I think one problem is that the developers of CR got tons and tons of disagreement on some changes to the basic gameplay, were really tired of that and wanted to avoid those by telling everybody that there will be changes now, and that "It has always been that way" is not a valid argument. We might have gone overboard with that - Lots of features have always been that way because it's good for them to be that way, not because it was simpler to implement or something. But lots of features would also have been equally good another way, and we'll want to change some of them just to have something new. A sequel that doesn't really change anything gameplay-wise is rightfully called uninspired and boring. I think we only got away with that with CR because everyone was distracted by the shiny network improvements.