all paths are generaly viable (although some will be more effective than others depending on the situation of course)
On top of that, several mechanics having been severely dumbed down (raising levies and embarking, personal levies vs vassal levies) and some of the features being straight up removed instead of being improved upon (papal curia, artefacts, societies) and CK 3 feels a little shallow to me compared to its older brother. Kind of like it's lost some of its flavor or cachet.
EDIT: now of course there are also plenty of improvement on various aspects of the game like some people have pointed out that's undeniable.
But some of the changes I'm just really not a fan of even after giving them time.
The main point of this post is that I believe that slowing down the game's pace significantly would create much more room to develop various playstyles instead of map painting. Like involvement in societies (if they come back) managing your real/vassal/familly/court, having a more extensive and slower approach to scheming and diplomacy. And more side occupations of various nature (religion, hunting, warfare training, children education etc etc, whatever you could think of)
