Talk about red herrings. This is an utterly nonsensical metaphor. Taylor Swift is more popular than The National because her music is generally inoffensive enough that nobody is going to hate it. The National is basically the exact opposite of that. And everything about them - the band, the musical style, the nature of the concerts - bear absolutely no resemblance to one another.
Here we're comparing HD to HD. Just at different times. If a band tried changing their music and lost 1/3 of their fans, they might care. They might also not, if they could afford to not care. Lots of musicians just want to make music primarily for themselves and are thrilled if they manage to make a living off of it and avoid a day job. But it would generally be fair to say that the general consensus was that their music had become less desirable if they lose fans. And by the same token, it's fair to say that HD has become less desirable since the switch to 3.0. That is objectively true. Whether the game is "better" or "worse" is an incredibly subjective question. I think it's less fun. That has very little to do with the probabilistic nature of new recruiting and virtually everything to do with the extended nature of it. I hate recruiting, always have, it is by far my least favorite part of the game. I like trying to unpack how the engine works, design an image of what I would like my team to look like, and then build team and player game plans. If I could autopilot recruiting I would. So this drawn-out recruiting is an absolute nightmare to me. Whenever I run out of free play I'm going to quit. But because world populations are so abysmally low, that may never happen. Until the lack of customers bankrupts the game.