Because opinions are like assholes, everybody has one.
There are the vocal few who in no way represent the player base are typically very vocal about changes they don't like. It's human nature to complain about something you don't like but far less likely someone will speak out about changes they do like.
This issue is common across all Internet gaming. Developers make changes and players largely adapt to the new rule set or get left behind and/or rage quit.
Regardless of the vocal few, paradox will judge its success based on metrics they can more easily measure than some Internet forum & if there sales are increasing it will indicate they are heading in the right direction.
That's not to say issues won't be addressed, but if you don't like how a mechanic works, far better is a constructive post to suggest how you think it might fit better than a rant which offers nothing and will be quickly dismissed.
To be fair though things like 'coring' bugs of varying kinds among the game along with CTD's that I can cause consistently since launch... there's no subjective opinion about these. They are things that are wrong with the game.
Referring to corruption though, this is definitely subjective, I won't argue with that but It's not a matter of 'adapting', the rule set isn't that hard to adapt to, but managing it (or ignoring it) ultimately it means 'you get much less of the fun things you liked about the game then you did before and the further away from Europe you are, the less fun you get to have'. When you take fun away in a game (however subjective) people are going to be especially upset. Adding challenge or making a change that's interesting and adds strategic depth (e.g estates) might get some original complaints and knee jerk reactions but even they can ultimately see what the feature is trying to achieve.
Corruption on the other hand... is just made to take things away and punish people playing in a way Paradox disproves of, which is... really bizarre, like why do they care? And don't say blobbing was too easy, you can still blob just as hard as before with little to no ill effects as a European power despite the fact Qing and Mughals historically both blobbed pretty hard, so there's no good historical OR game play argument which is true of MANY features they introduce for what amounts to 'because reasons'.
At the end of the day though you'll eat the corruption with imbalanced tech because it's simply better trying to fight off Europeans keeping ahead in military tech rather then rolling over at Muslim tech or worse if your rulers are sufficiently bad. Not dying or not losing land is going to better than almost any other nasty alternative, but people aren't going to be happy eating an extra penatly 'because reasons'. The kicker is that people who are pro corruption usually never play outside of Europe which just makes this issue even worse because many assume the real problem is 'expansion got nerfed' when it really really didn't.
It's generally the people who were already really strong at the game and have a deep understanding of its mechanics, both new and old that don't like the change. We've tried being constructive, that ended up being told we were three year olds trying to understand algebra by Johan when he refused to/couldn't answer fair questions. Wiz outright said to me that 'he doesn't answer to me' when I asked him similar questions. While technically true, he does answer to his customers who effectively pay his wages and it's not exactly the most open thing he could say... People are annoyed with their high handed and obnoxious attitude on top of changes that can only be justified because of a 'design' based on an art project rather than a game and when constructive criticism is met with such high handedness... it wears on people.
If we are talking pure sales though, this game... I really honestly believe it could sell better. I'm a little underwhelmed when looking at the figures of people actively playing and buying. I can suspect why it doesn't and it's not the complexity, I've seen more complicated games sell. Most notably their DLC policy and the fact many features of the game simply don't work without DLC... it's... really questionable as I know of at least two people who haven't gotten into the game because of this after buying the game with no DLC, but that may or may not have anything to do with it.
