The Beta Hate Is Justified
I have 215 hours on this game. There are a lot of great ideas in EU5 and a lot of systems with tons of potential that seems to be wasted. I really like how, compared with EU4, EU5 has actual population mechanics and can simulate more than one culture and religion in a location. I also really enjoy the increased map depth with more locations than EU4 had. There are a lot of great things about this game.
But the state in which the beta was released is simply unacceptable. There have been so many things wrong that could have been fixed within thirty minutes of playtime, and some of which have been fixed by random community modders (thank you all). To some extent, bugs are to be expected.
What do I expect out of a beta? I have two examples. Stellaris's 4.3 beta was of decent enough quality that I could, in fact, run the game and play it, and its features were not in an unplayable state. There were obviously problems but most of them were things I could reasonably expect that the developers would not have noticed. X4: Foundations had its 9.0 beta recently as well which was top-quality. I noticed hardly any bugs while playing it, and logged 25 hours on the beta without any complaint. The beta was regularly updated on the steam library activity page and all the changes were logged. They had no less than 11 beta updates before changing it to a release candidate, which they then updated 4 times before announcing 9.0's full release. From Tinto? I look at the steam library's activity page and the pinned post is still announcing 1.2, and there's only one post about the 1.3 beta. I click on the link to the subforum for feedback on the beta and the comments are locked.
I'm not huge into drama, I just visit the sub once or twice a week and generally I just play the game. But I'm losing confidence in Tinto's ability to manage the game and the professionalism of the studio. I did not buy the Fate of the Phoenix DLC because I do not have confidence in Paradox Tinto's ability to fix the flaws that it had on release and they did not seem to address the community response with anything except the sentences "While we are at rather negative reviews on Fate of the Phoenix, the reception to 1.2 itself has been encouraging. The HRE overhaul, AI Personalities, Orthodoxy rework, Event Viewer, the 300+ Balkan and Greek advances, the consensus is that the direction is right, and that means a lot to the team." on the 1.2.2 patch notes. This does not inspire confidence, as it seems that they are unwilling to course-correct and are trying to save face.
How does all this relate to the beta? I'm very disappointed in the lack of easily-accessible patch notes to the beta, the fact it seems that they are hand-waving away the community response, and also they seem to lack professionalism. The new mechanic of economic growth decreasing trust, which I have just found they will likely not include in the full release of 1.3, seems to have been added and dropped unceremoniously in a manner that suggests it was not a part of a broader vision but a bone they attempted to throw to the fanbase rather than address the real problems. The beta has been handled unprofessionally and does not meet quality standards of other studios (Egosoft for X4) or even Paradox's other game's beta (Stellaris). Beta is not a shield from any and all criticism, especially as it seems that they are using players for beta-testing as a replacement for, and not to augment, internal QA. I believe this is what players mean when they express distaste at being made to feel like Paradox's QA. Overall, it does not inspire confidence in the team that they would release a beta in such a state, and EU5 will be neither profitable nor commercially viable, nor will it help Paradox's consumer reputation to have a loss of confidence in the studio.
I played HOI4, CK3, EU4, and Vic3 from launch, and I know that those games were not always great. But there I at least had confidence that the game was improving with time and the developers had a coherent vision. I can't say that I have confidence in Tinto or their vision.
TLDR: The state of the beta just further causes a loss of confidence in EU5's long-term prospects and Tinto, as well as damaging Paradox's reputation. The beta simply is of an unacceptably low quality, both compared to Paradox's own and other, similar game betas. This cannot be dismissed as "it's just a beta, what do you expect?"