I think Paradox really ought to start listening to the voice of the people
The problem might not be with being deaf to the players, but their relatively new strategy of planning entire roadmap of DLCs years ahead. Even if VOTP was of top-notch quality, the main problem with it remains that it doesn't answer the worst problems with Vicky 3 as it is today: abyssmal warfare and international politics.
I can't help but notice that Paradox is caught in a, well, a paradox: they are trying more and more ambitious systems whilst limiting initial scope of their games (either to cynically bolster slales of the DLC or because they simply do not have the output to ship large enough games at the premiere - probably both). All of their last major historical games: HoI4, CK3, Imperator and now Vic3 follow the same pattern: more or less underwhelming initial release, awful first DLC, then either the game slowly becomes decent when DLCs finally start addressing core issues or gets abandoned because it doesn't sell well. I feel Vic3 will unfortunately be the latter.
It pains me, because lead dev for V3, Wiz, is one of the guys who 'gets' what makes Paradox Grand Strategies great and his work as a modder proves so. His initial projects are always interesting and ambitious, yet fall short to deliver, probably because Paradox doesn't have enough workpower/budget.
Paradox really needs to rethink their policy; either scale down their productions or take a risk and go big. The first option is more likely considering limited market for GS's, but also will probably not sit well will established audience, who will always expect the next game to have full features of the previous title in the series, even if that's obviously impossible.
