Can I admit that "Old Kaiserreich" purists that feel the good old days where Kaiserreich was unrealistic and "fun" was objectively superior and whine about Kaiserreich's embrace of hard alternate history over soft alternate history are annoying as hell? I feel they don't understand that alternate history standards have changed so much and what's acceptable then are seen with more scrutiny and cries of ASB now due to more research done into those eras that changed preconceived notions.
People bring up TNO as an example of a "fun, absurd" premise done well but to be honest, the premise had to be there to justify a scenario that most of the alternate history community had given up on as plasuible despite it being the bee's knees 20 years ago with more revelation of just how fucked up Nazism was. And premise aside, TNO's presentation in the 1962-1972 years do lean closer to hard alternate history than soft alternate history on it's own. All the le woke funni gamer paths are, on top of being horrifying, either economically and socially stagnant due to the far right and racial oppression or ticking time bombs on the verge of destruction(including one in Russia that actually goes off at the end date) while the more mundane, blessed, happy or the non gamer paths tend to be sustainable.
Hell Kaiserreich, as it's a different sort of mod(less narrative based), are more charitable towards the woke horrifying funni gamer paths. The Charter totalists, Pelley and Maurras and the saner paths are seen as both having benefits for the nation they happen in.
Also even TNO is genuinely aiming for realism outside the premise, just look at their plans for Burgundy and Kovner rewrite and the hint that DSR is going to be redone or cut. Also I think the CSS submod for TNO cut out one of the le funni woke horrifying gamer paths and I suspect that has to do with CSS maybe going ascended fanon in the future and the devs taking account into some of the rules of the TNO setting to better fit it into there.
Now there are a few things I genuinely feel Kaiserreich is wrong to remove like Orwell, and their India setup had problems on it's own, but this idea that gen 1 kaiserreich was better because "fun" is rather really absurd. Their China update was genuinely agreed to be good FOR it's realism rather than in spite of it despite the people that whine about Mongolia for one. And I think their South Africa content update wasn't derided as awful and a lot of people are genuinely looking forward to their CoF update.